Summary of Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book.Original book introduction: 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638152521

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Summary

of

Steven D. Levitt’s

Freakonomics

A Rogue Economist Explores the

Hidden Side of Everything

Table of Contents

Overview

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Important People

Authors’ Style

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Overview

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (2005) details the unexpected ways that moral, social, and economic incentives influence social outcomes. Incentives are factors that influence the choices an individual or group makes; a driver is incentivized to keep the speed limit, for example, by the desire to avoid getting a speeding ticket. With the help of journalist Stephen J. Dubner, award-winning economist Steven D. Levitt explains how he and other economists use large data sets and an understanding of how incentives function to determine the unlikely or even freakish causes underlying a number of modern phenomena. When economists determine the correct causes of these phenomena, they can answer questions such as why the crime rate fell unexpectedly in the 1990s and whether parenting plays a large role in a child’s future success. The authors contrast commonly held beliefs with the true causes behind social problems, thereby teaching readers to beware of easy assumptions and false correlations.

In economics, incentive schemes are used to solve any given economic or social problem, whether it’s