Resumo de Freakonomics - Steven Levitt

Freakonomics uses the data and methodology of economics to poke holes
in the conventional wisdom about sensitive and thorny issues ranging
from crime, real estate and abortion to parenting and sumo wrestlers
who cheat. Steven D. Levitt, a University of Chicago economics professor, is
the rogue economic brain behind the book and Stephen J. Dubner the
writer. Both of them decided to collaborate on a book after Dubner
wrote a glowing New York Times Magazine piece about Levitt that started
off with a description of him as "the most brilliant young economist in
America." The key premise underlying Freakonomics is the
relationship between morality and economics: Morality may represent the
way we want the world to work, but Economics shows how it actually
works. According to the author, you can understand the world and why it
works the way it does by simply scrutinizing the economic incentives
that motivate everyone from real estate agents to drug dealers. When we think of the ghetto that is full of drug-running kids who
won't take a job flipping hamburgers at McDonald's because they can
make more money selling coke of a different kind? If you do,
Freakonomics can teach you a thing or two. The authors argue that young
apprentice drug runners actually make the equivalent of the minimum
wage or less. Only ring leaders make a bundle. The book doesn't contain a lot of research done exclusively for
the book. Instead Levitt draws on data that he previously compiled to
come up with his conclusions. The sections on the drug trade actually
rely on some fascinating and rare primary research done by Sudhir
Venkatesh, a University of Chicago-educated sociologist. One day, one of the gang members gave Venkatesh some spiral
notebooks containing a complete record of the gang's financial
transactions. Venkatesh later told Levitt about the data, and the two
then collaborated on a paper about the organization of street gangs.
The result is provided in the chapter "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live
With Their Moms?" which portrays the Black Gangster Disciple Nation as
an organization much like an American corporation. The author challenges the conventional wisdom in matters big and
small, their political incorrectness, in choice of subjects and
conclusions, is refreshing and fun. But Freakonomics struggles with the
same challenges that face the modern media. In its attempt to entertain
and entice readers with an irreverent style, Freakonomics at times
substitutes that style for substance, leaving looming questions
unanswered. Levitt makes the most controversial argument about the
relationship between crime and abortion. Taking the reader back to the
1970s and `80s, Levitt and Dubner recall the crime wave that surged
across America, inundating the nation with soaring rates for death by
gunfire, carjacking, crack dealing, robbery and rape. Political leaders
spanning the ideological spectrum feared crime would continue to rise
as the nation headed toward 2000. The politicians then scrambled to
enact handgun bans and other anti-crime measures. But in the early
1990s, crime started to fall, and it continued to fall, which was
against their expectations. The conventional wisdom at that time attributed the decline to
everything from innovative policing strategies and handgun bans enacted
in several states to the roaring economies of the 1990s, which led to
low unemployment and the opportunity to set aside a handgun and door
jimmy for a lunch bucket. Here comes the use of economic analysis to shoot holes in the
conventional wisdom. He argues, the true reasons for the unexpected
drop in crime include three shopworn explanations and one new and
controversial argument. Increased reliance on prisons, changes in the
drug markets (particularly for crack cocaine) and more police on the
street account for about 60 percent of the decline, he says. But he has
a fourth explanation for the balance of the drop: the incre in the
number of abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade
decision. His logic is really clever, unconventional, provocative and
unquestionably politically incorrect to a large segment of the
population. And it's probably at least partially true. The legal abortions for women younger than 20 peaked in 1979 and
then reversed direction, falling by just over 21 percent from 1980 to
1990. During the same period, the nation's birthrate held steady and
actually rose sharply as 1990 approached. Again, the crime rate continued to decline despite the decrease
in abortions and the rise in births. Moreover if poor, young, unmarried
women were having abortions instead of children from 1973 to 1979,
shouldn't there have been a decrease in the population of teenagers by
1990, particularly young blacks, who were being blamed for much of the
crime wave? That didn't really happen. The population of 15- to
19-year-old black American males rose more than 70 percent from 1973 to
1990. It is found that Levitt doesn't even deal with the questions that
logically flow from such a potentially explosive suggestion. In 1958,
John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a book called "The Affluent Society?. But
he grappled with broad themes designed to help readers understand the
forces shaping American and world economies. This is what Freakonomics
doesn't do. Levitt does not tell you much about the broad themes that define
the economy, but they do make for lively cocktail-party conversation.
So, in short, Freakonomics help you see the hidden trends from the dumb
numbers.

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