Economics can be fun, rewarding, and surprising. Steven Levitt has strived to tell us this in the book “Freakonomics,†coauthored with Stephen J. Dubner from New York Time. The book is indeed fascinating, full of interesting anecdotes and detective stories. How can you catch cheating among teachers? Where have all the criminals gone? What makes a perfect parent? Steven has answered all these questions in a vivid, scientific, and empirical way.
The structure of the book is unconventional. Topics and ideas are jumping all around. Stories are not internally correlated. Furthermore, some chapters (e.g., the last chapter on naming kids) are too loose and some tables are redundant. Consequently, the authors claimed that the book had no theme. Actually, it does promote one central dogma throughout the text. That is, theories and conventional wisdom should be subjected to empirical test. Let data speak themselves. We social scientists all know it. Now you morons should know it too.