I initially gave this book a high score because it is entertaining, but:
-1. I must agree with other people who point out that the whole pretense of "freakonomics" as an amazing new science is completely bogus. Some economists keep trying to appropriate other fields like sociology, epidemiology and psychology and then pretend they invented something.
-2. I did not go look up facts from this book, but I did for the sequel and found that the authors were playing fast and loose with reality, so their credibility as scientists goes way down.

I once read somewhere that statistics can be used to prove anything. This book is evidence for the same.

Steven D. Levitt, a "rogue" economist by his own admission, and who confesses that he is terrible at traditional economics, uses the methods of statistical analysis to look at the unexplored relations between things in society - like the resemblance between Japanese sumo wrestlers and American schoolteachers, why real-estate agents are similar to the Ku Klux Klan, whether parenting has any effect on how a child turns out... etc, etc. By the confession of the authors themselves, the book has no central theme - it just explores the "hidden side of everything". Levitt and Dubner say that economics has the tools to provide the right answers, but only a very few people ask the right questions.

Some of his findings do have credibility (like that of schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers cheating to advance their careers, though I did not find anything earthshaking in those); some seem to be refreshing new perspectives (the similarity between the drug mafia and corporate houses, for example); some seem trite to the point of silliness (like the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents being undone through the availability of information); and some seem to have some substance, but require further study of all parameters (how the station in life and the behaviour of parents affect the children). However, One finding, which is lauded by most reviewers of the book as startling, I found I could take with only a very large lump of salt: that the reduction in crime in the USA in the 1990's is due to the legalisation of abortions in 1973. The authors assume that crime is committed by unwanted children whom their mothers could not get rid of, and once they were allowed to, problem was solved! This, while at the same time arguing gun control is not having much effect either way while increase in police force and punishment is a deterrent, seems to me peddling to the right liberal narrative - at the same time totally ignoring the socioeconomic factors behind crime.

As far as I am concerned, any kind of simplistic conclusions drawn from statistical data is suspect. Let me make this clear with an example close to my heart.

In India, the state of Kerala in the south (from where I hail) tops in almost all Human Development Indices (HDI) such as health, education etc. However, the state also has the highest morbidity levels. What does this mean? Whether higher levels of general health leads to higher incidence of life-style diseases, or simply that since the healthcare and education are good, more people see doctors? Similarly, Kerala is fourth in India on the basis of reported crime. Does this mean that a higher level of education increases criminal tendencies, or that with a more aware population, more crimes get reported? Heated arguments take place on these questions regularly with no clear conclusions - because there are too many factors to make clear inferences.

So does that mean Levitt and Dubner are talking through their hat, and are best ignored? No, in my opinion. This book is worth reading, if only for the unusual perspective. Also, it prompts us to think beyond the glib statistics the "experts" spout to intimidate the poor layperson, and see for ourselves.

I'm a bit of a late comer to this book. Wish I had read it years ago! Some parts of it felt overly developed (especially the chapter on baby names), but for the most part, I really enjoyed being challenged to revisit causation on a lot social issues that might have previously been assumed - like where increases in crime rates really come from (hint - it has less to do with law enforcement than you might think, evidently) and where c-sections are most likely to occur.

With every new US President, I am often frustrated because they all seem to blame their predecessors for inheriting faltering economies and take credit for soaring ones. Economic health is a lagging indicator of all that happened in the time before the measurement is taken, so it was really frustrating to me that so many people voted against Biden because of inflation, even though his administration had actually done A LOT to combat it, and especially because he had taken over the ever-increasing class gap 45 had handed him. Now that 45 is 47 (I refuse to say his name), I fear we'll regress and undo all that hard work. I feel like if more people had either read this book or done some soul-searching critical thinking, that maybe they would've voted differently and this country's outlook would be a little less scary to me.

I bought this book halfway through the library copy. I knew I'd want to reread it even before finishing it. I only wish there were an updated version, since it's been almost a decade from the time of its last publishing.

You know, I really enjoy economics and I used to listen to the Freakonomics podcast so I figured I'd enjoy this book more than I did. I think it's lack of a theme (which the authors clearly warn readers about ahead of time) contributed to my overall "meh" attitude. Additionally, I found myself yearning for more than just Levitt's observations and findings. For example, simply stating that data shows higher abortion rates yield lower crime rates and then not delving too deeply into the reasons that underlie this phenomena just didn't do it for me. That's an extremely weighty thing to state, regardless of if you have data to back you up or not. I guess I wanted some sociology mixed in with my economics. Alas, Levitt is an economist not a sociologist or political scientist.

