!!ليس اقتصاداً عجيباً فحسب وإنما اقتصاد ممتع

ستيفن لييفيت الذي يخشى التفاضل والتكامل هو في الوقت نفسه أذكى اقتصادي أمريكي حيث حصل على ميدالية جون بيتس كلارك وهي الميدالية التي تقدم كل سنتين إلى أفضل رجل اقتصاد أمريكي لا يتجاوز عمره الأربعين

"إن الأخلاق تمثل الطريقة التي يجب أن يرى الناس فيها العالم يسير، بينما يمثل الاقتصاد كيف يعمل العالم في الواقع"

هذا ما يعتقده ليفيت حيث يرى أن الاقتصاد بعد كل شيء هو علم القياس ويتألف من مجموعة من أدوات قوية ومرنة يمكن تطبيقها على قضايا مختلفة وقد كانت نتائج تطبيق ليفيت لتلك الأدوات مذهلة بحق ومنها:
أن انخفاض معدل الجريمة في التسعينيات سببه الإجهاض القانوني، وأن حوض السباحة أخطر على الطفل من مسدس، كما أنه كشف أساليب الغش لدى المدرسين ولدى مصارعي السومو....

I won't deny that this is a very interesting, compelling and thought-provoking book. Even for someone like me whose general response to economics is *snore*. And it's mainly because Freakonomics is not really about economics, but involves applying statistical analysis to many social issues and questions.

Very easy to read. Lots of shocking discoveries that seem weighted in fact - Roe v. Wade is responsible for a huge drop in crime? No wonder some people are pissed off with this book. It's really quite fascinating to look at the power of incentives - economic, social and moral - and examine cause and effect.

One of my favourite personal experiences with silly notions of cause and effect is diet soft drinks. I confess to being a bit of a coke zero addict. It's not great for you (the sodium makes you more thirsty, a lot of potassium can lead to palpitations, and a lot of phosphoric acid has been linked to kidney problems) but I've lost count of how many times people have cited statistics showing that diet soda drinkers are more likely to be overweight and diabetic. Of course they are! If you're overweight and diabetic you're more likely to drink the low-calorie, sugar-free alternatives, aren't you? So strange how people assume it is A that causes B and ignore the possibility of it being the opposite.

Anyway, my issue with this entertaining book is that I think it may be - to be frank - bullshit. Not all of it, sure. But definitely some of it. The writers state their points very confidently (some might say with a touch too much smarm) but it requires you to take a lot of what they say on faith. And some of the jumps they make between statistics and conclusion don't quite add up for me. I know many others have felt the same.

But here was the thing that really got me, the thing that made me smell bullshit: I'm fairly confident something they said is not rooted in any truth. And let's be clear: I am a total noob when it comes to most statistics and economics, so if even I can spot something a bit off, it really makes me question the rest of it. Here it is:

n  Women's rights advocates, for instance, have hyped the incidence of sexual assault, claiming that one in three American women will in her lifetime be a victim of rape or attempted rape. (The actual figure is more like one in eight - but the advocates know it would take a callous person to publicly dispute their claims.)n

This, if true, implies two things. 1) Those advocating women's rights are using false data, therefore undermining their credibility, and 2) They have invented a statistic to intentionally support their cause, knowing no one will dispute it (absolutely bizarre that the author thinks no one is disputing women's rights claims, but okay...)

Well, being a feminist and someone who has spent an awful lot of time reading and writing about women's rights organizations and statistics, my eyes narrowed a little. See, in all my research, I've never seen or heard any claim that "1 in 3 women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape". I have heard the "1 in 3" statistic, but a somewhat different one.

So, obviously, I went to look it up. I spent a couple of hours going through Google and every women's rights organization page I could find, trying to uncover a single case where that statistic was used. I found exactly: none. The only other thing I found that mentioned it was a Time article attempting to debunk so-called "feminist myths": http://time.com/3222543/5-feminist-my...

The statistic the authors appear to have misquoted is that "1 in 3 women will experience sexual violence, or physical violence by an intimate partner", which is used often. Sexual violence here is an ambiguous term, leaving room for wider interpretations and probably explaining why, with the addition of domestic violence into the statistic, the number is at "1 in 3" instead of "1 in 8".

