The book Freakonomics is a collection of numerous economics articles by Levitt. The author has gained an enormous reputation as an economist who has successfully applied economics concepts to diverse fields that have not been handled previously by any classical economist. The authors of the book, Levitt and Dubner propose that economics is basically the study of incentives. In their economics arguments, the authors ask such questions as between a swimming pool and a more dangerous gun? What are the major similarities between the schoolteachers and the sumo wrestlers? Try to establish the reasons why drug dealers never leave their mothers’ homes and the impacts of the legalization of abortion on the prevalence of violent crimes.
These do not form the typical economic questions. However, the author of the book is not interested in the conventional views of economics. He is much enthusiastic about understanding the riddles that entail our daily lives such as corruption, sports, crime and child nurturing; topics without any form of conventional wisdom. The book includes six chapters all of which handle varied life-related topics.
The author uses theories of economics to demonstrate the cheating that is done by the sumo dancers. Top division sumo dancers are expected to participate in fifteen matches during a sumo tournament; additionally, the wrestlers are supposed to win at least eight matches failure to which they are demonized. Levitt collects data from the wrestling matches in the sumo community and incorporates the corruption allegations of match-fixing to make conclusions. Levitt concludes that wrestlers with an eight-win record, who have already secured their place in the next tournament, often collude with those with a seven-win record to let them win.
Additionally, Levitt tries to exhibit the supremacy of data mining. This is exemplified by the investigations of dishonesty in the Chicago School system. Through the analysis of numerous databases and posing the right questions, Levitt emerges with various results.
The second chapter of the book deals with the visit of the author to the home of folklorist Stetson Kennedy. During the visit, the authors discuss Stetson’s explorations on the Ku Klax Llan. However, Levitt and Dubner later raise queries on the investigations that were conducted by Kennedy. They conclude that the effectiveness of the researches conducted by Kennedy was at times exaggerated (Levitt and Dubner 26). The authors observed that Kennedy’s portrayal of his investigations and other issues relating to the Klan were overly exaggerated.
Abortion is another issue that is handled in the book. The author investigates the impacts of abortion in Romania; he concludes that a lot of children who were born a year after the abortion ban would perform dismally in all measurable areas. According to Levitt and Dubner, these children would be poorer at school, the job market and would have higher chances of becoming criminals (118). The authors’ allegations were in contradiction of the proposed claims.
Freakonomics continues to argue that the need for additional police to combat crime can be eliminated by analyzing the electoral cycles. These allegations were partly evidenced by a computer programming error that occurred during the simulation. No relationship has been established between elections and the variations in the police recruitment process that establish a strong relationship between the effects of the police on combating crime.
In conclusion, Levitt and Dubner successfully portray economics as the study of incentives; the methods that people utilize to satisfy their needs and wants especially if other people desire the same thing. In Freakonomics the authors portray the hidden side of all things; from the activities of the illegal gangs, the theories of campaign finance to the covert of the Ku Klax Klan. The book ascertains an unconventional economics concept; morality dictates how the world is expected to work while economics dictates the actual working of the world.
Works Cited
Steven, Levitt and Stephen Dubner J. (2005). Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. William Morrow.