2008 Woodie Awards
Book Review: Freakonomics
Ryan Hengel
Issue date: 3/10/06 Section: Opinion
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Freakonomics is a book co-written by a rogue economist and a journalist dealing with the economics of everyday questions accompanied by understandable answers. Questions like, "What really caused the crime rate to drop so rapidly in the early to mid-nineties?" and, "What do real estate agents and Ku Klux Klan members have in common?" These are only a few of questions the authors raise all are equally provocative.
While these questions seem to have lofty or speculative answers, the truth of the matter is that all of the answers presented in this book are real. This book is less about economics and more about asking unanswerable questions and actually finding answers to them. In most of these cases the exploration of these topics has more to deal with philosophy than economics, or to phrase it another way, the philosophy of economics. This seems to contradict the notion of what economics may or may not be, but one thing is for certain: this book explores the notion of economics like no one else has.
Freakonomics is undoubtedly one of the most groundbreaking and thought-provoking books written in modern times. This book could potentially spark a whole new school of philosophical thought. My only hope is that Levitt doesn't stop theorizing and Dubner doesn't stop writing. The new horizons this way of problem solving holds for the philosophical economics is endless. I will leave you with a quote from the last chapter of the book: "If morality represents an ideal world, then economics represents the real world."
Freakonomics introduces you to the real world.
While these questions seem to have lofty or speculative answers, the truth of the matter is that all of the answers presented in this book are real. This book is less about economics and more about asking unanswerable questions and actually finding answers to them. In most of these cases the exploration of these topics has more to deal with philosophy than economics, or to phrase it another way, the philosophy of economics. This seems to contradict the notion of what economics may or may not be, but one thing is for certain: this book explores the notion of economics like no one else has.
Freakonomics is undoubtedly one of the most groundbreaking and thought-provoking books written in modern times. This book could potentially spark a whole new school of philosophical thought. My only hope is that Levitt doesn't stop theorizing and Dubner doesn't stop writing. The new horizons this way of problem solving holds for the philosophical economics is endless. I will leave you with a quote from the last chapter of the book: "If morality represents an ideal world, then economics represents the real world."
Freakonomics introduces you to the real world.