I also want to add that as someone with an MBA (thus, I took classes on data in grad school and would be fine to never run a regression again despite how interesting it can be) and who works with data at her job, I know firsthand how easy it is to manipulate data. I want to assume that Steven Levitt was completely neutral in his research, but who can really know except for Levitt himself? And, who funded all of his studies? I realize Harvard comped him for some work, but what about his studies on Chicago Public Schools? I find it interesting that a school system would turn over their data to him whenever it was inevitable that he find some questionable (and illegal) things going on. I don't know. Again, I want to assume that he was completely neutral, but spinning data is pretty darn easy. And even assuming he completed his research with no bias, what about the actual data he was working with. Some of the "perfect parent" data (I think it was still Chicago Public School data) seemed very subjective. For example, how exactly was "a lot" quantified in the the data point regarding "parents who have a lot of books in their home"*? I have ~200-300 books and don't really consider that "a lot." You might disagree which is my entire point. Won't different people quantify and thus answer that question differently? Ok, I'm going too deep into this. Basically, I know first hand that you can tell whatever story you want to with data, so I wonder what approach Levitt took in order to remain unprejudiced and unbiased.

And finally, I imagine I wasn't the only one holding their breath while reading over the low income baby names. Not that it means anything, but it was still a bit jarring to hear how a person's name reflects their parents' income. Some of the names were very obviously high or low income names, but it was interesting to hear how many common names have moved back and forth on the different lists over time. That portion of the book was undoubtedly the most interesting, and seemingly the most objective--both from sociological and data standpoints.

*might not be the exact wording used, but I listened to the book and thus can't reference the print.

Learning should be this enjoyable more often!

FREAKONOMICS is a refreshing, thoroughly enjoyable, easy reading, fast paced, witty and cynical breath of fresh air! Levitt and Dubner offer up a series of pointed, thought provoking essays composed in jargon-free layman's language that are loosely connected through a theme revealed in the book's sub-title - the hidden side of everything!

Incentives, or disincentives and deterrents, are examined as to their effectiveness in achieving the outcomes anticipated by those people, corporations or government organizations who designed them. We quickly learn that when incentives are applied in the context of our own philosophies and objectives, the outcomes may not be precisely as might have been originally intended.

The power of information, disinformation, information symmetry or asymmetry, perceived or real, and information hoarding in the form of secrecy is looked at from the point of view of determining its effect on our reliance on and opinions of "experts" and on our own strength in the process of negotiation or development of a contract. The authors' use of the KKK, real estate agents and the Internet as enormously disparate examples of information hoarders or disseminators is, in a word, inspired and informative.

The rather contentious issues of abortion vis-à-vis US crime rates and the relationship between race, economic status, parenting and scholastic achievement are used to demonstrate the enormous pitfalls in distinguishing between causality relationships as opposed to simple correlation.

I believe my personal background in mathematics and physics has allowed me to appreciate the deeper meaning of these essays from a scientific point of view. But, I'm concerned that in doing this, I may give rise to the profoundly mistaken impression that FREAKONOMICS is some turgid economics exposition that's as dry as a Death Valley dust storm. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Read it! Enjoy it! Laugh at it and think about what you've just read. If you never again look at a social phenomenon and accept it at simple face value without a raised eyebrow and a little more questioning attitude, then I believe that Levitt and Dubner will have achieved their goal.

Paul Weiss

Palasot citu atsauksmes nojaušu, ka šis varētu būt gadījums, kad man patīk grāmata tikai tāpēc, ka tā ir pirmā kaut cik jēdzīgi sarakstītā no tāda tipa, ko esmu lasījusi - nu ka uzķeros uz ekonomikas Paulu Koelju vai Greja nokrāsām. Bet es tiešām biju patīkami pārsteigta, ka ar ļoti lielu interesi lasīju statistikas datos balstītu analīzi un pamācību par ekspertu viedokļa kritisku vērtēšanu (sevišķi ņemot vērā viņu mērķi viedokli paust). Atzīstu, ka patika droši vien tāpēc, ka metode te ir apspriesta maz, bet piemēri par cēloņu un sakarību nošķiršanu (kāpēc kreka tirgoņi dzīvo ar vecākiem; kāpēc afroamerikāņi izvēlas viņiem tipiskos bērnu vārdus; kas nosaka iespējamo bērna potenciālu; kā atklāt skolotājus, kas krāpjas bērnu vietā; kāpēc nenotika ASV paredzētais noziedzības bums 1990.gados utt) ir tiešām ļoti interesanti.

complete bollocks, un-referenced 'studies' being used to back up their meandering and un thought out claims. should've been able to tell by the cover what type of 'book' this was.

Really closer to a 3 1/2. I found the essays interesting enough, but upon reflection they seemed to lose much of their initial punch. It's possible to nit-pick at most of the studies, but more importantly the author tends to equate correlation with cause a little too glibly I think. It was a very popular book, but aside from quite a few comments by the major review media about some of the articles, I don't suspect it really had much effect on thinking in the "social sciences". I could be wrong.


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The overarching point of this book is absolutely correct: conventional wisdom and what we perceive to be logical often is not. Our society is wrapped up and smothered in incorrect, dysfunctional assumptions that continue to rule our world and ruin our lives. Bigotry, ignorance, prejudice, fear, and the way people in power use these tools to divide and conquer us is at the root of all of our problems.

That being said - everything else in this book is mediocre to bad. The writers make repeated assumptions and statements that are just flat out wrong. They make interesting points, and their comparisons are often thought provoking, but they could have used more of their own medicine.

