Freakonomics 《魔鬼经济学》
精彩点评
"Do Sumo wrestlers cheat?
Which is a whiter name for a girl, Molly or Holly?
And what do crack gangs
and McDonald's restaurants have in common?
The answers to these
and other seldom-asked questions are all here,
in the funkiest study of statistical mechanics ever
by a world-renowned economist.
Crunching numbers too offbeat for Milton Friedman
--KKK membership rolls,
bagel sales figures, data from online dating services
--Levitt (along with coauthor Dubner)
searches for logic
in the messy mathematics of human behavior.
His conclusions are often eye-opening
(say it ain't so, Sato!)
and sometimes eye-popping
(his theory that high abortion rates
help reduce crime probably won't get him invited
to the White House anytime soon),
but in the end he never really adds it all up
to a cohesive or compelling sum.
Still, give the proof his props:
"Freakonomics" is a lot more fun to read
than anything Friedman ever wrote."
- Benjamin Svetkey, Entertainment Weekly
"Forget your image of an economist
as a crusty professor worried about
fluctuating interest rates:
Levitt focuses his attention
on more intimate real-world issues,
like whether reading to your baby
will make her a better student.
Recognition by fellow economists
as one of the best young minds in his field
led to a profile in the New York Times,
written by Dubner, and that original article serves
as a broad outline for an expanded look
at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives
behind all sorts of behavior.
There isn't really a grand theory of everything here,
except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts
have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom
even when it's wrong.
Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything
from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs
to baby-naming patterns.
While some chapters might seem frivolous,
others touch on more serious issues,
including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage
between the legalization of abortion
and a reduced crime rate two decades later.
Underlying all these research subjects is a belief
that complex phenomena can be understood
if we find the right perspective.
Levitt has a knack for making that
principle relevant to our daily lives,
which could make this book a hit.
Malcolm Gladwell blurbs that Levitt
"has the most interesting mind in America,"
an invitation Gladwell's own substantial fan base
will find hard to resist." (starred review)
- Publishers Weekly
"Why do drug dealers live at home?
Levitt (Economics/Univ. of Chicago)
and Dubner (Confessions of a Hero Worshiper, 2003, etc.),
who profiled Levitt for the New York Times,
team up to demolish conventional wisdom.
To call Levitt a "rogue economist" may be a tad hyperbolic.
Certainly this epitome of antistyle
("his appearance is High Nerd:
a plaid button-down shirt,
nondescript khakis and a braided belt,
brown sensible shoes")
views the workaday world with different eyes;
the young economist teases out meaning from juxtapositions
that simply would not occur to other researchers.
Consider this, for instance: in the mid-1990s,
just when the Clinton administration projected
it was about to skyrocket,
crime in the U.S. fell markedly. And why?
Because, Levitt hazarded a few years ago,
of the emergent effects of the Roe v. Wade decision:
legalized abortion prevented the births of millions
of poor people who,
beset by social adversity,
were "much more likely than average
to become criminals."
The suggestion, Dubner writes,
"managed to offend just about everyone,"
conservative and liberal alike,
but it had high explanatory value.
Levitt hasn't shied away from controversy
in other realms,
either, preferring to let the numbers speak for themselves:
a young man named Jake will earn more job interviews
than one with the same credentials named DeShawn;
the TV game show The Weakest Link,
like society as a whole,
discriminates against the elderly and Hispanics;
it is human nature to cheat,
and the higher up in the organization a person rises,
the more likely it is that he or she will cheat.
Oh, yes, and street-level drug dealers live at home
with their moms because they have to;
most earn well below minimum wage
but accept the bad pay and dangerous conditions
to get a shot at the big time,
playing in what in effect is a tournament.
"A crack gang works
pretty much like the standard capitalist enterprise,"
Levitt and Dubner write,
"You have to be near the top of the pyramid
to make a big wage."
出版社：广东经济出版社
出版日期：2006-3
页数：209