These pages are editable by the community, so please contribute! Click here to learn more about this feature. We’d love to hear your feedback.
Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They usually begin with a mountain of data and a simple question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus... read more
Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
“Anything worth having is a thing worth cheating for.”W. C. Fields
“For every clever person who goes to the trouble of creating an incentive scheme, there is an army of people, clever and otherwise, who will inevitably spend even more time trying to beat it. Cheating may or may not be human nature, but it is certainly a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor.”
“And an exclamation point in a real estate ad is bad news for sure, a bid to paper over real shortcomings with false enthusiasm.”
I.
Introduction: The Hidden Side of Everything
II.
1. What do School teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?
2. How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?
3. Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?
4. Where Have All the Criminals Gone?
5. What Makes a Perfect Parent?
6. Perfect Parenting, Part II; or: Would a Roshanda by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?
III.
Epilogue: Two Paths to Harvard
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
If you have any suggestions for how we can improve this page or if there are sections that you would like us to add, please let us know.