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Freakonomics Rev Ed: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

Rob's review
rating:
bookshelves: economics
recommended for: po-mo armchair economists

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 ...more 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.)...less

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