Resumo de Freakonomics - STEVEN LEVITT

A Review of the Book: ? FREAKONOMICS?
Authored by STEVEN D. LEVITT : Published in 2005

Review by Dr.V.S.Gopalakrishnan

Mercifully the sub-title of the Book is ?A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything?. How this book became so popular is not difficult to find. As per the Author the purpose of this book is to make the reader ?ask a lot of questions?. Yes, questions like how this inane book became so popular; what kind of economist is he? Is he just a rogue and not an economist? No, he is not a rogue, I conclude, but is a freakish person. There is hardly any economics in this book; just sociology, if at all.

The chapters hardly relate to each other. The writing is basically about disparate, popular matters in American public life, in a racy style, with voluminous data that any reader will ignore, and the reader is greatly satisfied that he has quickly finished reading a ?best-selling? book and can brag about it to his peers.

The author begins with ?crime? in the USA. Every kind of experts in the USA were predicting the escalation of crimes in the USA in the 1990s. Strangely this did not happen. The number of crimes in fact dropped. Big experts then ascribed this to better policing, increase in the police manpower, better gun control, better economy etc. The author pooh-poohs all these. He points out that in 1973, the Supreme Court had legalized abortion throughout America. So, the indigent pregnant women (generally black/Hispanic) simply did not produce unwanted children that would have turned hoodlums. What a discovery! But is it economics?

Then there is this strange chapter with the heading ?what do school teachers and Sumo wrestlers have in common?? The author talks about daycare centres for children in Haifa. If the parents come late to pick up their wards, simply fine them. However, low fines will be an incentive to parents to come late. Great economics! Then there is a dissertation about how school teachers cheat to show off their students in the best light so that they themselves could get faster promotions. Then the author gives copious notes to enlighten us about how the Sumo wrestlers in Japan rig their contests and cheat the public. Anyway, the author?s point in this chapter is just that everybody likes to cheat, including teachers and wrestlers. Does the author cheat? He does say: ?Cheating is a primordial economic act?. Is it really all about economics?

The next chapter is titled ?The Ku Klux Klan and Real-Estate Agents?. The whole history of the KKK is traced only to lead us to a point that if you want to beat others, simply join their ranks clandestinely. ?Information? is the key to winning! Real-estate agents have precise market information and yet when you sell your house they cheat you. Cheating and beating comes from the power of ?knowledge?.

The next chapter is about why drug dealers live with their moms. This is a mind -blowing economic issue worrying law makers! The author extensively borrows from the research work of a guy called Sudhir Venkatesh, born in India, graduated from California and pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology from Chicago. This Sudhir guy lived for years with mafia groups to collect information for his thesis. After pages and pages of drivel the author concludes that the lower echelons of mafia cannot afford their own accommodation and therefore live with their mothers, and that only when they rise to top mafia positions, they could leave their moms and buy yachts.

The following chapter is titled ?Where have all the Criminals gone?? This is not about criminals all over the world. This is about criminals in Romania and the USA. In 1966, the Romanian dictator Ceausescu made abortion illegal. So you have a new population of unwanted poor children whoblossom into criminals in that country. This very youth, the young criminals, rose against and deposed Ceausescu and had him killed in 1989. The American experience is the opposite. In 1973, abortion is legalized. So, in the 1990s there were few unwanted and criminal youth. Clinton cannot be overthrown and the American democracy is safe!

The last two chapters titled ?what makes a perfect parent?? and ?A Roshanda by any name? deals with trivialities. A mother would normally allow her young daughter to play with a kid who has a swimming pool in the house rather than with a kid in whose house a gun is kept. The author goes into a labour to show that the swimming pool kills more people than a gun. Now you get what a perfect parent should decide! The Roshanda chapter is about the naming of children. The author builds up laborious statistics to unveil the most popular names given to the white children and the black children in America. The author wants us to realize that even if the black children were to be given the top names that white children have, their handicaps and social and economic position will remain just the same. With such great discoveries, this strange economist-author concludes his book.

The success of this book is a pointer to the failure in the readers who largely sport poor mental capacity, poor taste and poor culture. This is not surprising considering that the author has largely written about crimes, cheating etc.

Review by Dr.V.S.Gopalakrishnan

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