!!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....

what's wrong with this book?

1. this book has nothing to do with economics. Something like "freakostatistics" would make much more sense as the name of the book.

2. in the introduction, the writers warn us that correlation does not imply causality. OK, agreed. But the rest of the book is just that: THEY act as if correlation and causality are the same thing (but they just have more "fun" explanation for stuff). What exactly is their proof that they are not "inventing explanations" based on correlation, without any real evidence of causation?


This book is just a pile of interesting nonsense.

EDIT (2016): There is another thing in the authors' arguments that really bother me (besides the "correlation vs causality" debate). The authors' approach to economics is that economics is all about how incentives play out. While incentives are no doubt important in human behaviour, this is an extremely shallow way of talking about economics. It is also very consistent with "unfettered free market" ideology, which says that the best way to organize society is through profit incentive. This is a dangerous proposition (as we have seen in 2008) and scientifically very doubtful.

[3.5*]
Ποιο θα ήταν το αποτέλεσμα της συνεργασίας ενός οικονομολόγου που τον λένε Steven (Levitt) και ενός δημοσιογράφου που τον λένε Stephen (Dubner); Σίγουρα (οκ, σχεδόν σίγουρα) λίγο γιούχου.

Ε λοιπόν, το Freakonomics είναι το αποτέλεσμα μιας τέτοιας συνεργασίας, και είναι γιούχου. Με την καλή έννοια. Μάλλον. Τι εννοώ; Αν το πάρεις σαν οικονομικό βιβλίο, θα απογοητευτείς. Λείπει ο όγκος δεδομένων που θα υποστηρίξουν πλήρως τα γραφόμενα. Βασικά, είναι αρκετά πιθανό να σου φανούν αερολογίες αυτά που διαβάζεις.

Αν το πάρεις, όμως, σαν ένα βιβλίο που θέτει ερωτήματα που απασχολούν μια μερίδα ανθρώπων (ναι, και τους οικονομολόγους) με ζωντανό και αστείο τρόπο, τότε είναι μια χαρά. Οι δε τίτλοι των κεφαλαίων είναι για σεμινάριο. Σ' έναν βαθμό, το βιβλίο μπορεί να σε βάλει στο τριπάκι να σκεφτείς γιατί σκεφτόμαστε έτσι όπως σκεφτόμαστε, και ποιες είναι οι κοινωνικοπολιτικές επιπτώσεις αυτού του τρόπου σκέψης. Και να αναρωτηθείς αν οι γονείς σου έκαναν καλό parenting job. Και αν σου έδωσαν ταιριαστό όνομα.

Τελικό πόρισμα: Ναι, αξίζει να διαβάσεις το Freakonomics. Και μπορεί να ενθουσιαστείς. Ειδικά αν αρχίσεις να σκέφτεσαι τα κοινωνικοπολιτικά θέματα που Αν είσαι, βέβαια, και λίγο data afficionado θα πεις "γαμώτο, δεν με καλύπτει πλήρως". Προσωπικά το είπα, δεν το κρύβω.

Υ.Γ.: Ζήλεψα τους ευφάνταστους τίτλους και τη σύνδεση ανάμεσα στα κεφάλαια, δεν ξέρω αν το ανέφερα νωρίτερα.

Superficial, lleno de anécdotas y explicaciones enrevesadas sin ninguna base más allá de la correlación. Este es el nivel de la economía.

Hay un punto que resulta especialmente ofensivo: Levitt repite una y otra vez "ya sé correlación no es causa" y añade sistemáticamente "pero...", y da una explicación causal de libro. El análisis de regresión es llamado "una sofisticada herramienta de los economistas", que "permite controlar variables". Esto es la peor interpretación posible de la regresión, que NO es una técnica explicativa, pese a que durante dos capítulos Levitt convence a Dubner para escribir lo contrario.

A ver. La economía va de hacer predicciones ajustadas a corto plazo sobre un sistema muy complejo, usando mil variables y sin pretender explicar o entender nada del sistema, y olvidando al agente del cambio. Eso es la economía, así usan la regresión y el resto de la maquinaria técnica predictiva que han desarrollado. Mientras el sistema está estable y el agente se comporta en él de manera regular, todo va bien.

