Thesis Of Freakonomics

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

There is an example in Freakonomics shows the different incentives are complementary. For instance, the moral incentive has been taking place when parents were frequently late for pick up their children from Israeli care centres in Haifa and the moral incentive is that the parents will feel guilty and shameful due to their unpunctuality. Therefore, it does discourage parents from being late while economists decided to test their solution by enacting the bill which is paying $3 fine per child for the late arriving parents. In this case, economic incentive have been taking place by moral incentive because the feeling of guilt that parents felt was cheaply replaced by $3 fine. After the fine was enacted, it was supposed to dissuade parents from arriving late but the number of late pickups went up drastically. This shows that the incentive was obviously backfired. In this case, both incentives are complementary

The intended audience of Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s Freakonomics is made up of middle class Americans and comprised of adults and teenagers with a basic education and a broad knowledge of a wide range of subjects. Since Levitt and Dubner reference a large variety of topics, it is imperative for the audience to also be familiar with a wide variety of subjects or at the very least to be aware of popular culture and government. For example, when Levitt and Dubner reference a Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, where a young woman named Norma McCorvey was “...the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit seeking to legalize abortion” they establish their audience as one that would be educated enough to know the fundamentals of some of the most important events in American history (Levitt and Dubner 5). By referencing the Roe v. Wade case, a court case which is generally considered to be common knowledge for Americans, Levitt and Dubner reveal that their audience must be comprised of

In chapter one, Levitt talks about incentives and how it's an important role in economics. This is something most of us learn at some point in our lives if not at a very young age.

How can someone benefit from having a friend that has different abilities and talents than themselves? In the book Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick, Max the narrator shares his story of his adventures with Kevin and how they became Freak the Mighty. Before Kevin, Max never actually had a true friend, they came together and combined abilities to become one. Both helped each other with each others disabilities. Max helped Kevin physically, in return Kevin helps Max with his learning disabilities. This is shown when Kevin teaches Max about the King Arthur legends, including the Fair Guinevere, and Arthur's sword, Excalibur. The message that Philbrick wanted to get out into the world was that people can learn from and be friends with others

The next case study was on Sumo Wrestling matches in Japan. Sumo wrestling is huge in Japan and the ranking is everything to the sumo wrestlers. Highest ranked wrestlers are treated like royalty while those who don’t rank as high must tend to their superiors and do jobs that are less than desirable. The results of the data in this chapter shows that a wrestler very well might throw a match to help his opponent maintain his current ranking, when throwing the match does not hurt or help his current ranking. There was economic and social incentive for them to cheat. A wrestler would help another out with the promise of being helped out when they needed it. It was proven that the majority of sumo wrestlers do cheat at one point or another.

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

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

Pathos. Being a book of nonfiction and being written with the purpose of educating others, Levitt and Dubner do not hesitate to throw logistics on what they talk about. The title of this chapter asked what schoolteachers and sumo-wrestlers have in common and anyone would be surprised by how much they actually do in fact have in common. A usage of pathos used by Levitt and Dubner is “ Whatever the incentive, whatever the situation, dishonest people will try to gain an advantage by whatever means necessary”(page 21), in saying this, Levitt and Dubner want you to grasp your mind around the fact that basically people will do whatever they need to do. The whole chapter

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.

Many, if not most, of the people in today's generation are constantly judged by others and even themselves based on what their identity comprises of. The concept of racial injustice and inequality among ethnic minorities constantly fills the media. Women's rights issues seem to arise rapidly whenever a single female is mistreated in the slightest way. The debate on homosexuality is also an enormous topic in our social lives today, with millions of supporters for it, but also millions against it. This internal segregation within our own human population is nothing new, since it has been continuing ever since verbal and written communication with each other has existed. All these components, and many more, are a huge part of what identifies a

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

Levitt and Dubner start out Chapter One by explaining a dilemma that involves day-care centers and tardy parents. In order to resolve the unpunctual parents, a twenty week study was conducted in Israel. The idea behind the study was to apply a small fee per child if the parent was more than ten minutes late. The hypothesized result wasn’t what one would expect. Attaching the fee only made tardy parents tardier, and the number of parents showing up late nearly doubled. On page 16 of Chapter One it reads, “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.” This statement is the first time that incentives are first introduced. Levitt and Dubner go on to state that incentives are

In Levitt and Dubner’s novel, Freakonomics, they deal with the sensitive subject of abortions in chapter four. During this section, Levitt and Dubner are purposing that the drop of crime is not because of the many popular ideas they address but instead because of abortions becoming legalized. Providing proof to their argument, they list out all the popular ideas that many people believe to be the cause of the drop in crime and then one by one explain why these ideas could not fit into the massive crime drop. After explaining the list of popular ideas, they finally come out and state what their take on the crime drop is and explaining why they believe this explanation instead of the ones listed before (115-145). Levitt and Dubner’s flow of writing and logic are shown very strong in this section and provide an easy and understandable read to the audience. Using this form of writing also creates an easier understanding for when they get to their point and distracts the reader into taking account of what they say instead of how offensive it is.

citet{carpenter2006mutual} following similar work by citet{gachter2000cooperation}, provide empirical evidence that economic incentives can reinforce the effect of social disapproval. Both the mentioned papers consider groups of people ranging from five to ten. Each group plays ten rounds, and are then moved to a different group after each round in the `strangers ' treatment. There are three stages to each round, firstly they must contribute, secondly the contributions are made public and finally in the treatments that had a punishment round, players have an opportunity to punish another player at a cost to them self. The results of both papers show the trend that people who contribute less are punished and in later rounds they will contribute more. This suggests that punishment works, interestingly the willingness of players to punish cannot be explained in an economic sense as it is at cost to them. This is referred to by citet{bowles2004evolution} as `strong reciprocity ', this is defined as the willingness to enforce a social norm at material cost to oneself and no expectation of benefit for them or anyone else. In terms for this dissertation an action that cannot be explained by classical economic analysis which justifies actions with the self-interest motive, which suggests that the separability conditioned outlined by citet{bowles2008social} at the beginning of this chapter does not hold. Furthermore the behaviour of those that are punished cannot be explained with