BGE rating:

This is another book review from the goat! I don’t think that my comments on how good a book is would really cause any ripples, or even get people reading it, but I’m going to give my 2-cents worth anyway.

I must say that I was a little “non-committal” when Freakonomics - A rogue economists explores the hidden side of everything was recommended to me by a dear friend, who despite our relationship only revealed to me lately that he actually majored in Economics (you would never pick it!) I have read my fair share of textbooks in Economics, in fact I find the subject very interesting but this is the only economics book I’d ever label a page-turner. An extraordinary work of social science explanation without oversimplification.

I can’t really pinpoint the key hook that finally got me, I finished the book when I was somewhere over the South China Sea on my way back to Melbourne from HK, so I had time to contemplate the reasons, I came up with 4 possibilities. 1 - Its wacky revisionist title. 2 - Its unsettling take on Roe v. Wade 3 - Its compulsively readable argument that economics does nothing more than study the incentives that drive us or 4 - Just the fact that one of the authors is a mad golf enthusiast like me. Probably all of the above. If you have some time and haven’t read it already then give it a go. On the author’s blog you will find the book has just won the BookSense Award for non-fiction of the year, so there are obviously some people out there who think it’s great.

Levitt (economics, U. of Chicago) and writing collaborator Dubner (a writer for the New York Times and The New Yorker) dub the material in this work “freakonomics” because Levitt uses analytical tools from economics to address a range of questions that, at first glance, might seem to be far removed from the discipline of the “dismal science.” They consider questions such as how to determine if teachers are aiding in students’ cheating on standardised tests, the impact of information asymmetry on the operation of the Ku Klux Klan, how the organisational structure of crack gangs resemble other businesses, and the influence of parents on child development

I do have one problem on the whole “legalised abortion reducing the crime rate in the US” notion. As much as it is a clever theory, it’s only part of the story; the authors seemed to have only gleaned over some of the other points that in my opinion warrant more discussion. Further, I have one statement and it won’t make sense unless you’ve read the book: On the basis of Levitt’s and Dubner’s logic on the Roe v Wade case, the introduction of the pill in the US sometime during the 60’s should have had a similar effect (relatively speaking) on the crime rate 20 years or so later, I am no expert in this field and do not claim to be, but didn’t the crime rate in the 80’s actually rise?