About Freakonomics
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and
sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?
How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect
the rate of violent crime?
These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven
D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies
the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and
child-rearing—and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head.
Freakonomics is a ground-breaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J.
Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin with a
mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern
life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new
field of study contained in this book: Freakonomics.
Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that
economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want, or
need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics,
they explore the hidden side of … well, everything. The inner workings of a
crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance.
The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.
What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great
deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable,
and—if the right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. All
it takes is a new way of looking.
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 true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and
stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more
than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.