Yet another argument against Levitt and Dubner is the outcry surrounding the processes used to devise their controversial conclusions. While many opponents challenge the nature of the studies, people like Charles Jobs said their statistical methods were wrong. He illustrates how Freakonomics suggests “socioeconomic situations which violate a normative standard involving real life situations” (Jobs). He cites the naming study, which challenges the fabric of many people’s core beliefs and is viewed by many as unethical. Jobs attacked the virtue of the study by citing Levitt and Dubner’s conclusion of how “a person with a distinctively black name… does have a worse life outcome than a woman named Molly or a man named Jake” (119). He was just one of the many outspoken critics who claimed the study had no true bearing on possible events.
Others, like Michat Brezezski and Maria Halber, have examined the studies first hand and found “the coefficients’ estimates in abortion-crime regressions [were] not computationally stable and, therefore, are unreliable” (Brezezski and Halber). These critics affirmed Levitt and Dubner’s research was wrong in more than its moral character through their analysis. Unfortunately, these critics did not understand the purpose of the book. They drew conclusions undermining the purpose of Freakonomics and instead focus on the specifics of each study.
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...
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Works Cited
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Summary In chapter one of Freakonomics, the beginning portion of the chapter discusses information and the connection it shares with the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents. The Ku Klux Klan was founded right after the Civil War, in order to persecute and subdue the slaves that were newly freed. The popularity of the Klan increased in the early 20th century, around the time of World War I. In the late 19th century, the Klan had only discriminated, persecuted, and subdued Blacks, but in the 20th century they did these things to Blacks, Jews, and Gypsies.
Their main focus is to engage and teach the ordinary person versatile concepts of economics in an inoffensive way. In doing so, they account for all manner of people who might be reading it, including drug dealers. That way, a drug dealer could read facts about their line of work and digest data concerning it, without feeling offended or attacked by the words the authors chose. Levitt and Dubner make their book an all inclusive reading because anyone can read it from any walk of life and not be offended in doing so.
The book “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner is a dissection of anecdotes. The authors intensely dismantle ideas that are social norms, using economic and demographic data. The book has no central theme other than to “explore the hidden side of… everything.”pg.14 One chapter the subject will be on corruption in the sumo wrestling community, then another on how legalizing abortion lowers crime rates, then another on what effect parenting has on children. Chapter three explains why the popular idea that most drug dealers were rich is almost entirely false. The authors blame the media for this idea. When crack cocaine first started to appear en masse, the cops and the media put an emphasis on how unfair the fight was, because the
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This chapter's main idea is that the study of economics is the study of incentives. We find a differentiation between economic incentives, social incentives and moral incentives. Incentives are described in a funny way as "means of urging people to do more of a good thing or less of a bad thing", and in this chapter we find some examples public school teachers in Chicago, sumo wrestling in Japan, take care center in Israel and Paul Feldman's bagel business of how incentives drive people and most of the time the conventional wisdom turns to be "wrong" when incentives are in place.
...d G. Fryer Jr., himself an African-American, has studied the “Acting White/Black” phenomena and found it stems more from education, “White” referring towards higher level of education and “Black” referring to lower levels. When race is removed from the equation a prevalent pattern can be seen within races as socioeconomic status and naming trends (Levitt 190). The pattern is able to roughly measure the education of a child’s mother depending on the choice of name and the frequency of the name within social classes (Levitt 190-204). Over time Fryer could see the way names tended to move, down. As names become more used and common they will pass on lower to lower social classes (Levitt 201).
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At first thought, abortion may not appear to have any involvement in economics. But, economics and abortion are, in fact, deeply intertwined. Studies of abortion show that financial hardship is the reason most often cited by women seeking abortions. Lack of money is rarely the only reason a woman seeks an abortion. Most women do so for a complex set of reasons, but money is frequently the paramount factor, the one that tips the scales in favor of abortion. This is especially true for low-income families and single
In a 2006 study conducted by the CDC, it was reported that 53-56% of abortions were performed on white women between the ages of 20 and 29. Among the 46 states that provided data consistently during 1996--2006, a total of 835,134 abortions (98.7% of the total) were reported; the abortion rate was 16.1 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15--44 years, and the abortion ratio was 236 abortions per 1,000 live births. During the previous decade (1997--2006), reported abortion numbers, rates, and ratios decreased 5.7%, 8.8%, and 14.8%, respectively; most of these declines occurred before 2001. During the previous year (2005--2006), the total number of abortions increased 3.1%, and the abortion rate increased 3.2%; the abortion ratio was stable. (CDC, 2009)
... “Abortion in the United States: Statistics and Trends.” National Right to Life. N.p., 11 Jan. 2012. Web.
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