Essay Freakonomics chapter 1 summary

One of the primary fundamental ideas expressed in Freakanomic is that “incentives are the cornerstone of modern life”. An incentive is persuading people to do more good than bad. Levitt defines three types of incentives, social, economic, and moral. The authors state that individuals including sumo wrestlers and teachers, will behave unprofessionally to meet their needs and desires, if the incentives are good enough. A schoolteacher’s incentive to cheat has increased due to high-stakes testing. While a sumo wrestler’s chance of cheating will increase when he is on the bubble since the outcome of his matches will affect every aspect of his life. In order to determine if these incentives to cheat exist, specific data is viewed. For the

Based on Paul Feldman’s findings, the authors of Freakonomics argue that a person, who is faced with an efficient way to cheat, will not necessarily choose to. The data involved in Feldman’s accidental bagel study proves that not all humans are corrupt. However,

Chapter 1 of Freakonomics focuses on the beauty of incentives. It asks the question “What do teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?” The answer is that they both

A number one bestseller many say is grasping in amazement: Freakonomics is said to unravel the untold stories of life. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner break common misconceptions of economics by revealing its true science. Freakonomics shatters the view of economics being an arid study of finance and markets. They pull in information to make inferences on past occurrences subtly influence on the present. Freakonomics packs punches with its countless number of tables and figures, serving as concrete data to make their assumptions. Levitt & Dubner in the beginning identify the fundamental Latin phrase post hoc ergo propter hoc in the sentence, “…just because two things are correlated does not mean that one causes the other”, due to

Levitt next examines the incentives that cause people to cheat. The first example of cheating is a story of teachers cheating in Chicago public schools. To avoid the risk of getting fired or getting penalty by the government for low test scores, many teachers chose to cheat and inflate their students ' scores. They cheated by allowing the students to have more time during test, giving away answers, and even by changing students’ answers by themselves. In this case, we can see that the schoolteachers are driven by economic incentives. For them, moral and social incentives are not as strong as economic incentives. Similar cheating can be seen in sumo wrestling. In Japan, sumo wrestling is a very popular sports and the high-ranked wrestlers get great honor. Also, among sumo wrestlers, their rank determines their salary, reputation, how they are treated, and even how much he gets to eat and sleep. Because they are so desperate for higher rank, the incentive for cheating is very powerful. In the crucial matches that determines sumo wrestler’s ranking, they cheat by

In chapter 2 of Freakonomics the main argument is that the absence of information can be used for personal gain. The main example used to display this tactic is when the KKK is compared to real estate agents. Although the crafty practice of real estate agents is in no way similar to the horrors of the KKK, they have a distinct similarity when it comes to the hoarding of information. The majority of the chapter focuses on the history of the KKK and Stetson Kennedy’s effort to stop it through the infiltration and exposure via radio of the Klan. Since the Klan was dependant on their violent—despite not being extremely violent—reputation, the disclosure of the information they had withheld from the public rendered them powerless. The narrators

Co-founder of think-tank Demos, David Callahan, in his nonfiction book, The Cheating Culture, presents how cheating has become a prevalent influence in American society. Callahan’s purpose is not to shame Americans for breaking the law for a minimal profit, but rather, he intends to eliminate the underlying cause of cheating, which is the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. He adopts a sympathetic tone in order to appeal to similar feelings and experiences in his widespread readers.

“An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change anything”(Levitt 20). What professor Steven D. Levitt (a professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s dictum here is that the incentive has a lot of power in this world). And that the metaphor of comparing “incentives”to a bullet really speaks wonders to their strengths. They can change almost any situation by motivating someone to do something in a business situation, all the way to education fields. After many years of college, business and economics students are being taught how to be greedy in college. It is only a matter of time before greed is too powerful. Incentives and greed both have favorable and critical effects on individuals and the populace, but when connected together both can have dangerous effects on future selections.

The idea of cheating to attain rewards is no new concept. Throughout history, people have performed actions that contradict their morals in order to advance in society. Leaders, parents, and even children have taken shortcuts that strike at their integrity. In recent times, cheating has become more prominent than ever before. The concepts of honesty, fairness, and morality are not enforced, therefore, deception, fraud, and dishonesty prevail in the shadows. In Cheating Culture, written by David Callahan, the author addresses the issue of lying, deceit, and trickery in today's world, while also recognizing a change in the near future is within the people's grasp.

In the book Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, is made up of a series of scenarios in which an economist and a journalist apply basic principles of economics to demonstrate that information can often expose interesting truths about how the world operates. It uses the science of economics and specific data to challenge our assumptions about everything. In the book Freakonomics by Levitt & Dubner, compares and contrasts two groups of people or things by using their informational data. This is called juxtaposition, which means the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect. Levitt and Dubner look at the world in a way that is both surprising, occasionally funny, and always enlightening. They do so by drawing unexpected connections between two greatly different but complementary aspects of sociology and economics, such as sumo wrestlers to school teachers, KKK members to the real estate agents, and lastly, crack gangs to McDonalds.

In chapter 3 in Freakonomics by Stevin Levitt and Stephen Dubner, it concentrates on conventional wisdom. The chapter begins by discussing about conventional wisdom, and how conventional can be wrong. Conventional wisdom was invented by John Kenneth Galbraith to explain generally acceptance by the public. It is furthered explained that conventional wisdom is associated with convenience. That many experts used it for their own agenda. But then explained how asking pointed questions can often overturn conventional wisdom. The authors provide some examples of when people have done some creative lying to draw attention. One of the examples was about getting people’s attention on how rape is a serious problem, it’s much more attention grabbing to tell people that it occurs in every one in three women, rather than the

People make decisions based on many factors. Even more, incentives are a large factor behind those decisions. Incentives can range from moral to economic. In 30 for 30: Playing For The Mob, it illustrates how incentives can persuade people into corruption. In this case, bribery is the focal point of corruption.

In chapter 1, Levitt and Dubner describe how many people in different cultures and walks of life, which are otherwise inclined to be honest, find subtle ways of cheating to advance their position or increase monetary awards when incentives are strong enough. The authors define an incentive as “a means of urging people to do more of a good thing or less of a bad thing,” and identify three varieties of incentives. Economic incentives are those, which a person responds to in the marketplace. Social incentives motivate people to respond in a certain way because they care or are worried about how they will be viewed by others. Moral incentives appeal to a person’s sense of right versus wrong. Three case studies of the

In the book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner note “An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key: an often-tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation” (16). This is to showcase the amount of power an incentive can have over a person or a situation; either good or bad. Humans are found to use incentives when it comes to making daily decisions. Often, people need motives to proceed with their plans. Some tend to make either moral, social, or economic incentive. The moral incentive is about self-respect; keeping in check with what was taught to believe is right and wrong. The social incentive is how the public views the person; wanting to look good in front others. Economic incentive, however, would relate to monetary benefit. While all three incentives can affect people’s decisions, economic

Incentives are seen everywhere in daily life and they appear in a variety of ways. Whether a person is making a choice between what to eat for lunch or when to go to bed, they are being influence by incentives. For example, images of an appealing lunch meal in a TV commercial may make someone choose Subway over Mcdonalds. However, the same thought process can motivate someone to prefer a meal at McDonalds because of the company’s constant promotion of their “dollar menu” (Mcdonalds, 2013). Either of these incentives can appeal to a person, depending on what they are motivated by, in this case, either health or money.