Freakonomics

I’ll try to put forward a little overview of a book that I finished a couple of days ago. It was the Dubner’s and Levitt’s pretty famous and often referred Freakonomics: A Rouge Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Buy the way Financial Times voted this book as one of the best business books written in 2005.

Well, the hype around the book has been quite huge. Even when you pick it up, one can only read exceptional praise on its blurb: “prepare to be dazzled”, “a phenomenon” etc. But once i had read it, to be honest, I must say that was left a little bit disappointed.

Firstly, the story seems to praise Mr. Levitt a bit too much. I found it quite awkward to read chapter after chapter how good economist and person Levitt really is- if I’d wanted to know that, maybe I would have read Levitt’s autobiography instead.

Secondly, I think that the book is made too accessible and thus loses some of its cutting edge. Very rarely there is any discussion on the methodology and sometimes I felt that Mr. Levitt falls into a hole that he himself created. I quote: “Experts depend on the fact that you don’t have the information they do. Or that you are befuddled by the complexity of their operation that you wouldn’t know what to do with the information if you had it. Or that you are so in awe of their expertise that you wouldn’t dare challenge them.” I think this is exactly what happens when you present your research results like it is done in the book. The conclusions of his/their research seem to just pop up from nowhere… Or then again, maybe I fall into the wrong category of a reader (because of my background) and what I really should do is look up on some Levitt’s original work. Well, I will not- have better and interesting things to read.

But what about the results? Were they interesting? Well, the case of crime decrease seemed kind of deja vu from a Fukuyama book that I read some years ago. Maybe, the point about incentives is good and the example with real estate agents. And what about the name of Ku Klux Klan? The author states that it comes from the Greek word klukos – circle. Previously I’ve encountered a different meaning something like click-click of a gun when it’s triggered. Ahh, nevermind.