BOOK REVIEW: ‘Freakonomics’ Lives Up to Its Reputation as Quirky, Readable Book on Real-Life Economic Models
Reviewed By David M. KinchenHuntington News Network Book Critic
Hinton, WV (HNN) – You’ll quickly run out of words trying to describe a book that compares the Ku Klux Klan to real estate brokers; cheating sumo wrestlers to school teachers who “improve” on their students’ test results; and explores why drug dealers live with their moms.
These are only a few of the seemingly odd-ball comparisons economist Steven D. Levitt makes in a bestselling book he co-wrote with Stephen J. Dubner called “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” (William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins, 256 pages, $25.95).
If you’re as scared of higher math as I am, have no fear of “Freakonomics” – it’s written for people who were frightened by a math teacher in grade or high school. Levitt is a throwback to the literary economists of the past, the David Ricardos, Adam Smiths, John Kenneth Galbraiths. He claims to be as math-shy as most people, but he didn’t win the John Bates Clark Medal -- awarded every two years to the best economist under the age of 40 – by being deficient in the basics of his profession, which includes complicated math. He teaches at the University of Chicago and I’m willing to bet his classes are among the most popular at the prestigious “U” on the city’s South Side.
OK, how does the Klan relate to real estate brokers? It’s all in the secrets of the Klan, its rituals, its screwball names, as explained by a man, Stetson Kennedy, who infiltrated the Atlanta chapter of the Klan more than 50 years ago and fed its secrets to the producers of the radio show “Superman.” The authors met with the 88-year-old Floridian, who is related to the Stetson hat and Stetson University founders. His book, “I Rode with the Ku Klux Klan” was published in 1954 and was republished under a different title in 1990.
Similarly, real estate brokers have a special code in their descriptions of houses for sale. The authors decipher this code and show how real estate brokers manipulate their buyers and sellers to obtain the best commission without getting greedy – which results in the house staying on the market too long and deferring the valued commission. I confirmed this with a real estate salesman friend of mine in Encino, Calif., a native New Yorker who is also a veteran TV and movie actor. The secret language of brokers has been undercut by Internet listings of houses. You can Google for houses in, say, St. Louis, and get pictures, descriptions and prices in a few seconds – complete with the code words “charming,” “good neighborhood,” “well-maintained,” etc., etc.
Sumo wrestlers aren’t supposed to cheat – they are masters of the national sport of Japan which embodies much of the mythic spirit and religion of Japan. But cheat they do, as do some teachers who manipulate the results of the “No Child Left Behind” tests taken by their students to make their schools look better and, in some cases, win cash bonuses.
Drug dealers living with their moms? In their book, Levitt and Dubner detail an exploration of Chicago’s black drug dealer culture, which was infiltrated by Indian-born sociology graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh beginning in 1989. One particular gang he befriended was organized like a corporation, with a college-educated man named J.T. running the show and reaping the benefits of the big money selling crack cocaine. His underlings worked long and dangerous hours for what amounts to below minimum wage in the hope of making it big themselves. They live with their moms because they can’t afford their own apartments and often work at minimum-wage jobs to supplement their incomes.
Venkatesh, now teaching at Columbia University, and Levitt co-wrote four academic papers on the financial and structural aspects of this particular chapter of the Black Gangster Disciple Nation.
The recent comments on abortions among African-Americans by William Bennett are obviously derived from the “Freakonomics” chapter on the massive decline in the violent crime rate that began at the beginning of the 1990s and continues to this day. The authors trace most of this crime decline to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade abortion decision of 1973. By making abortions legal, the ruling resulted in fewer children who would have been at their prime criminal peak at the beginning of the 1990s. Levitt and Dubner don’t introduce the element of race, but the subtext is that legalized abortion reduced the number of young black criminals who are overrepresented in criminal statistics.
Drawing on research by a black economist, Roland G. Fryer Jr., who has collaborated with Levitt on economic papers, the authors have a wonderful chapter on names chosen by white parents of various education and economic levels, as well as names black parents give their children. In “A Roshanda by any other Name,” they speculate about the handicaps of names like DeShawn and Latisha, and describe the “acting white” experiences of young Lew Alcindor (later called Kareem Abdul Jabbar) when he went to an all-black school in New York after attending a predominantly white one.
“Conventional wisdom” – a phrase coined by John Kenneth Galbraith, the authors state – has it that guns are something very dangerous in a house with children. Actually, a swimming pool is far more likely to result in deaths of children than guns, Levitt and Dubner say. Galbraith didn’t mean his coinage to be a compliment.
“Freakonomics” stems from a 2003 New York Times Magazine profile of Levitt, written by Dubner. It’s a quick read that is worth re-reading: I read it in a couple of hours, and thoroughly enjoyed the lack of numbers. I’m not totally math illiterate, but I appreciate a book on economics that doesn’t toss a jumble of formulas at me – and expect me to understand them.
Freakonomics web site: www.freakonomics.com
Publisher web site: www.harpercollins.com