Cuando la maquina de ver el futuro falla, los economistas abren la máquina y dedican todos sus esfuerzos a ver qué ha fallado. Aquí Levitt busca la pieza más exótica y seduce a Dubner para que admire su ingenio y le haga un panegírico (por no usar una metáfora más sexual). Y no.

Reto a Levitt a usar su penetración intelectual para hacer una sola predicción a un año sobre cualquiera de los temas de los que trata.

Un libro ridículo sobre retrofuturología.

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.

বইটা অর্থনীতির বই ভেবে পড়া শুরু করেছিলাম। কিন্তু এটাকে অর্থনীতির বই মানতে আমি রাজি না, এটা সমাজবিজ্ঞানের বই। সমাজবিজ্ঞানের সাথে অর্থনীতির সম্পর্ক আছে ঠিক, কিন্তু এভাবে বললে মোটামুটি সব বিদ্যার সাথেই অর্থনীতির সম্পর্ক আছে; পরিবেশবিজ্ঞান থেকে পদার্থবিজ্ঞান, সবই অর্থনীতির বই।

যাহোক লেখক দুইজন পৃথিবীর শীর্ষ কয়েকটা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে পড়াশোনা করেছেন(হার্ভার্ড, শিকাগো ইউনিভার্সিটি, এমআইটি, কলাম্বিয়া ইউনিভার্সিটি,... বুঝতেই পারছেন)। তাদের ভারি একাডেমিক সিভি এই বইটা পৃথিবীব্যাপী বেস্টসেলার হওয়ার পেছনে বড় অবদান রেখেছে নিঃসন্দেহে। নাহলে এই বই মার্কেট পাইতো বলে মনে হয় না।

বইটার কিছু বিষয়বস্তু আছে যেগুলো অনেকের জন্যই প্রাসঙ্গিক না, অর্থাৎ অপ্রয়োজনীয় জ্ঞানের কমতি নাই। একথা বলছি কারণ নন-ফিকশন মূলত পড়া হয় দৈনন্দিন জীবনে কাজে লাগানোর জন্য। বিশ্বাস করেন, একজন খুচরা কোকেন বা ক্রিস্টাল মেথ ব্যবসায়ী কেন তার বাবা-মার সাথে বসবাস করে এইটা না জানলেও আপনার জীবনে কোন ক্ষতি-বৃদ্ধি হবে না।
ঠিক ধরেছেন, ড্রাগ ডিলারদের জীবন নিয়ে একটা লম্বা রচনা লেখা আছে। না বললেই না, বেশিরভাগ রচনাই মাত্রাতিরিক্ত দীর্ঘ করা হয়েছে; একই কথা ঘুরায়ে পেচায়ে বারবার বলা হয়েছে। যেমন আমেরিকায় অ্যাবোরশন বৈধ হবার কারণে গত শতাব্দীর নব্বইয়ের দশক থেকে ক্রাইম রেট সিগনিফিকেন্টলি কমে যায়। কথা সত্য, কিন্তু এই কথাটা এতবার বলা হয়েছে যে, মনে হচ্ছিল শুধু অ্যাবোরশন হালাল করলেই বেশিরভাগ ক্রিমিনাল জন্মের আগেই নির্বংশ হয়ে যাবে।

বই থেকে একটা উদাহরণ বলি, কোল্ড ওয়ারের সময়কার ঘটনা, সমাজতান্ত্রিক রাষ্ট্র রোমানিয়ার চরম দুর্নীতিবাজ ডিক্টেটর নিকোলাই চসেস্কু অ্যাবোরশন নিষিদ্ধ করেছিল, তার উদ্দেশ্য রোমানিয়ার জনসংখ্যা বৃদ্ধি করা। অ্যাবোরশন নিষিদ্ধ হবার পর যে প্রজন্মের জন্ম হয়, সেই প্রজন্মের তীব্র আন্দোলন ডিক্টেটর চসেস্কুর পতনে ভূমিকা রাখে। অ্যাবোরশন বৈধ থাকলে ঔ আন্দোলনকারীদের অনেকের জন্মই হতো না। এই সরল যুক্তিটা আমার খুব কদর্য লেগেছে। এই যুক্তি দিলে ফরাসি বিপ্লব, বলশেভিক বিপ্লবেও অ্যাবোরশনের ভূমিকা টেনে আনা সম্ভব।
চসেস্কু যেভাবে দেশ চালাচ্ছিল, অ্যাবোরশন যদি বৈধও থাকতো, তবুও তার পতন অবশ্যম্ভাবী ছিল।

