Levitt And Dubner's Freakonomics

Economics can be applied in many situations where you wouldn’t normally expect it found. In “Freakonomics”, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the authors attempt to reveal what is happening behind the curtain of modern day life by comparing what you would think are two completely different people or subjects, and they relate these seemingly uncommon topics to more sophisticated economic concepts. The authors initially claimed that there was no theme, but after reading the book I have realized that there are many misunderstandings in the standard wisdom that we know due to the fact that people usually do not look into the motives of a given situation to uncover the truth.

In what way are schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers similar? At first, this question might be puzzling, but the answer is provided in the book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Freakonomics is the result of a partnership between an award winning economist, Steven D. Levitt, and a journalist, Stephen J. Dubner. The duo decided upon making a book after Dubner was given an assignment to profile Levitt. Dubner realized that Levitt took a different approach to economics than other economists and he saw that Levitt had an interesting and effective way to explain statistics. This pushed the two to release the 315 page book to the public in 2005 in New York, New York. Since then, the book has flourished and has been republished numerous times. In Freakonomics, Dubner and Levitt reveal that fundamental ideas of economics can be used to interpret just about everything in modern society. The book focuses on a few key points including; incentives are the driving force behind everything, conventional wisdom is often wrong, small causes can often have dramatic effects, and the advantages of having information. The authors use many interesting stories and statistics to demonstrate these economic themes in the modern world. Stories include how some school teachers in the Chicago school system cheat, the influence that the legalization of abortions had on crime rates, and how real estate agents tend to sell their own homes for higher prices than if they

“An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation” (Levitt & Dubner 16). Freakonomics is a book written in 2005 by award winning economist Steven Levitt and former New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner while they both resided in different states. The use of simple diction makes it so a larger audience can be reached; readers vary from everyday people to students to economists. In order to better explain economics, Levitt and Dubner appeal to their audience by forgoing economic jargon and using simpler terms to ensure that the readers understand and relate to what is being explained throughout the passages. The authors also appeal to the readers through their credible background and logically by using statistics, researches, facts and parallelism.

1.In the book, Freakonomics, the authors discuss about a group called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was very popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the article “27 Important Facts Everyone Should Know About The Black Panthers” by The Huffington Post, a group called the Black Panthers was also popular in the twentieth century. The Black Panthers differ from the KKK in many ways, for example the Black Panthers wore black leather jackets and black berets, opposed to the KKK white sheets and hoods. A major difference between the two group was that while the KKK was hunting down black people, the Black Panthers were trying to protect the black community.Another notable difference between the two groups is that the KKK was aided by the

Parenting is an excellent system in how we raise children, but much pressure is added in raising them to live a successful life. Can it be done, and what should a parent do? These are some of the questions that Steven Levitt attempts to give reasons to in his book Freakonomics, and with it are there arguments and theories on how a parent can accomplish this. Levitt makes a good argument in how economic status of the parents affects the success of future children, but I would reevaluate his argument concerning the importance of how you treat your children, and the way his inferences are concrete.

Freakonomics is a humorous and intriguing book about taking off the top layer of a situation and understanding what is happening underneath. Through everyday examples Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner take perspectives that are unheard of in any other writing while simultaneously comparing the most unique and uncommon ideas to each other. As they study everyday life, readers see insight to the ways in which the world really functions and runs. As they study the world the authors continue to ask questions, thus continuing to challenge the reader to seek for a deeper answer. Through these highly untypical questions, Levitt and Dubner are able to display that the root of economics itself is incentives.

Imagine a perfectly ripe Granny Smith apple. Famished, you bite into it, expecting a crisp, juicy crunch. Instead, it's soggy. Acidic. Different. Confused, you reel back to view the apple's interior: it's not an opaque, light green, it's a glistening orange. The fruit, at least on the inside, is an orange. Your bite, the act of diving into the fruit, revealed a deeper layer, something not expected, something that simply staring at the surface could have never revealed. That is how Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner work. That is Freakonomics.

In the eyes of the authors, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, economics is not seen as a monetary subject but rather a subject with the ability to gain answers through the utilization of interesting, yet out of the ordinary questions. These “out of the ordinary questions” can be seen as the backbone from which the collaboration was written. Levitt and Dubner structured the novel in this way to explore and reveal “the hidden side of everything.” They focus on the incentives behind people’s motives in all different aspects of society—from sumo wrestlers to crack dealers—and connect the surprising similarities with each other. After reading what Levitt and Dubner had to say, I established that the authors’ goal in creating such a novel was

Looking back to 1960 we can notice that violent crime rates always vary. In 1960 murder was at 824, but the 1961 it dropped to 788, then goes back up to 983 in 1966. There is no real pattern to how it varies. Many might think that with increased population we will have increased crimes, but that isn’t the case. In 1975 the population was an approximate 12,237,000 and violent crime was at 1,639. In 1976 the population grew to 12,487,000 but the violent crime dropped to 1,519. (4)

Freakonomics was one of the best novels that I have ever read! I am truly amazed at how Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner compared their study and research to the economy that we live in today. Out of all of the chapters in Freakonomics, Chapter 3: Conventional Wisdom, is the one that stood out the most. This particular topic relates to the world in many different ways.

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

At one point, crime in America grew 13 times faster than population. Between 1965 and 1980s, crimes in every category rose to a record high in New York. Burglary related crimes rose from 183,443 to 360,925. Larceny-theft rose from 253,353 to 535. Vehicle theft rose from 58,452 to 171,007. Assault rose from 27,464 to 91,571. Murder rose from 836 to 2,228. However, during the 1990s, crime in New York crime tipped. Crime fell to a record low. Murder rates, burglary, larceny-theft, vehicle theft, assault, and rape all fell suddenly. Homicide rates plunged 43 percent reaching the lowest levels in 35 years. The crack epidemic along with the election of a new governor both contributed to the drop in crime not the “broken window theory”. Many

In chapter 4 the chapter considers a variety of possible explanations for the significant drop in crime and crime rates that occurred in the 1990s. Based on articles that appeared in the country’s largest newspapers, the authors compile a list of the leading, commonly offered explanations. The next step is to systematically examine each explanation and consider whether available data support the explanation. What the authors, in fact, demonstrate is that in all but three cases–increased reliance on prisons, increased number of police, and changes in illegal drug markets–correlation was erroneously interpreted as causation and in some cases, the correlation wasn’t even that strong.

Economics in reverse is the best way of describing the unconventional method preferred by economist, Steven D. Levitt. While most economists measure social situations and present the data as numbers and graphs Levitt takes anomalies within the data to reveal truths obscured. It’s Levitt’s sociological take on economics that has set him apart from his peers with his heavy focus on incentives, choices, and the consequences they have. Freakonomics mirrors Levitt’s method since it’s a collection of stories he has uncovered or read, and the core economic principles are hidden within each story throughout the book, sometimes even in plain sight like how there are exactly as many chapters as there are core economic principles.

​The field of economics is often distinguished as a field of studying financial trends and market advancements, but Freakonomics reveals how the tools used in economic research can be put to use to study the events and problems that our society encounter on a daily basis. Freakonomics presents a vivid display of how informal methods of data accumulation and examination are often necessary to have an appreciation of the world around us. Just knowing what to measure and how to measure data from our routine lives makes the complex world around us somewhat less problematic. Oftentimes, Levitt presents situations that challenge our prior beliefs and leaves the reader in a state of amazement. The situations in the chapters without no doubt demonstrate