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What it argues
Freakonomics is economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner's argument that economics — properly understood as the study of incentives — can explain things that look, on the surface, like they have nothing to do with money. The book doesn't have a single thesis. Its organizing principle is a method: find good data, ask a question nobody thought to ask, and follow the numbers wherever they go, even if the answer is uncomfortable.
The most famous case is the argument that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s, not policing tactics or economic growth, was the primary driver of the dramatic drop in crime rates in the 1990s. Levitt and Dubner trace the logic carefully: children born into circumstances where they are unwanted are statistically more likely to commit crimes, and when Roe v. Wade reduced those births, the effect showed up in crime data roughly eighteen years later. The chapter generated enormous controversy, and the authors engage it directly rather than hedge.
What it gets right
- 1.
Incentives are the central mechanism of human behavior. Understanding who benefits from a situation — financially, socially, or morally — often explains behavior that seems irrational on the surface.
- 2.
Conventional wisdom is frequently wrong, especially when it's propagated by people with an interest in maintaining it. The real estate industry, parenting experts, and crime analysts all get chapters making this point.
- 3.
The link between Roe v. Wade and the 1990s crime drop is Levitt's most controversial claim: reduced births into high-risk circumstances, not policing or the economy, best explains the timing and geography of the decline.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Steven D. Levitt is an economist at the University of Chicago whose research applies statistical analysis to unexpected domains, from crime and education to sumo wrestling and drug markets. He won the John Bates Clark Medal in 2003. Stephen J. Dubner is a journalist and author who has written for The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. Together they co-wrote the Freakonomics series, which includes SuperFreakonomics, Think Like a Freak, and When to Rob a Bank, and host the long-running Freakonomics Radio podcast.
