This was an interesting book. I say it was interesting because I started liking it (a lot) when I first read it, as time passed I liked it less and less. In that way I call it a candy book, tastes good at first but leaves you worse off for reading it.

In my opinion, there are two problems with the book: First, Stephen Dubner comes across as a sycophant. Way to much of the book is spent praising Levitt. Secondly, I was disappointed in the lack of detail provided about Livitt's hypothesis. I wanted more. It was like reading War and Peace and discovering that you read the abridged version and in fact the book wasn't 100 pages long. This disappointment may have come from my engineering background and my strong desire to really understand economics. This book didn't offer any of that, only a titillating glimpse of the economics.

In some regards one may think my single start rating is to harsh. As mind candy this book was quite good. I did enjoy reading it at the time. Whats more, it did encourage me to study real economics. I am currently enrolled in a masters program in economics and this book did play a very small roll in that decision process. However, as I learn more about economics I realize how shallow the book in fact was.

While this is not the forum for a comprehensive review of the topics presented in the book, or an analysis of how good the economics in Freekanomics are, a review in "Journal of Economic Literature (Vol XLV, Dec. 2007 pp 973)" quotes Livitt as saying: "There is no question I have written some ridiculous papers." The article then goes on to quote a paper by Noam Scheibler(2007) describing Livitt's comparing some of his papers to the fashion industry. "Sometimes you write papers and they're less about the actual result, more about your vision of how you think the profession should be. And so I think some of my most ridiculous papers actually fall in the high-fashion category."

On the whole most of the contents of the book strike me as sociology rather than economics. Interesting in parts, obvious in others (as in the comparison of the structure of a drug dealing network to that of McDonalds) , apparently methodologically unsound in places, a curate's egg.

The major problem is the difficulty the authors have in escaping the gravity of their own biases which then pull them in certain directions. For example the case of fraud and cheating in Sumo wrestling. Statistically we might be happy with the authors' report that after a certain point in competitions fairly fought bouts were not occurring, but that does not prove their claim that money was changing hands.

It seems more than a little cheeky to describe one of the authors as a rogue economist when his rogueishness consists not of wayward or distinctive thinking but mostly in commentating upon the work of other researchers. Derivative, moderately entertaining. Take well salted.

I assumed Freakonomics would be a book that used statistics to debunk various societal hysterias and fearmongering in a semi-humorous way. I quickly realized what I was in for when early in the book when the authors gave their background as Harvard Jews and profiled a guy that infiltrated the KKK for the ADL. The story sounds at least partially made up.

It then jumped into predictable white guilt inducing trash and goes into mental contortions using "data" and sociological explanations for black criminality and low IQ scores. The writers of this book are also obsessively pro-Abortion. The only surprise was they used statistics to show you are much more likely to die from an automobile or a swimming pool than a gun. This book would probably appeal to upper middle class liberals who like to consider themselves clever and politically astute from their isolated armchairs. For me Freakonomics was a big load of garbage.

This is a very American book. Not just because all of the examples in it are set in the US, but also the hype about it is terribly American too. It has the tone of self congratulation that has sold a million self-help books. Which is a pity, as what it has to say is terribly interesting and amusing.

The stuff at the end about how the name you are born with affects your life is very interesting. Also the idea, that is clearly true, but I'd never thought of it before, that people give their daughters crazier names than their sons.

The point of this book is to say that sometimes there are very interesting correlations between things that seem quite disparate. The big one (and I haven't checked, but I assume this one didn't go down terribly well with the religious right in America) was the idea that the drop in violent crime in the US was due to the drop in violent criminals and this was due to there being less people brought up in abject poverty which is due to people being able to have access to abortion and not bringing unwanted children into the world.

The comparisons between drug dealers and McDonalds as a corporate structure is now received wisdom - Obama quotes this in his book.

Overall this is a great little read and quite fun - but really, I can't think of a single book that was improved by self-congratulation.

I lost all faith in this book when it tried to teach you how to be a “perfect parent” and came to the conclusion that “it isn’t so much a matter of what you do as a parent; it’s who you are.” He claims that your socioeconomic status determines whether or not you will be a good parent. One of his biggest points in this chapter is that nothing a parent does (for example, taking their child to museums or reading books to their toddler) matters in the slightest. The only data he uses to draw this conclusion is a collection of test scores. Obviously a high test score does not equal a well-raised, happy child in a healthy family environment. And of course what you do as a parent matters. You can’t totally neglect your child and then claim you’re a perfect parent because of your socioeconomic status. You also cannot determine what makes a good parent based on children’s test scores alone.