লেখকদ্বয়ের আরেকটা যুক্তি, স্ট্যাটিসটিক্স দেখিয়ে ব্যাখ্যা করেছেন, গান(বন্দুক) কন্ট্রোল করে কোন লাভ নেই, বন্দুকের গুলিতে মৃত্যু ঘটার সম্ভাবনা থেকে সুইমিংপুলে ডুবে মরার সম্ভাবনা বেশি। সমাধান? অ্যাবোরশন। এটা বৈধ থাকলে ক্রিমিনাল ছেলের সংখ্যা হবে কম, গোলাগুলি এমনিতেই কম হবে।

বলছি রেগেমেগে গিয়ে অথবা মানসিক ভারসাম্য হারিয়ে ওদের দেশে গোলাগুলির ঘটনা তো নিয়মিতই ঘটে, কিছু মানুষ মারাও যায়। যাদের পরিবারের মানু��� নিহত হয়, তাদেরকে কি আপনি স্ট্যাটিসটিক্স দেখাবেন? বলবেন এরকম একটু আট্টু হতেই পারে, এরথেকে বেশি মানুষ সুইমিংপুলে ডুবে মরছে।

অ্যাবোরশন চালু থাকলে প্যারেন্টিংয়ের মান কেন তুলনামূলক ভালো হবে সেসব নিয়েও আলোচনা আছে বিস্তর।

যাইহোক, এই বইটা মূলত অ্যাবোরশন নিয়ে। এরসাথে আরও কয়টা বিষয় আছে, শিক্ষকরা কখন প্রতারণা করে সেটা নিয়ে একটা ইন্টারেস্টিং রচনা আছে, হোয়াইট সুপ্রিমেসি��্ট গ্রুপ কু ক্লাক্স ক্লানের কথা আছে, আমাদের পিএইচডিধারী লেখক যে খুব ব্রিলিয়ান্ট সেকথাও লেখা আছে, আর আর একটুখানি অর্থনীতিও আছে, যেমন ইন্টারনেট আমাদের অনেক তথ্য জানার সুযোগ করে দিয়েছে, অনেক পণ্যের মান ও মূল্য জানতে পারছি, তাই ইন্টারনেটের যুগে পণ্য কিনে ঠকবার সম্ভাবনা কমছে। এটা সম্ভবত সবাই জানে। এজন্য কোন Rouge Economist -এর লেখা বই পড়ার দরকার নাই।

অপ্রয়োজনে বইটা দীর্ঘ না করলে দুই তারা দিতাম। সময় নষ্ট করার জন্য এক তারা।

I found this audiobook unbearable. I turned it off halfway through and listened to the public radio pledge drive instead.

انتظار یه کتاب اقتصادی رو داشتم ولی با یه کتاب جامعه شناسی مواجه شدم

خیلی هم خوب، اینم از اولین کتاب جامعه شناسی که تا حالا خوندم

Freakonomics: a rogue economist – Is that all there is?

The title of Freakonomics tells us that Steven Levitt is a “rogue economist” exploring the “the hidden side of everything.” I have always been up for a rogue telling me about everything. Even a rogue telling me about anything appeals to me; you know that special insight that only a mischievous, perhaps unprincipled, but somehow likeable person has. From the title I even conjured up some noble rogue elephant tearing apart the civilized world after suffering a loss of habitat. I was up for rogue. Economics, I thought, is a damn good place for a rogue.

Levitt is an economics professor at the University of Chicago and a winner of the John Bates Clark Medal. That medal is awarded every two years to the best economist under 40. It is given by the American Economic Association. If you know anything about this Vanderbilt University supported organization, it wouldn’t be for their search for rogues (although they got Milton Friedman right in 1951.)

Steven Levitt is best-known for his findings on America’s falling crime-rate during the 1990s. Teenage murder rates were predicted to double. Instead they fell by more than 50% in the space of five years. By 2000 they were at their lowest in 35 years. But why? Well, a lot of people were taking the credit. They were citing economic growth, gun control, policing, imprisonment and even the death penalty as the reason. Levitt proved the cause as Roe vs Wade, the Supreme Court decision that lead to the repeal of abortion laws in the US. His research showed that children born into impoverished environments were more likely to grow up to become criminals. His analysis formed the elegant but uncomfortable syllogism: “Unwantedness leads to high crime; abortion leads to less unwantedness; abortion leads to less crime.”

