Last week, I finally gave into temptation and purchased the NYT bestseller Freakonomics by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner.
After all, how could anyone resist a book titled such, especially with a cover so tempting?
Needless to say, I was quite skeptical — not because I doubted either of their credentials, but because a lot of NYT bestsellers tend to be full of utter fluff and nonsense.
However, I picked this book up for two reasons — one, because I have heard of Steven Levitt and have read other (academic) papers by him, particularly his famous, “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime” that explained the drop in crime-rates in the US post-90s. And secondly, all the reviews that I had read indicated that the book might actually be quite an interesting read.
Fortunately, I was not disappointed.
Freakonomics is a very fun read, and Levitt and Dubner have a uniquely refreshing way of looking at things. What makes this book especially interesting is Levitt’s use of conventional economic principles to analyse and solve unconventional problems and situations, yielding some very interesting results.
The book has six chapters, each of which analyses a series of related problems and looks at causes and (on occasion) solutions. These include the incentives of cheating, information control, economics of certain nefarious activities (such as drug dealing), the role of abortion in cutting down crime, effects of parenting on education, socio-economic effects of children’s names and the like.
In fact, parts of the book discuss some of Levitt’s papers in layman terms, such as the role of abortion in reducing crime and cheating and other controversies in Sumo wrestling. However, what makes it an interesting read is in the way Levitt and Dubner compare and analyse such results with “conventional wisdom” — or what passes for it these days. To that end, this particularly insightful description that they give themselves probably sums it up better than anything else:
Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: if morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work.
It is also interesting to note that although the tagline of the book reads, “A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”, Levitt is not a rogue economist by any stretch. He is a believer in contemporary economic theories of microeconomics — he just uses and applies such theories to unconventional socioeconomic situations and draws some interesting conclusions.
It also turns out that Freakonomics has been recommended as a textbook at several schools. To this end, there are even study guides to help the student learner understand the finer concepts within the book.
Personally, I like the Freaknonomics Student Guide by Palmer and Carlson.
This guide shows the application of various economic principles to the problems that Levitt and Dubner discuss and gives an overview of the basic economic concepts used as well as summaries of the topics being discussed.
And after a little further exploration, I also found out that there is a Freakonomics website — and more interestingly — a Freakonomics Blog where the authors discuss other things in the same vein as the book. Although I must add that the blog is in no way a comparison to the content in the book, which turned out to be a very fun and interesting read.
So, how would I rate this book? Here ya’ go:
- Originality: 5/5
- New Insights: 4/5
- Clarity of Thought: 4/5
- Language: 4/5
- Knowledge Value: 4/5
- Overall Rating: 4/5
At the end of the day, a very nice book that is a recommended and good read. Go for it!
Update: If you are interested in getting your copy of Freakonomics signed, Levitt and Dubner have a neat little idea — sign up for it and they will send you a signed bookplate. Swell! 
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