Analysis Of The Book ' Freakonomics ' By Steven D. Levitt

In chapter one of Freakonomics, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt describe how when incentives are strong enough, many usually honest people from different walks of life will cheat in order to gain financially or climb the ladder in their careers. The authors define an incentive as “a means of urging people to do more of a good thing or less of a bad thing.” This chapter covers three varieties of incentives: Economic, Social and Moral. Economic incentives motivate people with the promise of money or goods. Social incentives motivate people to respond in a certain way because they care about how they will be viewed by others. Moral incentives motivate people on the basis of right and wrong. We look at four

The author is very affective with his argument, he uses logos and rhetorical questions the most to make the audience form their own opinions, but also listen to his. The main point in this book, Freakonomics, written by Steven Levitt, is to show that economics can explain many phenomenons. Levitt uses logos and rhetorical devices the most to display this argument. The audience is made to question if “It might be worthwhile to step back and ask a rudimentary question; what is a gun?” (Levitt 118). The audience asked to think about what the consequences of a gun can be. Levitt also uses data so show that these moments can be discomforting and dangerous. The most discomforting example that Levitt provided was that “The most famous gun-control

Based on Paul Feldman’s findings, the authors of Freakonomics argue that a person, who is faced with an efficient way to cheat, will not necessarily choose to. The data involved in Feldman’s accidental bagel study proves that not all humans are corrupt. However,

In what way are schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers similar? At first, this question might be puzzling, but the answer is provided in the book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Freakonomics is the result of a partnership between an award winning economist, Steven D. Levitt, and a journalist, Stephen J. Dubner. The duo decided upon making a book after Dubner was given an assignment to profile Levitt. Dubner realized that Levitt took a different approach to economics than other economists and he saw that Levitt had an interesting and effective way to explain statistics. This pushed the two to release the 315 page book to the public in 2005 in New York, New York. Since then, the book has flourished and has been republished numerous times. In Freakonomics, Dubner and Levitt reveal that fundamental ideas of economics can be used to interpret just about everything in modern society. The book focuses on a few key points including; incentives are the driving force behind everything, conventional wisdom is often wrong, small causes can often have dramatic effects, and the advantages of having information. The authors use many interesting stories and statistics to demonstrate these economic themes in the modern world. Stories include how some school teachers in the Chicago school system cheat, the influence that the legalization of abortions had on crime rates, and how real estate agents tend to sell their own homes for higher prices than if they

1. The first chapter in the book is about the market and its inner workings. The book briefly explains the idea of supply and demand, in which the price of a certain good or service will reach the point where all the demand is equivalent to the supply. However, the value of something is not determined by its necessity, but its desire within society, as seen by the difference in cost between a diamond and life giving water. Markets operate as they do because people try to maximize the amount of utility for themselves. Nevertheless, a strict rationalism model cannot be used for predicting all the occurrences of a market because of the ever changing behavior of people; thus economists must take precautions against

After reading Chapter 3 of “High Price” by Dr. Carl Hart, I learned he lived with his mother and father until the as halfway thru the second grade. Then got a divorce and he stayed with his father for about two week, but once his father realized that he was unable to take care, he then went to live with his Big Mama. His great grandmother was a Bahamian woman. She came to the United States when she was a young adult. His big mama was a women who believed and stressed that going school and being self sufficient was important. She believed that a black men in this society had no chance if they weren’t educated. Dr. Carl Hart’s family based their family morals off of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, based on the beliefs of the his grandmother and great grandmother. His great grandmother followed role of W. E. B. DuBois, because she believed that education was important and this was a way for African Americans can advance. Although his great grandmother believed that education was important, she did not believe that it would not help someone of his race in a world where racism played a big part of being successful. Carl’s father would promise to pick him up on the weekends and would never show or even showed up drunk. Although his father was an alcoholic, Carl didn’t mind it he just wanted to be around him. Being the his great grandmother loved him dearly, his great grandmother loved him and always had his back. When Carl’s father didn’t play a the role of being a

In the book Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, is made up of a series of scenarios in which an economist and a journalist apply basic principles of economics to demonstrate that information can often expose interesting truths about how the world operates. It uses the science of economics and specific data to challenge our assumptions about everything. In the book Freakonomics by Levitt & Dubner, compares and contrasts two groups of people or things by using their informational data. This is called juxtaposition, which means the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect. Levitt and Dubner look at the world in a way that is both surprising, occasionally funny, and always enlightening. They do so by drawing unexpected connections between two greatly different but complementary aspects of sociology and economics, such as sumo wrestlers to school teachers, KKK members to the real estate agents, and lastly, crack gangs to McDonalds.

