Freakonomics

If the thought of a book on economics is about as exciting as sorting your mails, then the bestselling book, Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, just might be the book for you.

Economics is supposed to be about price elasticities and interest rates and not drug dealers and their curious living prefernces. That is what makes it so useful to management graduates like me, seeking relief from insomnia.

With its well-paced and easy reading style, this book shows how the resulting correlation of data impacts our lives and makes us think differently about facts and figures. Many people- including some of his peers- do not recognize Levitt’s work as economics at all!

Levitt is happiest grappling with questions that have the potential to overturn the ''conventional wisdom.'' ''Where did all the criminals go?'' proved to be the perfect instance of such a question.
The sudden and precipitous crime drop in the 1990's took everyone by surprise. Plenty of plausible-sounding hypotheses were put forward to explain it. But when Levitt turned an economist's eye to the data, he found that most of the supposed causes – better law enforcement, a strong economy, the aging of the population, etc. -- had a negligible effect.
And then, Freakonomics arrives at a startling conclusion. The book submits that the highly publicized drop in America's violent crime rate since 1990 is due almost entirely to legalized abortion!!

 As Levitt sees it, economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers, but a serious shortage of interesting questions.

On the downside however, Freakonomics will give you plenty to talk about, without an in depth analysis of the issues presented.

Also, those of you desiring a smooth flowing book, with numerous concepts building to an ultimate conclusion, might be disappointed. Actually, the book presents six wholly different topics, with no unifying theme.

All in all we say Freakonomics definitely asks some good questions, and it inspires readers to do the same.