Also, can we talk about how self-congratulatory the author is? It makes the book such a chore to read when he includes things like how he is a demigod of economics or how much he dazzled journalists with his inventiveness and how he revolutionized the field.

Freakonomics is disappointing.

کتاب اقتصاد ناهنجاری های پنهان اجتماعی نوشته استیون لویت به بیان خود نویسنده کتابی ایست که موضوع واحدی ندارد ، و اثر و اصولا ادعایی هم در بهبود کیفیت زندگی مادی انسان ندارد ، اساس کتاب او بر مبنای شک است .
آنچه نویسنده به دنبال آن بوده است پیدا کردن رشته ای مشترک در کاربردهای امور روزمره است ، این که مردم در دنیای واقعی چگونه رفتار می کنند ، مساله ای مهم که آقای لویت تلاش کرده با تلفیقی از علم اقتصاد ، آمار ، جامعه شناسی و رفتار شناسی به آن پی ببرد .
هدف نویسنده در زیر سوال بردن عقل متعارف است ، پرسیدن سوال های بسیار تا هر فرد برای هر موضوعی با تکیه بر هوش و شناخت خود به ایده یا راه حلی برای آن برسد .
اگرچه بیشتر موضوعاتی که استیون لویت به آن ها پرداخته اصل و ریشه غربی دارد و برای مردم در جوامع شرق ممکن است کمی عجیب به نظر برسد اما کتاب در مجموع در تلاش برای نگریستن متفاوت و خارج از عقل متعارف برای خواننده فارغ از هر جامعه یا ملیتی ، نسبتا موفق بوده است .

از هرلحاظ کتاب خوبی بود.
اول از همه بگم که توی این کتاب قرار نیست خواننده با نظریات و تئوری های اقتصاد خرد و کلان رو به رو بشه که با نثری خشک و سنگین و تخصصی، فقط برای علاقمندان و استادان اقتصاد قابل درک و مطالعه باشه. کتاب کاملا برای مخاطب عام نوشته شده، کسی که نه تخصصی در اقتصاد داره و نه علاقه‌ای به پرداختن به مباحث نظری، بلکه فقط دنبال لذت بردن از نثر و ایده کلی کتاب و کِیف کردن و هیجان زده شدن از ورق هایی که نویسنده دونه به دونه رو میکنه و حقایق جالب و تامل برانگیز به خوردش میده تا بعد از تموم شدن کتاب به یه‌نگاه متفاوتی به علت و معلول های جهان اطرافش داشته باشه.
برای نگاه ژرف‌ و کنجکاوانه به‌جهان اطراف، الگو های هیجان‌انگیزی در اختیار خواننده گذاشته بود. صرفنظر از اینکه آمارهای مورد استفاده به بومِ ناآشنا و غریبی تعلق داشت؛ یا حتی اینکه بعضی نتیجه‌گیری ها برای محیط اجتماعی ما جور در نمیومد؛ اما با این وجود پژوهشگر، متفکر، اقتصاددان یا به‌طور کلی هر شخصی که علاقمند به دونستن پشت پرده مسائل اجتماعی باشه با خوندنش تجربه جالب و به یاد موندنی‌ای خواهد داشت.

As the old joke goes, the questions in economics exams are the same every year; only the answers change.

(re-reading in prep for the super-freaks)

I guess some people don't like this book because it's not centered around one theme. Instead, it's more about the seemingly diffuse academic work of one of the authors Steven D. Levitt (the other author is a journalist, Stephen J. Dubner). Levitt is something of an economist but more like a social scientist using the tools of Microeconomics applied to other fields that happen to catch his interest (often having something to do with cheating, corruption, crime, etc.). In the back of the book he mentions how he considers himself a student of Thomas Schelling who is kind of like the father of Game Theory (strategy theory?), except much more of a 'man of ideas' than what one might think of when one thinks about game theory today, which is much more mathematical.