Freakonomics is basically a book that explains its own version of the economic history. Dating all the way back to the 1800s with some stated facts explaining what incentives are and what type of incentives there are and what they're used for. Basically there’s a way to motivate someone and set them on a clearer path and bettering themselves in the future. One of the best motivations would be money because well money can get you anything in the world. Clothes, food, and car, Etc. They are a great way to motivate and give people that mind set to work for their money and not just lay there and wait for it on a silver platter. I feel like that people who work against people who never worked. They know more about the struggle than anything. Which is why they actually care when they get money and they spend it wise. Obviously the rich wouldn’t care to get or not because they already have enough to fall back on.

For this review I read Freakonomics written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. This book was published by William Morrow an Imprint of HarperCollins and is copyrighted 2005. Freakonomics is a unique book where there is no central story. It is not a story where it goes from point a to point b and follows a traditional storyline. This book is broken up into a collection of mini stories where the authors try explore issues and approach them from a non-conventional way of thinking. Some of these issues in the book include comparing Ku Klux Klan members to real estate agents, why drug dealers live with their moms, and linking abortion to criminal rates. The book addresses the issues at hand and uses data they have accrued and in their

In chapter 2 of Freakonomics the main argument is that the absence of information can be used for personal gain. The main example used to display this tactic is when the KKK is compared to real estate agents. Although the crafty practice of real estate agents is in no way similar to the horrors of the KKK, they have a distinct similarity when it comes to the hoarding of information. The majority of the chapter focuses on the history of the KKK and Stetson Kennedy’s effort to stop it through the infiltration and exposure via radio of the Klan. Since the Klan was dependant on their violent—despite not being extremely violent—reputation, the disclosure of the information they had withheld from the public rendered them powerless. The narrators

The book Superfreakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, is basically just a collection of stories that analyze certain aspects of our society/world, and evaluate why something is what it is or how it can be changed. All solutions/evaluations made by the authors though, are from an economist’s point of view. This is one of the main reasons why I chose this book alongside the fact that some of the stories inside I found to be quite intriguing. Topics discussed in the book ranged from why suicide bombers should buy life insurance to how street prostitutes are like department store Santa clauses. Despite the “interesting” topics discussed though, the main reason I chose this book was for the economics viewpoint of the authors. It

Levitt next examines the incentives that cause people to cheat. The first example of cheating is a story of teachers cheating in Chicago public schools. To avoid the risk of getting fired or getting penalty by the government for low test scores, many teachers chose to cheat and inflate their students ' scores. They cheated by allowing the students to have more time during test, giving away answers, and even by changing students’ answers by themselves. In this case, we can see that the schoolteachers are driven by economic incentives. For them, moral and social incentives are not as strong as economic incentives. Similar cheating can be seen in sumo wrestling. In Japan, sumo wrestling is a very popular sports and the high-ranked wrestlers get great honor. Also, among sumo wrestlers, their rank determines their salary, reputation, how they are treated, and even how much he gets to eat and sleep. Because they are so desperate for higher rank, the incentive for cheating is very powerful. In the crucial matches that determines sumo wrestler’s ranking, they cheat by

In chapter 1, Levitt and Dubner describe how many people in different cultures and walks of life, which are otherwise inclined to be honest, find subtle ways of cheating to advance their position or increase monetary awards when incentives are strong enough. The authors define an incentive as “a means of urging people to do more of a good thing or less of a bad thing,” and identify three varieties of incentives. Economic incentives are those, which a person responds to in the marketplace. Social incentives motivate people to respond in a certain way because they care or are worried about how they will be viewed by others. Moral incentives appeal to a person’s sense of right versus wrong. Three case studies of the

​Freakonomics is a book that explores the many possibilities of why some things are the way they are. Principles of everyday life are examined and explained while Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner search for logic in statistical economics. This book answers the questions: how can things affect what people do, why are things the way they are, and why experts routinely make up statistics. This book highlights the commonalities between schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers as well as the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents, the life of drug dealers, criminals, and the art of parenting.

What they were all responding to was the force of Levitt’s underly- ing belief: that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not un- knowable, and—if the right questions are asked—is even more in- triguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. - Stephen J. Dubner.