Book Review Freakonomics Essay - 1524 Words

Anybody living in the United States in the early 1990s and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper could be forgiven for having been scared out of his skin... The culprit was crime. It had been rising relentlessly - a graph plotting the crime rate in any American city over recent decades looked like a ski slope in profile... Death by gunfire, intentional and otherwise, had become commonplace, So too had carjacking and crack dealing, robbery, and rape. Violent crime was a gruesome and constant companion... The culprit was the so-called superpredator. For a time, he was everywhere. Glowering from the cover of newsweeklies. Swaggering his way through foot-thick government reports. He was a scrawny, big-city†¦show more content†¦It was the proliferation of gun control laws, they said. It was the sort of innovative policing strategies put into place in New York City, where the number of murders fell tremendously. These theories were not only logica l, they were also encouraging, for they attributed the crime drop to specific and recent human initiatives, showing us that we had the power to stop it the whole time. Author Steven D. Levitt defines Freakonomics as ?the science exploring the hidden side of everything.? In this example, Levitt does just that. Instead of just accepting the conventional wisdom of the time, that the drop in crime rate could be attributed to an innovative police force, a good economy, stricter gun control, etc, Levitt looks to the source of the crime, the criminals. Levitt first looked to many factors to identify the cause of the drop in crime, assuming all of these factors to be a cause. Then he examined the data and saw that none of the causes cited by the media at the time of the crime drop could have possibly had such an effect on crime, thus ruling them out. Levitt wanted an explanation for the specific circumstances of the drop in crime rate. The drop happened quickly and simultaneously all across the country. A roaring economy and innovative police strategies, the two main causes supported by the media, had never before influenced crime rate so significantly. He looked back to the identity of the criminal and noted the timeShow MoreRelatedFreakonomics Book Review Essay630 Words   |  3 Pagesis a book written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubuer. Steven d. Lennits is the living definition of the phrase â€Å" Think Outside the Box† He is not a typical economist, he even states it in the book’s introduction, â€Å"I’m not good at math, I don’t know a lot of econometrics, and I also don’t know how to do theory.† This marks right away Lennits to a different approach of ways to get his audience attention, he steps outside of the boundaries most people in society live by. Freakonomics, is a book thatRead MoreApplication of Freakonomics to Project Management1806 Words   |  8 PagesA Book Review of Freakonomics and Application to Project Management November 2010 Project Management Summary The idea to write Freakonomics began in 2003 when journalist and award winning author Stephen Dubner wrote a profile of economist Steven Levitt for the New York Times Magazine. 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Levitt and Stephen J. Dunbar. Levitt describes the book as a effort to â€Å"strip away a layer or two from the surface of modern life and see what is happening underneath.† He does this by taking two seemingly unrelated events and associates them. From comparing teac hers and sumo wrestlers, to inquiring why crack dealers still live with their mothers Levitt and Dunbar manage to successfully putRead MoreAbortion Did NOT Reduce the Crime Rate Essay1945 Words   |  8 Pagescrime and the economy because of the economic indicators typically used to measure economic conditions (Rosenfeld Fornado, 2007). Levitt and Dubner summarized academic work done by Levitt and co-author Donohue, and assert in their book, Freakonomics, in the chapter titled â€Å"Where Have All the Criminals Gone?†, that because of Roe v. Wade, legalized abortion had an impact on crime (Levitt Dubner, 2009). The authors point to the early 1990’s, that just as the first cohort of children bornRead MoreInternet Piracy : Friend Or Foe?1327 Words   |  6 Pagesor Foe? Internet piracy has been debated about for almost two decades, and still its effects are not clear to the public. Piracy is the act of illegally copying files that have been copyrighted, usually things like music, movies, games, and even books. The music and film industry usually report about a sharp decline in sales because of piracy, but other experts disagree and some even claim that piracy is helping those industries. There are obviously many sides to this argument. Is piracy the problemRead MoreEssay on Review of Freakonomics1663 Words   |  7 PagesReview of Freakonomics This chapters 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 Ââ€"publicRead MoreBroken Window Theory1773 Words   |  8 Pagesprison. Also, many large drug gangs were arrested at that time in New York leading to the end of high-fatality â€Å"turf wars† between crack dealers, (Kahan, 1997). The sum of all these factors may have led to the observed decrease in crime. In the book â€Å"Freakonomics†, economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner, propose that the legalisation of abortion during the ‘70s contributed heavily to the decrease in crime during the ‘90s. By reducing the birth of unwanted and possibly fatherlessRead MoreWhy Do Companies Advertise During The Nfl Super Bowl?2202 Words   |  9 Pagestitle? Are your Super Bowl commercials effective? A study into consumer brand recall against the creative treatment of Super Bowl commercials) – 06_11_14 Literature Review WIP#1 â€Å"People not only watch the Super Bowl for the game, they watch it for the commercials. If that not an advertisers dream I don’t know what is† (NFL Freakonomics episode 14, 2012). The NFL Super Bowl, the biggest television event of the year, every year. In 2014 the XLVIII Super Bowl called an unprecedented 111.5 million viewersRead MoreTourism Planning and Project Management1979 Words   |  8 Pagesbut that is not enough time for most to travel to a destination (Dubner, 2008). Hotel availability Hotels do not book based on the weather, they book based on the season. There may be times in which the surf reports are excellent and there is a windfall of bookings, but no place to stay; conversely, hotels do not charge based on the weather. Airlines Like hotels, airlines do not book or charge by the weather, but by the day of the week, month, season, etc. Their bookings may be full when surf conditions