(Note: is he really a "darling"? They make it sound that way, but if I were old school, I'd find him pretty annoying.)
I enlisted Michael to write a review since he read the book first, but he has missed several deadlines, so you'll have to check the comments for his take.
This was our April book club selection, and I think that overall it went pretty well. We are a tough crowd. General thoughts: it was a pleasant and quick read, but not well-enough written. It didn't go in depth enough on each topic (maybe because details would be boring for non-economists?). Levitt seems to cherry-pick his data and doesn't always back up conclusions. Several of the stories, however, we rather interesting. (The group especially liked the drug dealers and the grad student embed. I preferred the bits on parenting and children's names.)
It was surprising to me that my fellow clubbers (Michael excepted) hadn't heard much about the book before we chose it. As I mentioned above, it's been quite the "It" book in certain circles. For my money, I prefer Malcolm Gladwell. Of course, since I don't actually have to choose, I'll enjoy them both.
And man, are there ever opportunities. A quick trip the Freakonomics web site reveals a fountain of information, including free study guides (see! I knew they'd be using this in college econ courses) and info on the "Freakonomics" column at the New York Times. There's even a blog! Here's an example post from Dubner, from earlier this week:
The National Association of Realtors has started a blog. The lead item today is headlined “The Cost of Selling without a REALTOR®: $31,800.” Pretty scary, huh? Here’s the lead: “Real estate professionals do more for sellers than make the transaction easier. They make them money. In fact, the average seller who uses a real estate professional makes 16 percent more on the sale of their home than do sellers who go it alone. That’s an average of $31,800 per home.” Unfortunately, there’s no supporting data. So it could be that a Realtor actually brings in, on average, $31,800 more per home sale. Or it could be that a few dozen, or few hundred, or few thousand Realtor-sold multimillion-dollar homes skews the average very high compared to FSBO’s, which tend to be cheaper. Or it could be a few dozen other factors.Take that, Realtors! Or another, by Levitt:
An article in yesterday’s USA Today reports on a recent survey of health care providers. The study asked them whether or not they would report to work in a flu pandemic. Nearly half said they would be no-shows.If only bosses were as sympathetic as professors...
If there is one thing economists have learned, it is that what people say and what they do are often not the same. And the way words and actions diverge is easy to predict. I am much more likely to tell a survey-giver that I will show up at the ER in the next pandemic than I am to actually be there. With that in mind, the problem of health-care providers playing hooky is certain to be worse than even this study suggests.
(And, for the record, if you are a student in my class and a bird flu pandemic hits, class is cancelled.)
Anyway, it's a fun read. If you like kooky statistics, check it out. If not, hang on for next month's book, set in turn-of-the-century Turkey...
UPDATE: Be sure to check out Rahul's thoughts in the "comments" - he argues forcefully that the book fails to live up to its promises.
4 comments:
hh and I just read this a few weeks ago! I think my conclusions are similar to yours; it was interesting, but strangely skeletal and lacking an analytical sense about it. Here's my quick capsule review!
Each chapter of Freakonomics is prefaced with a laudatory excerpt from a magazine article, selling us on the idea that Steven Levitt is an economic genius. This is bolstered by the books subtitle: "A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything." Despite the outward appearance of some rebellious, glamorous edge, this bold claim hardly seems appropriate given the book's tone. It's rather going out on a limb to describe Steven Levitt as a "rogue economist" simply because he entertains the idea of studying sumo wrestlers under the umbrella of economics. In my opinion, this is not a totally zany idea, as the issue he studies clearly falls under game theory, itself a social science that applies heavily to business. Anyway, as far as I can tell, Levitt is more of a statician than an economist per se, one who uses his skill to assess social constructs. Is this, as the book would suggest, being a "rogue economist?" I guess, if your only criteria for distributing the "rogue" label relies on the reassignment of focus (society instead of business) -- not the employment of independent or non-mainstream theories.
Furthermore, the title "Freakonomics" is rather misleading as well. You might get the impression, before reading it, that because of the title, "Freakonomics" boldly enters uncharted territory in economic theory, using groundbreaking new methodology to shine an ultraviolet light on the seemy underbelly of modern life. Well, sort of. It shows us some interesting things, but I'd hardly call it a revelatory or groundbreaking methodology. Levitt is probably a gifted guy with stats, but when you boil it down he simply takes data, applies a standard statistical theory to it, and extracts findings. Not to shortchange him, but the results aren't "freaky" in any way. I think it would be fair to say that most other accomplished staticians would come to the same conclusions he does, given the same data. What Levitt has going for him is the subject matter he's interested in, which may be fortuitous for us as readers, but it seems preposterous to suggest that the science itself is any more wacky or freaky, which is what the title seems to be suggesting.
huan-hua accuses me of being overly sensitive to these points, and feels that I'm overlooking the content based on a feeling that I've somehow been lied to with regards to the title. Is this an accurate assessment? Well, I did fork out $25 for this book, so naturally, when I'm told that a "rogue economist" (ooh, how exciting!) is going to tell me about the "hidden side of everything," based on a mysterious and tantalizing scientific phenomenon described as "freakonomics" I naturally expect something different than this. Not to say that what I got wasn't good, it just wasn't as engaging or revelatory as what I would have expected, and maybe more to the point, I did not learn any applied lessons that I imagined I would. There was little to nothing in this book that I could use in any fashion in my life, aside from very specific statistics that are really only useful as trivia. The idea of there being a secret, hither-to-unknown concept called "freakonomics" that was the silent engine of the economic cosmos dissolved to dust the second I reached the last page. There simply was no theory that I might apply to my daily life somehow. No tidbits of economic, psychological, or behavioral knowledge that could somehow, in some way, be useful in an applied setting, which was extremely disappointing.
As entertaining and as full of fun, interesting information as it is, Freakonomics felt surprisingly skimpy on meaningful content. It's a good-- if short-- read, and it more than likely contains information that I'll find myself reciting to friends and pondering over, but I can't help but walk away feeling like it's a half-finished book. By its own admission, there is no unifying theme to the chapters, and no particular purpose to its order. There's a sense of pointlessness and lack of cohesion that makes the book crumble under the weight of its own lofty pretensions-- or at least the ones put on it by the marketing department.
This book was enjoyable, but I felt the whole time that I had already read it, and I think for a lot of that, it was true, since I had read the original article when it came out in the New York Times, and I think there was another excerpt somewhere else. I was annoyed at the long quotes from the article introducing chapters, and the introduction, which was basically a summary of the book. They should have just admitted that the book isn't very long, or better, put in some more substance from the studies that made up the book.
The chapter I found most interesting was about what makes good parents, although as Rahul points out, this is mostly statistics, rather than economics. And judging by test scores is pretty superficial.
I guess my point is, I can't wait for the sequel!
I think it could potentially be a good textbook (one that students might actually want to read) if the authors would pad it out with information on how to apply statistics.
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