Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Paperback)

I'm not sure what co-author Dubner's role is here - either to act as an alter ego for Levitt, allowing reproduction of fawning extracts from various newspaper articles written about Levitt throughout the book (as sole author Levitt wouldn't be able to get away with this without heaping hubris on his head), or perhaps to take the material he had from his original article and pad it out into a volume just fat enough (and no more) to justify publication as a hard-back, in which case Levitt had pretty much nothing to do with this book at all. I suspect a bit of both.

Most of the few points made in this book are, at best, only moderately interesting, and there are very few of them: Freakonomics doesn't even remotely live up to its billing, managing only to explore the hidden side of about five completely discrete, and only moderately uninteresting, topics (statistical evidence that there's cheating in Sumo Wrestling, anyone?) Indeed, the sumo cheating data wasn't especially compelling: it seems to me there is an entirely innocent explanation for wrestlers who have already "qualified" losing an abnormally large number of bouts to statistically weaker fighters who have not: a "qualified" wrestler simply has no incentive to try particularly hard, where as a non-qualifying wrestler does. That analysis doesn't involve any collusion at all.

Elsewhere, Levitt's theorems only really work where there are huge quantities of data covering all conceivable aspects of the topic at hand. Most of the time, this just isn't the case, which is why the hidden side of everything remains, even to Levitt and Dubner, hidden.

In the cases where the data are available - like Baseball - others have done a much more compelling job of writing the economist's expose. For example, try Michael Lewis' outstanding Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game.

Mean time, this one joins Lynne Truss's Eats Shoots & Leaves as the latest in a long line of quick-buck publishing pan-flashes.

Perhaps the money I've wasted on this book can be put, through this review, to some good use: saving yours.

Olly Buxton

For most people economics is a dimly understood science. It conjures pictures of finance, interest rates, banks and corporations. Whilst these fiscal aspects play a large role, and admittedly many job opportunities for economists, the science itself is much broader. It is essentially the study of how man chooses to live in a world of infinitate want and finate resources. Twinned with advanced statistical study, an enquiring mind and an accomplished writing partner Steven Levitt manages to forge a book that is both a fascininating insight in to academic economics, and an arresting blast to many of our pre-conceptions.

Levitt is seems to be somewhat unaware or unconcerned with the chaos his theories unleash. He is an academic economist, and is unconcerned with politics, political correctness, or the niceties of society. Thus he asserts that sharp reduction in crime correlates and is predetermined by the judgement in Roe v Wade which brought federal sanction for abortions. He demonstrates how the control of information puts experts such as realtors and lawyers in the same 'industry' as members of the Ku Klux Klan. The unifying theme seems to be the shattering of deeply held, but erroneous beliefs, and the 'proving' of alternative factual situations, e.g. the much greater risk posed by swimming pools to children than guns.

Combining Levitt's pioneering economic genius with Dubner's erudite and accessible writing produces a team which exposes many of the commonly held myths, and acts as something of a clarion call for the media, experts, politicians and even the general public to be a lot more responsible and diligent in their pronouncements. They are too often wrong.