Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?
Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization
of abortion affect the rate of violent crime?
These may not sound like typical questions for an econo-mist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical
economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday life.from cheating and crime to
sports and child-rearing.and whose conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head.
Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author
and journalist. They usually begin with a mountain of data and a simple question. Some of these questions
concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study
contained in this book: freakonomics.
Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study
of incentives.how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same
thing. In Freakonomics, they explore the hidden side of . . . well, everything. The inner workings of a crack
gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating
schoolteacher. The secrets of the Klu Klux Klan.
What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and
downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and.if the right questions are asked.is even more
intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking.
Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to
work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed
with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than
that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.
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