Levitt is saying, according to Dubner, that incentives and motivations are intimately linked in driving human behaviour. No breakthrough – my mum knew that! He does come through with some interesting proofs. His ingenious methods of analysing data reveal sometimes startling conclusions: Chicago public school teachers were helping their students cheat on state exams; Sumo wrestlers were fixing some of their matches; real-estate agents don’t really care about how much they sell your house for – only their own house, and my favourite; dope-dealers rarely make a good living. These results do amuse, surprise and even educate. In all these conclusions there is a haunting. Strangely, within these intriguing anomalies we never find that superbly-skilled rogue practitioner of economics. Instead we are left with a peppy little repertoire of cocktail chatter (beer-chat for me) and little else.

Something went wrong in the writing of Freakonomics. In the reading there was the echo of Mark Twain’s comment that golf was “a good walk spoiled.” Yes it is provocative and interesting but it has a problem. If Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point fame says “Steven Levitt has the most interesting mind in America . . .” then the problem is uncompromisingly simple – we can’t find Levitt or his mind in this book!

Without question we can find – actually, we can’t get away from – the other Stephen, Stephen Dubner. He is Levitt’s coauthor and a contributor to the New York Times. Dubner occasionally genuflects to Levitt’s genius, to his unique insight, and treats us to the odd passing anecdote. For most of the book though he relies on the coattails of Levitt to spin his own story.

Dubner just doesn’t get Levitt. A flaw, especially given the hype in the title. He tells us that this very special economist is challenging the established lens through which we see conventional economics. The problem is what is conventional is never argued and the nature of the difference is never revealed. This new lens, we are told, uncovers – no exposes – the patterns of conventional thinking. These come by way of conclusive moments, end points really, that are sometimes remarkably fascinating and clearly capture interest. The question is, are these moments, this shopping-list of results, the only point of the book?

Although Steven Levitt is apparently (or even paradoxically) the coauthor, he never actually appears. Not only is he not there but his methodology is never fully presented nor explained. Malcolm Gladwell goes on to say “. . . and reading Freakonomics is like going for a leisurely walk with him on a sunny summer day, as he waves his fingers in the air and turns everything you once thought to be true inside out.” Well the problem is we never get to go on that walk with Steven Levitt. He just might be nearby, but you never know for sure.

The book is a first-person telling by Dubner. So it leaves Dubner responsible for that walk. It also leaves him responsible for the non-telling of either process or personality. It is an issue of depth. His preamble, along with the very bad An Explanatory Note are ill-chosen attempts at building an arcane, deified and mystical Steven Levitt. When we get into the book, we think we are going to meet Levitt, this “rogue economist” – but we never do.

Dubner continually misses the mark. He let a good book and a great opportunity slip away. This is because he thinks the mark is simply some captivating Levitt conclusion. Even though I found myself relishing some of these points and was more than willing to tell these little tidbits to my friends; they leave forever undone some important thinking.

The success of the book is that each story is portable. In their portability there is a weakness. If the point is, each story is an indicator of how we can mis-see the world, then how do we understand mis-seeing or recognise mis-telling? The only way to know would be to understand Levitt, economics, and the processes by which we make conventional and sometimes remarkably wrong conclusions.

We never do. Instead, in each story there is an echo of missed opportunity. In each he takes us on some short walk on how we might see the world. The trouble is it is only a short walk with no critical path to understand how we got there or just where we might be going.

Dubner tells us early on that when the publisher approached Steven Levitt, Levitt didn’t want to write a book. He finally did agree to write it, but along with Dubner who had done a story about him for the Times. So Dubner and the brilliant Levitt agree to coauthor. Freakonomics is the result of that division of labour. Presumably Levitt’s job was to continue mining of the reality of the “hidden side of everything.” Then what was Stephen Dubner’s job? The answer: The weaver of these disparate stories; the interpreter; the pattern-finder – the writer! Unfortunately a substantive telling never happens. It takes about half the book to slowly realize Dubner doesn’t really get Levitt – and neither do we.