This book is clearly written by economists. Economics is one of the most useless, garbage ideologies ever created by humans. This is, of course, my opinion - but this book, I feel, only serves to prove that opinion. Over and over again the authors try to narrow down causes to one thing or another. They try to find the factor that changed everything. The abortion/crime essay is the clearest - abortion being legal is NOT the only factor that led to crime going down. There are thousands of factors that all contribute to everything that happens. Economists like to boil things down to numbers - instead of looking at people, looking at the complexity of life, they want a simple answer. There are no simple answers.

In the book the authors do, occasionally, note that just one thing is not the cause - but they then go back on this again and again by making ridiculous statements, ie:

"What sort of woman was most likely to take advantage of Roe v. Wade? Very often she was unmarried or in her teens or poor and sometimes all three." This sentence gives the image of the typical woman getting an abortion to be a poor teenage girl. They don't say that's the majority, but the implication by choosing this example is that it's the norm. This is absolutely false - Planned Parenthood has plenty of information on this - the most common type of woman who gets an abortion is a woman who has already had a kid(s) and accidentally got pregnant and didn't want another kid. No stereotyping, no images of teenagers making bad choices, etc.

Then there's this gem:

"Black Americans were hurt more by crack cocaine than by any other single cause since Jim Crow"

I almost stopped reading the book there. That is so wrong, so offensive, so ignorant it is utterly ridiculous. There is NO SINGLE CAUSE of anything! This reductionist economist bullshit is exactly why I hate economics. And if there was a single cause - it wasn't fucking crack. It was racism, or structural racism, or criminalizing of young black people, or economic segregation, or reagonomics, or zoning laws, or re-districting, etc. etc. etc. Crack ruining black communities is, in actuality, a myth. Yes, it's a problem, yes, drug addiction in all forms is terrible, but this myth that crack just fell on black communities like a nuclear bomb leaving nothing behind but violence and death is just plain false. Additionally: the crackdown on drugs came BEFORE crack became an issue - it was a political device pre-dating crack used by Reagan to get votes from ignorant white people who feared black people. There are many books documenting this.

In short: there are interesting points in this book, and the overall point is absolutely true. We all fall into believing bullshit that feels like it's obvious but is not. It's up to us individually, and as a society, to always seek the truth. However - the truth is not provided in a 20 page article as a single answer. If only the authors took their own ideas further the book might actually be worth something.

An engaging read but not necessarily the scintillating, mind-blowing experience it had been hyped as.

Levitt and Dubner present their arguments well and their style makes the at-times daunting subject matter easier to approach and thus easier to digest. I don't read much non-fiction (for example) and even less stuff about economics but I found this book quick to get through and I was able to take away their message without having to labor through it.

That said, a few points:

(1) They make some outrageous claims. To their credit, these claims appear to be backed up by the data. Their rhetoric is frequently hyperbolic though. At times it takes some patience to get the point of a given chapter. The arc tends to go like this: outrageous claim > brief discussion of that claim > discussion of parallel claim > presentation of data > analysis of data > tie them together > see if you can tear down the argument via convention wisdom > oops, conventional wisdom falls under scrutiny of the data. That said, the style makes it easy to break chapters up into small read-it-on-the-can chunks; if you read it that way, prepare to bite your tongue on any given objection until you have finished.

(2) In light of #1: Levitt keeps mentioning that he's not much of an economist and even poorer with his math. But there's a lot of math in here. (Presented in a friendly, non-mathematical sort of way, but math nonetheless.) So... Is he just putting us on? Or (as A. would say) is it that "stats" aren't "math"?

(3) Also in light of #1: I would like to have seen more of the data. We get a lot of "xx% decrease" and "such-and-such quadrupled" but the figures themselves are obfuscated. There is an extensive appendix of notes at the end of the book which references specific articles; I'm assuming the "hard numbers" are in those articles. But my own background (i.e., bio-psych research papers) biases me to expect a more explicit presentation of those data. So that was disappointing.

(4) Levitt & Dubner allege at the beginning of the book that there is no unifying theme. That's more/less crap. The unifying theme seems to be: here are some microeconomics, mostly having to do with crime and/or corruption (see also: crime).

(5) The "Revised & Expanded Edition" was touted to me as essential because of all the additional articles and re-published blog posts etc. that are now included in this binding. I was a bit under-whelmed by these. They were certainly interesting and they do help illuminate aspects of the text but I didn't necessarily believe that they were essential. (The revisions vis-à-vis Stetson Kennedy's KKK research however: very essential.)

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.

4,5/5 ⭐

“The conventional wisdom is often wrong.”

As an economics student, this really helped me to open my mind to learn how to analyse everyday situations from a economic point of view. And it also showed me a new branch of economics that has become my favourite.

If you want to learn the basics on economics, this book is for you. Some people might find it a little bit basic, but I think it should be taken as an introduction to the topic. More than teaching you how economics work, which is no easy task, I believe its purpose is to try and show how for every situation you can find an economic assumption to back it up.

What should be also taken into account when reading this book is that to prove most of his theories Levitt relies on statistics, which are part of economics as a science but not pure economics itself. Basically, do not expect to become an expert on the subject after reading it.

Anyways, I found the book pretty entertaining and well written. Highly recommend it.