General Description (from Amazon.com)
Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don’t need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald’s, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don’t really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner’s 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there’s a good economic reason for that too, and we’re just not getting it yet.
Why the President Should Read This Book
The subtitle of the book “A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” says, at least in part, why this book is important. When it comes to policymaking, there is a “hidden side” to every decision, every law, every policy, and at the Presidential level, every word. This hidden side is often referred to as “the law of unintended consequences”, and while sometimes decisions must be made within a short timeframe and therefore without adequate consideration of unintended consequences, most decisions should be made with more such consideration. But first you must know that such unintended consequences are possible, and this book does an effective job of convincing one of that.
Other than that, this book has probably done more than any other to make economists popular at parties.