"Freakonomics"--A Review

Paper Summary:

This book review examines the chapters in Levitt and Dubner's off-beat and irreverent work, "Freakonomics", which covers many issues in society from an economic bent. Some of the outlooks may be controversial, yet the reviewer sees them as quite valid. According to the review, Levitt and Dubner interview many people from different segments of the working world to gather information about society. The review also illustrates the authors' views on crime, and the circumstances that cause it to rise or fall. The review concludes by showing how the authors discuss thinking "sensibly" about real people in the real world. They urge skepticism with accepted wisdom, and looking underneath a layer of society to discover the truth.

From the Paper:

"Levitt maintains economists love incentives and believe incentives can fix just about any problem. He lists many incentives we respond to during life, that incentives urge people to do the right thing rather than the wrong thing, and that someone has to invent incentives. He also maintains incentives must be appropriate to be effective. He also maintains that just about everyone cheats - it is just a matter of the stakes and incentives. Many people spend their time thinking of ways to beat the system, rationalizing it as "getting more for less." He discusses how this relates to education and high-stakes testing, and how it might influence teachers to cheat to gain bonuses and save their jobs. Economists identified patterns that might indicate a teacher was changing answers in a classroom, and discovered that some teachers in the Chicago Public Schools were cheating by erasing students answers and filling in the correct answers. He relates this cheating to Japanese sumo wrestlers, who he maintains also cheat. He shows why they might cheat, and offers some ways to measure data to prove they cheat, and cites information from former sumo wrestlers who said some matches were rigged. Then he discusses the honor system as it relates to bagels and white collar crime, noting that office workers cheat, do not pay for bagels, and that larger offices are worse than small ones. He shows the honor-system does work, at least about 87 percent of the time."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Levitt, Steven D. and Dubner, Stephen J. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

More papers on "Freakonomics"--A Review:

• Book Review # 103875 : "Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner"
• Book Review # 144878 : "Is it Economics--or Freakonomics?"
• Book Review # 98459 : "Freakonomics"

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