अ बुक Review of FREAKONOMICS

“This sensation will apparently redefine the way you observe the modern world.”- A.M.Dixit

It’s been couple of years when I started buying novels and books for my own, and one of the most interesting books that I ever read was FREAKONOMICS by Steven Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner. Through influential storytelling and ironic insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner shows that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. One becomes spell bound when you have to go deeply thorough questions like “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?” ….Right! these may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But S. D. Levitt and S.J Dubner isn’t a typical economist. They are much like scholars who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life, from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head.

In FREAKONOMICS, they set out to explore the hidden side of... well, almost everything. From the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real-estate agents, the myths of campaign finance to the telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. This book usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question leaving readers to solution of newly created unknown. As Leveitt sees it, economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but with a serious shortage of interesting questions. His particular gift is the ability to ask such questions which when scratched from root will leave you fascinated.

The fieriest admission in the book refers to a distant cause of the dramatic crime rate drop of the 1990s, which was unlikely predicted by criminologist; political scientist similarly learned forecasters to be horrible future, as did Presient Clinton during that time. Mr Levitt and Dubner in explaining the Hidden side of everything states – “It wasn’t; gun control or a strong economy or new policy strategies that finally decreased the American crime wave. Policies and Security were among other factors, the reality that the pool of potential criminals had dramatically shrunk was with legalization of abortion in the early 1970s. As far as crime is concerned, it turns out that not all children are born equal. Not even close, Decades of studies have shown that child born into an adverse family environment is far more likely than other children to become a criminal. And the millions of women most likely to have an abortion were often models of adversity. They were the very women whose children, if born, would have been much more likely than average to become criminals. But because of legalization of abortion these children weren’t born. This powerful cause would have a drastic, distant effect: years later, just as these unborn children would have entered their criminal primes, the rate of crime began to plummet.”

There are numerous cases and questions this book drills into and every time you get close to the unabsorbed facts you become captivated. We define morality as how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work, combining economics, morality and unobserved facts this book FREAKONOMICS has enough riddles and controversial stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But more then anything else this sensation will apparently redefine the way you observe the modern world.

CHEERS


A.M. Dixit