Synopsis
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is the debut non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. It was published on April 12, 2005 by William Morrow. The book has been described as melding pop culture with economics. The book is a collection of 'economic' articles written by Levitt, an expert who has already gained a reputation for applying economic theory to diverse subjects not usually covered by traditional economists; he does, however, accept the standard neo classical microeconomic model of rational utility-maximization. In Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Levitt and Dubner argue that economics is, at root, the study of incentives. The book's topics include :
Chapter 1: Discovering cheating as applied to teachers and sumo wrestlers, as well as a typical Washington DC area bagel business and its customers
Chapter 2: Information control as applied to the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents
Chapter 3: The economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers
Chapter 4: The role legalized abortion has played in reducing crime, contrasted with the policies and downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (Levitt explored this topic in an earlier paper entitled The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime, written with John Donohue.)
Chapter 5: The negligible effects of good parenting on education
Chapter 6: The socioeconomic patterns of naming children (nominative determinism)
About the Author
Steven David Steve Levitt (born May 29, 1967) is an American economist known for his work in the field of crime, in particular on the link between legalized abortion and crime rates. Winner of the 2003 John Bates Clark Medal, he is currently the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, director of the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy published by the University of Chicago Press until December 2007. He co-Authored the best-selling book Freakonomics (2005) and its sequels Super Freakonomics (2009) and Think like a Freak (2014). He is a grand-nephew of Robert L. May, the lyricist of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In 2009, Levitt co-founded TGG Group, a business band philanthropy consulting company.
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