Furthermore, not only have the authors misrepresented the statistical claim itself, but they have also suggested that women's rights advocates have pulled the numbers from thin air to make a point - on the contrary, this is a study conducted by the World Health Organization on the "Global and regional estimates of violence against women".

I like the idea of the book, but this really put me off. Perhaps it was a one-off error that I managed to spot. Perhaps. Either way, I started to be less impressed by the facts and statistics they presented. Still, very enjoyable book for the most part.

I enjoyed Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything; however, I’m not yet sure if it is simply entertaining or is in any way instructive. Levitt and Dubner explore a diverse range of subjects: from linking Roe v. Wade to violent crime, cheating by teachers and sumo wrestlers to an economic model of drug dealing.

I’d like to think that the stories told by the authors and the way they analyze conventional thinking would put me on a path to look past easy answers. Having completed Freakonomics, do I look at the world radically differently than I did before picking up the book? It is Interesting to look at subjects from a different angle. Positing that economics and specifically the field of study now dubbed freakonomics has nothing to do with morality is an intriguing concept as well, but deciding which stories to tell is necessarily selective. Indeed, the focus is interesting. So yes I enjoyed Freakonomics, but feel I should have more to say about it and the authors’ underlying premises than I do. 3.25 stars

A közgazdaságtan az a buborékszemüveges kockagyerek az osztályban, aki bármit, de tényleg bármit megtenne, hogy kúlnak tűnjön. De hiába kapálódzik, a többiek jobbára kinézik maguk közül: nem is tudomány ez, gondolják, csak jóslás, ráadásul még unalmas is. (Más kérdés, hogy 20 év múlva az érettségi találkozóra ez a srác fog égőpiros Lamborghinivel érkezni.) No most ami Levittet illeti, valóban életrevaló kísérletet tesz az előítéletek eloszlatására, bár ehhez szüksége van egy újságíró (nevesítsük: Dubner) segítségére. Kettejük együttműködésének eredménye a Freakonomics* c. kötet.

No most az efféle szövegek kulcskérdése, hogy a szerző(k) megtalálja(-ják)-e az üdvös egyensúlyt az anekdoták és az adatok között. Mert ugye vicces anekdotákból bárki tud többé-kevésbé szórakoztató valamit rittyenteni, csak épp három nap alatt elfelejti az ember, hogy egyáltalán olvasta. Ugyanakkor hiába van tele egy adott szöveg releváns információkkal, ha két oldal után úgy érezzük magunkat benne, mintha víz alá nyomnák a fejünket. Az alkotók, ezt ki lehet jelenteni, megtalálták az egyensúlyt, könyvük kellemesen elszállt, ugyanakkor valódi tudást közvetít, izgalmas elegy - az ember hajlamos eltekinteni tőle, hogy valójában minden, csak nem forradalmi.

A Freakonomics ugyanis kábé pont azt csinálja, amit a közgazdaságtan úgy általában: fog egy hipotézist, megkeresi a hozzá tartozó adathalmazokat, az adathalmazokból kibányássza azokat, amelyek korrelálnak egymással, majd levon bizonyos következtetéseket. Amiben Levitt kicsit több, mint kollégái, az tényleg csak annyi, hogy szélesebb perspektívában gondolkodik, olyan kérdéseket is feltesz, amelyeket mások nem, és olyan adathalmazok korrelációját is leellenőrzi, amelyeket mi nem kötnénk össze a témával. A folyamatban részt vevő változókra (nevezhetjük őket embereknek is) ható ösztönzőket szabadabban kezeli, vagyis nem ragad le a piszkos anyagiaknál, hanem el tudja képzelni, hogy bizonyos dolgokat absztrakt jutalmakért (jó lelkiismeret, pozitív önkép) teszünk meg. De amúgy ez egy botegyszerű kötet, ami semmiféle alapvető szemléletváltást nem hirdet, hacsak nem számít szemléletváltásnak annak kijelentése, hogy a közgazdaságtan sokkal több mindenre ráhúzható, mint ahogy azt hittük.

