"Freakonomics" by Steve Levitt

[Voltron87]

Has anyone else read this book? I'm 3/4 done with it and I love it. This book is awesome. The anecdotes are great, and he looks at data really well. It helps that the book is well written (credit to the co author there) which is an exception to the rule of economics writing.

My favorites were the crack dealing section and the abortion chapter. It turns out that the crack market and crack gangs work just like most other large profitable American corporations and the crack market follows the simple labor laws of economics even though it is illicit and unregulated.

And if you haven't read or heard about his abortion argument, he says that Roe vs Wade is a large factor in the crime drop of the 1990s when in fact most media "experts" were predicting a rise. Good stuff.

[Tron]

From what I've heard about it, it just sounds like a bunch of ridiculous data mining... Moreso comedy/satire than economics.

Is this the case?

[Voltron87]

It's not really pure economics and most people wouldn't call it an economics book, but he uses the basic principles of incentives and looks at raw data to make his conclusions, usually in a kind of interesting unorthodox way.

He does make some funnies in the book but generally it is not satire.

[Tron]

So let's say I would like to learn the basics of economics, but don't want to read a boring textbook (and I'm intelligent enough to sort out the jokes, etc.). Is this the book for me?

[istewart]

I love that sort of stuff, I'm definitely going to pick it up.

However, I bet it's a lot like The Tipping Point, which I found really elitist and gay at times.

[istewart]

I would say it is a lot of datamining, yes.

[felson]

[ QUOTE ]
So let's say I would like to learn the basics of economics, but don't want to read a boring textbook (and I'm intelligent enough to sort out the jokes, etc.). Is this the book for me?

[/ QUOTE ]

I liked the book a lot, but it won't teach you very much at all about the basics of economics. It's more of an overview of the author's research. If you want to learn about macroeconomics for example, (inflation/unemployment) etc., there's zero of that here.

[Voltron87]

It will teach you stuff about economics, yeah, but it won't at the same time. You'll understand economics better at the end if you're pretty smart but not in the same way as taking an Econ class. Some people would say in a better way. It certainly isn't boring though.

[Voltron87]

There's a lot of economics minded thinking though which can be education. Stuff about incentives, and how he uses data. It's kind of miscellaneous. But it's not going to teach you boring stuff like marginal cost and how that factors against the ATC in a long run competitive market blah blah blah.

[Voltron87]

The author also has a kind of interesting blog here (http://www.freakonomics.com/blog.php).

[Jack of Arcades]

Levitt's an idiot when talking about baseball, FWIW.

[The Armchair]

I read it in about four hours.

Awesome, start to finish.

[Voltron87]

What did he say?

[shadow29]

My favorite non-Economics Economics book is "The Lexus and the Olive-Tree" by Thomas L. Friedman.

Friedman's stuff is classy, imo. I got his newest (The World is Flat) but I haven't read it yet.

[Jack of Arcades]

Link here (http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/04/will-real-billy-beane-please-stand-up.html)

Roughly, what it says: Billy Beane preaches OBP as the important offensive stat, but his teams offense produced more or less the same way other's did, so their offense wasn't exactly "revolutionary." The thing is, they did it on such a lower budget by developing players and getting underrated players...

It misses the point of Moneyball entirely, which, if you haven't read it, goes something like this: in every market there are inefficiences, and the key to win without a large payroll is to exploit these inefficiences. What this means is looking for something that's undervalued. At the time Moneyball was written, it meant guys who couldn't play defense too well but could get on base. Now it means good fielders that don't necessarily have a big bat.

What's important to remember is that even once you completely eliminate the Big 3 from the picture (ie, salary and contribute marginal wins), the A's STILL had the best marginal win/payroll ratio.

[Corey]

I'm about 1/2 of the way through it (it's my "metro book" for the commute). A very easy and insightful read so far. As other posters have said, there isn't much explicit economics in it. I think he presents his research well and gives a different perspective on already learned theory.