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Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: William Morrow, 2005.242 pages. $25.95.
Precious few books about economics have ever made it to the top of bestseller lists. Freakonomics by economist Steven Levitt (cowntten with journalist Stephen Dubner) is a singular recent exception. In a day when much modern economics ranges from the simply arcane to the unintelligibly irrelevant, Levitt has written a fascinating and brilliant work ("brilliant" is not an adjective I use often). He plumbs - with simple numbers and conclusions drawn from a host of his previous studies - the "hidden causes" of many disparate phenomena. One definite warning: Levitt's conclusions contain something to offend everyone. Levitt's defense for the latter is that "Morality . . . represents the way that people would like the world to work - whereas economics represents how it actually does work" (p. 13).
Levitt and his coauthor eschew all technicalities but do use basic economic principles, to wit:
(1) Incentives matter a lot.
(2) Information is often not evenly divided between buyers and sellers, and "experts" often serve themselves.
(3) Dramatic effects often have distant and subtle causes.
(4) Knowing what and how to measure makes understanding "hidden causes" less complicated.
Levitt then tackles...