A kötettel kapcsolatos általános problémák, úgy hiszem, két dologból fakadnak. Az egyik Levitt azon alapvetése, hogy a puszta adatoknak nincs erkölcsi minősége. Ha az jön ki, hogy az abortusz engedélyezése a hetvenes évek Amerikájában közrejátszott a bűnözés zuhanásában a kilencvenes években**, azzal semmit sem kíván mondani az abortuszról mint morális döntésről - egyszerűen leírja a következtetéseit, te meg kezdjél vele valamit. Ezzel szerintem semmi gond nincs. A másik lehetséges probléma pedig a közgazdaságtan sajátos jellegéből adódik. A közgazdaságtudomány ugyanis speciális tudomány abból a szempontból, hogy nem tud laboratóriumi körülmények között kísérleteket elvégezni, tehát ha bizonyítani akar egy hipotézist, keresnie kell megfelelő adatcsoportokat, amelyeken keresztül megteheti ezt. Magyarán ha azt állítom, hogy azok az afroamerikaiak, akik hagyományos "fehér" keresztnevet kaptak szüleiktől, sikeresebbek, mint akik nem, keresnem kell egy kazal kimutatást, statisztikát, dokumentumot, és ezekből kell összefésülnöm valamit, ami bizonyítékra hasonlít. Sajnos minél speciálisabb egy hipotézis, annál nehezebb megtalálni a hozzá passzoló adathalmazt***, következésképpen jogos a felvetés, hogy Levitt állításai bizonyos szituációkban talán kontrollmérésre szorulnak.

Ezek tehát a (lehetséges) általános problémák. A személyes problémám meg csak annyi, hogy a könyv utolsó harmadát nyugodtan el lehetett volna hagyni. Itt a szerzők nem tudtak ellenállni a késztetésnek, és összegereblyézték az első kiadás után megjelent törmelékeiket (cikkeket, bloggbejegyzéseket, stb), majd hozzácsapták az egészhez. Csak épp lesüt róluk az esetlegesség, az, hogy voltaképp meg nem gondolt gondolatokról van szó, amelyeket még emészteni kellett volna.

Különben meg jó.

* A kötet magyar címe ("Lökonómia") kicsit irritál, igyekszem kerülni a használatát. Értem, hogy a fordító eléggé meg volt lőve a magyarításával, de azért na.
** Ez amúgy a szerzők legtöbb vitát kiváltott tanulmánya. És egyben a legizgalmasabb is, mert tökéletesen illusztrálja Levitt módszerének sajátosságait, amikor két, egymástól csaknem két évtizedes távolságban lévő adatcsoportot vet össze. Ez másnak eszébe sem jutna, de Levitt képes kilépni a keretből - ez az ő skillje.
*** Nyilván az internet, a "big data" rengeteget segít abban, hogy ez a probléma idővel nem létező legyen.

I could not finish this book. It made me cringe twice on each of the hundred odd pages that I did force myself to read.

Would I recommend this book to you? If you don't know how people use statistics to detect fraud, go ahead and read this book. You will find it to be entertaining and informative. On the other hand, if you feel strongly about the difference between correlation and causality and already know what, say, Benford's law is, spare yourself the horror. You will find yourself reaching for the wall (to bang your head on) by page 10.

Also, the title is a bit misleading. This book is NOT about economics.

This would have been much more impressive had I read it in a timely manner, like say ten years ago when I first wanted to. It does read a tad bit dated, even though this is the updated version, but it's still pretty fascinating, and I think worth reading. I will be reading the second book and checking out the podcast.

[four and a half months later]

And now I have finally come to write this review, and I have forgotten nearly everything about it but the overall feeling I got from it. This will not be a comprehensive review. So.

My feelings, in summary:

*Mostly this was a fun way to apply statistics and math to real life.
*Since the book is now fourteen years old and a lot of it hinges on current cultural norms and references, it doesn't age as well as other books might. I know there was more than this, but the one that stood out in my head was the way he treated rape statistics. (Of course, I remember nothing about the way he treated them, only that it felt wrong to me.)
*There was something in here about realtors? It made me very suspicious to buy property. Also I don't want to buy property because I like having people come fix things for me.
*There was something else in here about gangs and a researcher embedded with them? I don't remember the significance.
*This might be the worst review I have ever written.

It made for a good audiobook, though! So if you're still going to check it out and like listening to things, that is a good way to go.

[3.5 stars, rounded up]

As the tagline goes, "the hidden side of everything", this book explores the mundane yet devious plots in our everyday lives. It makes random reflections on random subjects, and in turn, upends conventional wisdom rather than reinforcing them. The book offers profound insights on informational advantage, that is enjoyed by people from (nearly) all walks of life.