Anyway, as for the book itself, I thought it was really great. I really like what Levitt is doing as far as using the tools of Microeconomics in other fields. One of my intellectual heroes (I only have a few) is Kenneth Waltz who did the exact same thing in the field of International Relations in the '70's and wrote the seminal book The Theory of International Politics, which pretty much the single-handedly invented defensive (neo) realism. More generally, I think Economics is probably the most formalized of the social sciences and the one to which others should esteem. A lot of the Political Science field concerned with both voter behavior and how legislatures work is now pretty formalized as well, and, I, for one, think this is a good thing. I don't see how anyone could think it's not (good) unless they a)think the scientific method cannot be used to analyze human behavior; or b)have a visceral aversion to mathematical languages. Actually, I am one of the latter, but I, at least, see the value in having a formalized language to work with.

As for the book itself, there's some maybe-controversial things in there like Levitt did some work that showed that the legalization of abortion in the U.S. (Roe v. Wade) was one of the main reasons that crime in the U.S. dropped in the '90's and continues at the same rates today. He stands behind it pretty hardily though and it doesn't seem like he has a moral agenda at all. Some might argue that the best writers are those who are best able to disguise their moral agenda, but considering he writes about all kinds of not-very-serious things like how sumo wrestling in Japan is probably corrupt as far as matches g,o and there's stuff in there about how real estate agents sell their houses for more than they sell their customers' houses (which, may or may not be surprising), I really don't think he has a hidden pro-life agenda.

Anyway, there's a bunch of stuff in there (the book), hence the 'freak' in Freakonomics. It's well-written. It's not dry. It's written for a lay audience. I recommend it. Read it and feel the power of social science! ;-)

I could go on about the wealth of misinformation, statistics devoid of context, and the casual racism at work in this book. Instead, I'm going to take a novel approach because this week I came across a podcast that sums it up more eloquently and succinctly than I could here. Check out the first episode of "If Books Could Kill." They cover most of the reasons I loathe this book.


https://pod.link/1651876897

The "experts are evil, have agendas, will trick you" talk got old real fast, especially when points are later being backed up with experts research. There's not enough discussion on the data itself, no distinction between quantitative and qualitative, and not enough discussion on the many flaws of data and how we analyze it. Pretty interesting how much he dislikes criminologists but then (if I remember correctly), only mentions the same one or two names over and over when giving examples of criminologists that had agendas/tricked the public. Also the fact that the entire book, and the issues, feels very simplified. Actually the author puts it best himself:
"The typical parenting expert, like experts in other fields, is prone to sound exceedingly sure of himself. An expert doesn’t so much argue the various sides of an issue, as plant his flag firmly on one side. That’s because an expert who’s argument reeks of restraint or nuance often doesn’t get much attention. An expert must be bold if he hopes to alchemise (?) his homespun theory into conventional wisdom."
This is often how I perceived the book to be written, very simplified, without enough nuance or room for possible explanations - only one right answer. I didn't like how the book was written, how the topics where dealt with, and had a hard time taking anything seriously after all of the self-admiration and the repeated "all experts have agendas (except for us)" talk in every chapter.

Sheer Rubbish. This is an awful book, yes I read the whole thing, like bitter medicine to a toddler, and had to see what the fuss was about.

This Amazon review nails it.  Here's my review/rant.

I'm reading this is 2012, maybe the hype in 2005 was different and people ate this kind of stuff up, even then I don't think we were that gullible at this time. There were good social science/stats books out there. This book pales in comparison to the works of Malcolm Gladwell and others.

Levitt is making something out of nothing from strange stories he heard, now he's stitching them together suggesting there's a *GASP* hidden side to everything. Because the KKK spoke in code, real estate listings are supposedly in code, and we're all being duped into spending more for our house because of the secret speak between realtors! How about consumers don't just read a real estate listings but check a place out before making the biggest purchase of their lives, one could argue there's secret speak in every industry. For his final chapter (which is in the middle of the book) Levitt's grand finale, Black people name their children differently to White people! The second half of the book is blog posts from their blog more atrocious reading from these ranting lunatics.

There's no appeal to science, Levitt is throwing a lot of his own opinion, and making wild estimations and bringing up even wilder conclusions. It's pretty obvious Levitt is a shrewd businessman, he's not just writing books, but has a well to do following with his blog, radio station and yes even movie! This is "easy to consume" garbage for the masses.