Much has been said about this book. Despite that, still decided to share some of my thoughts. At first there were only some random opinions heard here and there, nothing truly shocking though. Generally – ‘a book for dumbies’, ‘quasi-economics’, ‘not much economics in economics’ and so on. And have to partly agree with such views. I would put ‘Freakonomics’, written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, on the same shelf as Tim Hardford’s ‘Undercover Economist’ or Steven Landsburg’s ‘The Armchair Economist (even though I haven’t had a chance to read the latter one yet).
A simple piece of reading for wider publicity, a relaxing lecture after a tiring day. Yes, it may dazzle you at times, however that will likely be caused by its undoubted charm and funniness than a massive amount of economics theory. Authors opted to take a rather different approach in presenting the context. What they did, was to form a list of several questions, unusual in its nature, such as ‘what do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common’? Common sense tells us nothing, but as you can surely guess, Levitt and Dubner obviously came up with something. Readers will definitely be astonished by the process of linking thoughts one to another, carefully led by the pair of economists. Have to admit that there is quite a lot of data and statistics in use, but in the end, that’s the only touch of economics. No models, no graphs, no extraordinary concepts – everything is kept as simple as possible. And maybe that’s why ‘Freakonomics’ proved to be so successful? Very likely to be so.
Rating: 6.5/10
Cheers,
John A62
PS Thanks to Chik for gifting me the book.
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