A simple unasked question, and there you go! This is where the exploration begins and it is an efficacious way to demolish the widespread fallacies. All in all, this book addresses that things are not always what they seem and there lies something under the surface, which, more often than not, does not come to limelight.

It is only when we do not embrace faulty causes at the urging of the experts in which they have a vested interest, and deep dive into the rudimentary aspects of a subject, that its veracity would be divulged.

I loved this book, though I think the title is a bit misleading. It's not really about economics. In fact, he's showing you what interesting things you can discover when you apply statistical analysis to problems where you wouldn't normally think of using it. I use statistical methods a fair amount in my own work, so I found it particularly interesting. The most startling and thought-provoking example is definitely the unexpected reduction in US urban crime that occurred towards the end of the 20th century. Crime rates had been rising for decades, and people were really worried about what would happen if the trend continued. Then, suddenly, they peaked and started to decline. Why? There were a bunch of theories, all of them superficially plausible.

Levitt crunched the numbers, to see what proportion of the variance could be ascribed to the different factors. This is a completely standard technique; it just hadn't been used here before. He came to the conclusion that the single most important factor, by far, was the ready availability of abortion that started to come in after Roe v Wade. Other things, like more resources for policing and tougher sentencing policies, probably helped, but not nearly as much. I didn't at all get the impression that he had been expecting this result from the start, and just wanted to prove his point. He processed the data, and went where the numbers led him. That's how you're supposed to do science.

The clincher, at least as far as I was concerned, was the fact that crime statistics peaked at different points in different states, the peaks correlating very well with the dates when each state started making abortion available. States that brought it in early had correspondingly early peaks in their crime rates. It's hard to see how that could happen if Levitt's explanation weren't correct.

I am surprised that there hasn't been more discussion of Levitt's findings in the political world. Maybe it's just regarded as too hot to handle. But if Levitt is right, and at the moment I would say it's up to his critics to explain why he isn't, then pro-life campaigners would seem be heading in a very unfortunate direction.
_________________________
[Update, Jun 26 2022]

In view of the Supreme Court's recent ruling, I wonder which Republican-led states have started planning for the increased levels of crime that are to be expected fifteen to twenty years from now, and which ones have decided it won't be necessary. In the second case, it would be interesting to know why not. A couple of suggestions to get the ball rolling:

a) this is liberal science and can be discounted as political messaging,

b) the Rapture will occur first.

I went all Fahrenheit 451 on this one.

ما حقیقت را با آسودگی و بی دردسر می خواهیم. همینطور با چیزی که تا اندازه ای زیاد با نفع شخصی و رفاه فردی هماهنگ است یا با چیزی که تلاش زیادی نمی خواهد و سبب دگرگونی های ناپسند در زندگی نیست. ما همچنین آن چه را سبب بالا رفتن اعتماد به نفس می شود به آسانی می پذیریم. رفتارهای اقتصادی و اجتماعی پیچیده هستند و گاه پی برده به ویژگی های آنها کاری نشدنی است. پس به آرمان هایی دست می یازیم که مانند تخته ای شناورند روی آب و همین ها اندازه ی فهمِ ما را از مسایل نشان می دهند. چنین است که اگر اصول اخلاقی دنیایی آرمانی را پی می گیرند اما این اقتصاد است که دنیای واقعی و رفتارهای حقیقی را نشان می دهد


هفتم اردی بهشت 1400 خورشیدی

Sure, this book was a compelling read that offered us all some great amo for cocktail party conversation. But ultimately I think most of what Leavitt claims is crap.

He dodges accoutability with the disclaimer about his book NOT being a scholarly work, but then goes on to drop statistics, theories and expert opinions. These assertions laid, he doesn't provide readers with enough information to critically examine his perspectives.

Ultimately I have a problem with the unquestioned, unaccoutable role of the public intellectual. Leavitt dances around with his PhD on his sleeve, but is never subject to peer review or any sort of academic criticism. I think it's irresponsible.

Freakonomics explores the hidden side of everything.

If morality describes the ideal world, then economics describes the actual world. Further, Freakonomics studies incentives and how different people in different professions respond.

Some of the case studies include bagel salesmen, sumo wrestlers, public school teachers, crack cocaine dealers and parents. This is a smart, fun book; but it's not for everyone. Through a high nerd prospective, the authors deliver a slide rule and pocket protector observation of some controversial subjects.