"A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything"

A lot of buzz online didn't help Freakonomics to overcome its hype. The premise is simple, apply boring economics to interesting practical questions. The book came about when Dubner a journalist hooked up with Levitt the economist for a New York Times Magazine article. Now the article is swel but as a full length book, it feels disjointed and without purpose. The fact that they make fun of this having no "unifying theme" (a good thing) like Levitt's career is laughable

Freakonomics reads more like a collection of novel ideas "loosely" connected to each other. The beginning with real estate practices is actually a good opener but it's curtailed when the the authors jump to explain the motivation to cheat (teachers, sumos) and then parenting (quite a big chunk of the book). I often felt like I wanted more, or maybe just some closure

Sometimes the flurry of numbers would confuse me, it probably has to do with me not giving this a close reading but that's also a symptom that this wasn't very exciting to read

I think something that really struck me is how they debunk the drop of crime rate of the 90s in America. It's actually very convincing but it's also a bit anticlimactic (what can I say, I need to be moved). I recommend skipping the introduction for better effect (it gives it away). This chapter also disputes something that one of my favorite writer, Malcom Gladwell, explains in the Tipping Point. That bugged

For all its talks about this being innovative, we go back to basic economics principles such as incentives, correlation and causality (I actually enjoyed reading about those and regression analysis)

If nothing I guess there's a lot to be gleaned from the chapters on parenting. They end up proving that what matters is not what parents do (in effect parenting) but who they are (highly educated, high socioeconomics status, etc). There is an interesting discussion on naming children and people's lives living up to the name, it's something straight out of backronyms. This actually made me want to check out the notes (very complete) for further reading, including an article by Gladwell and a book The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris

The chapters on crack dealing and its organization intricacies had me hooked but that's more because of personal interest (like watching too much The Wire, season 4 coming in 2006 yo)

The read was a breeze (3 slow days, 256 pages) but it was pretty weak, especially compared to works in the same vein by Malcolm Gladwell or Steven Johnson


Update
March 2006, Gladwell responds to Levitt and Dubner