Freakonomics is book written to explain common man about hidden truth behind certain activities. Authors has tried to relate economics with day to day activity. It also guides individual about how to understand and interpret things correctly and behave accordingly. There are six chapters in book first is about how school teachers & sumo wrestlers cheat? Second chapter is about how real estate agents behave and manipulate their customers for their own benefits. Third chapter is about why crack dealers still live with their moms? This part explains entire working system of crack dealing gangs , working of criminal organization, etc. Fourth chapter deals with why crime rate in US has decreased and what are the exact factors of it. …show more content…
Suppose I want to sell home for $300, I get offer today of $290 US dollar. So dilemma infront of me is wheather I should take offer or I wait for some period and sellit for $300 US dollar. I go to real estate agent and take his opinion he says take the offer because market is going down, in future you may not get worth customer , etc. I might think that why he would lie to me, both of us having intrest aligned real estate agent will get more money if I sell it for more money. But actually it is not. Your agent don’t have same interest as you think. Agent keep their house on an average 10 days longer that itself proves there is something fishy, isn’t it?? If total commission in deal is 1000 US Dollar then half goes to buyers dealer , half goes to sellers dealer. Each agent have to give half of remaing to their agency so ultimately each agent gets 250US Dollar, to wait for next deal of 300 US dollar agent have to work for a 10 days again bring new customer , so agent try to grab each customer and seal the deal and moe on. It is not these real estate agents are bad they are just human beings, and human beings behave according to there incentives so one should know about the incentives system to get work done perfectly. One should know what & how to measure it solves many of your problems, if you know how to look at information correctly you can solve situation which seems to be
The next portion of the chapter talks about how real-estate agents use information to gain power and wealth. Most real-estate agents have a better sense of knowing the condition that a home or apartment is in, and this gives them an upper-hand against the buyer or seller. Like the Ku Klux Klan, real-estate agents use secret words and information to
In this chapter of Naked Economics, by Charles Wheelan, he describes many aspects of trade. It begins by showing the capabilities of trade and how it affects everyone as a whole. It makes it so that everyone is better off than normal. To put it into perspective, he put the image in your head of how hard your life would be without trade, you would have to make your own clothes, find a way to get/make your own food, make your own car, etc... After showing some of the advantages to trade, he applies it to a global persona and begins to introduce his opinion on how global trade (globalization) makes us richer. One of the key explanations of this point is that trade frees up time in our busy schedule, therefore allowing us to use that freed up
Written by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics is built upon three major philosophies: incentives are the fundamentals of life, experts on a subject use their knowledge as an advantage to serve their own wellbeing, and orthodox wisdom is wrong most of the time. This book goes into detail to explain the mindsets of humans, from school teachers to sumo wrestlers, through statistics. Levitt and Dubner claim that when the data is closely examined it can relate to more concepts than originally hypothesized. The style of this informative piece is very precise yet, at the same time, very concise and to the point. The tone carried throughout the book is informative and knowledgeable. The authors use distinct tactics to get points across
In “The Devil and Tom Walker”, Irving reveals many aspects of the humanity especially how economic depression plays in the society. Some may disregard what really happens throughout the world because they ponder that the situation is “inapplicable” to their lives. Others are able to determine the problems of it but the Media/News Organizations seem to be more anxious about the people’s entertainments rather than talk about the economy. As declared by John Bellamy Foster, a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and also editor of Monthly Review, the world economy is “experiencing by far its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” In some instances, research illustrates that money is not the problem in the economy instead the problem is the people that are corrupt, “never was sinner taken more unawares” (Irving 16). The economic problems that have been gradually increasing over the past few years in established economies throughout world just continue to intensify.
Some of the realtors are pushing the home owners to sell the house; therefore,
Reiman, Jeffrey. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, Sixth Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001.
This paper aims to present the book review of ‘Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything’ along with the main arguments, course applications and personal opinions.
Freakonomics should be viewed as a form of questioning the world. Not as “an excellent subject for more rigorous analysis” but rather as an example of literature used to present information to the general public (Jobs). For example, although Charles Jobs critiques many Freakonomic studies, he discovered the importance a certain mindset can have in a c...
In the movie Freakanomics there are about five to eight examples given that could possible explain the darastic drop in crime since the crime waves of the ‘80s and earlyer decades. The person that most people acredit the cleaning of New York Citys streets to, is formar Mayor Giuliani. Giulian is often thought of the man who cleaned up New York, however, acording to Freakanomics crime was on a nation wide decline, and the city would have been cleaned up no mater who took office. Therfor the movie completly discredits this therory. A therory that was said to have actually worked lowering nation wide crime rates was the crack down on criminals. People who broke the law were given harsher punishments, and the number of prison sentences increased. Prior to the crack
Economics in reverse is the best way of describing the unconventional method preferred by economist, Steven D. Levitt. While most economists measure social situations and present the data as numbers and graphs Levitt takes anomalies within the data to reveal truths obscured. It’s Levitt’s sociological take on economics that has set him apart from his peers with his heavy focus on incentives, choices, and the consequences they have. Freakonomics mirrors Levitt’s method since it’s a collection of stories he has uncovered or read, and the core economic principles are hidden within each story throughout the book, sometimes even in plain sight like how there are exactly as many chapters as there are core economic principles.
For example, a realtor signed a contract with a couple to sell the couple apartment in two months. The realtor was able to sell the couple house in two months.
Everyone will experience buying a house at one point or another. Why not have a real estate agent help you and guide you through the process? I chose this occupation because it interests me for many different reasons. Wouldn’t you like a job where your schedule revolved around your life? Or you could control the growth of your business? Or basically over time, be your own boss? These are a few of the many reasons the real estate industry has caught my eye.
...ialization, restricted membership, and corruption for example. Mainly, one of the parallel themes between the book and the things that I have learned in class are the six categories of crime, easily applied to the Gravano crimes - illicit services, illicit goods, conspiracy, the penetration of legitimate business, extortion, and corruption.
The first step to buying your home is assessing your financial situation. A person must evaluate how much exactly they can afford and borrow. Most people hire a real estate agent to find a home. A real estate agent can help in finding different homes that suit the person’s needs. At the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s website, “You'll want to start searching for a broker as soon as you decide to buy a home. Talk to several and find someone you think you'll be comfortable working closely with”(1) Having a wide range of options is always helpful. An agent can also help in negotiating the price, and showing what the potential buyer needs after finding a home. A buyer might also need the services of a lawyer, a loan officer, insurance agents, and an accountant. In all purchasing your own home is a daunting task if you plan on doing it alone.
When prices increase, the quantity decrease (Graph 1) and new firms enter the market in order to make economic profits. However this does not mean the real estate agents or brokers earn more money. On the contrary, the prices they charge may increase, but the number of houses each sell do not change (Goolsbee, 2005, Online). From this it is evident that the price of products in the real estate market is not affected by the entry of new firms.