In the end this book bizarrely peters off into some kind of parenting manual. This is presumably because Dubner and Levitt are young fathers. Who knows? Dubner then thinks he can put Humpty back together by saying in the Epilogue that there is “no unifying theme” in Freakonomics. Well he got that right! Here he is alluding to a quote by the philosopher Robert Nozick where Nozick said that at 26 Levitt didn’t need a “unifying theme” as an economist. This may be right for a young economist – but it is not necessarily true of a book.

Dubner’s patchwork attempt at an ending only exacerbates the reality of missed opportunity. Unfortunately it causes Freakonomics to read a bit like: What my really important really smart friend did on his summer vacation.

William Moore

The apt name would have been F**konomics, for the book hovers around the passing of abortion bill in USA. How can somebody write a book of 200 pages out of nothing is a mystery to me. What intrigues me more is that many newspapers had wrote great things about this book, a perfect case of hype creating a best seller.
All gas no substance. And nothing to do with economics rather than some stupid black-white demographics and some obvious facts. Thank God, I'm through with this.

For a book that so heavily relies on (mostly) untested assumptions, the repeated, passionate references to the distinction between causality and correlation is impressive if not audacious, to say the least.

Suffice to say, n  “"As Levitt sees it, economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions".n

Exactly, Stephen. And that would work extremely well as an inside joke too. Unless you are implying that, in contrast with the usual textbooks, n  Freakonomicsn actually uses science to pose those questions. In which case, and given the absolute lack of evidence, statistics and insight on any methodological tools here, I can’t help wondering: Science? What science? Where? GIVE ME ONE PAGE.

The other unfortunate thing here is the n  “Revised and Expanded edition”n issue, which can generally mean a number of things, but in the case of n  Freakonomicsn in specific, it was, as we know, the result of a huge wave of negative feedback from reviewers due to:

a) the fact that the authors massively exaggerated some of their assumptions (because, obviously: when you think you’re using science when you really are not, that’s just bound to happen) and, as if this isn't enough already, the authors’ reliance on some quite noticeable mathematical monstrosities.

b) The self-praise:
“Hi. I’m Stephen J. Dubner. And I’m co-authoring this book. The other author is Steven D. Levitt and he’s such a genius, radical economist that we’re thinking we’ll stuff n  Freakonomicsn with tons of newspaper clippings on how awesome he is. And that’s gonna be all over the place. Yes! Oh, in case you’re wondering what a too-cool-for-school unconventional genius like Steven D. Levitt is doing writing books instead of just being a weird recluse in permanent scientific euphoria, worry not! He wasn't interested in writing anything, silly ones (as if)! Not unless it was with me, because, in case you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a kickarse, amazing journalist too! So please read us. Please. We’ll make you feel important and scientific”.

So apparently they got the message and scrapped most of that out of the book, hence the n  “Revised and Expanded”n edition.

But honestly, when I found all that out, for a moment I thought I needed to double check that I was actually reading the revised thing.
I was? Really? REALLY? WHAT WAS THE FIRST VERSION LIKE THEN?

And it’s certainly not my fault that Nick Hornby has the answer to nearly everything. I don’t remember which issue of The Believer he wrote that in, but it was along the lines of: n  "Freakonomicsn was a cool book and it made me feel smart. But what was it about?”
Exactly, thank you.

Two stars, because some of the questions they pose have interesting political and social implications, even though all questions are always posed through prose (with the use of loose logic at best) and absolutely not through the use of science.

Oh. And the title is.. er.. misleading (Today I’m nice).

For a book that aspires to "redefine the way we view the modern world," the authors are supremely irresponsible. They put on a "freak" show of data (their term choice) to make a sensation and lull the lay economist into thinking they've learned something. I read several reviews of this book and it appears people who know about the subject are appalled by their poor analysis, contrived conclusions, and use of unreliable research to make sensationalized claims.

Maybe I'm stating it a little strongly, but it has been over two years since I read this book and I'm still angry about one of their premises. The authors proposed that crime rates went down due to the increase in abortions some 15 years earlier. Yes, they claim society is better off without the kids whose parents apparently didn't want them ever having a chance to grow up to be the miscreants they'd be destined to become. That may be a correlation but it is a huge stretch to claim it is a cause and effect. (The decreased crime rate is much better explained by Strauss & Howe in Generations , by the way.)

Why I gave this book 2 stars instead of 1 is because it does succeed in drawing interest to economics.