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SuperFreakonomics
Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
SuperFreakonomics (2009) explains why thinking like an economist can help us understand our modern world. These blinks illustrate key economic principles and the importance of collecting data with colorful stories from human history, and offers surprising solutions for the global problems that we face today.
- Anyone interested in entertaining, statistical facts about human behavior
- Math buffs who believe in the power of statistics
- Anyone curious about a very cheap way to stop global warming
Steven D. Levitt is an American economist with degrees from Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has specialized in researching crime and corruption. He currently teaches at the University of Chicago.
Stephen J. Dubner is an American writer and journalist who focuses on economic subjects. He is also the author of Choosing My Religion (previously known as Turbulent Souls) and Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper.
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SuperFreakonomics
Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
- Read in 15 minutes
- Audio & text available
- Contains 9 key ideas
Synopsis
SuperFreakonomics (2009) explains why thinking like an economist can help us understand our modern world. These blinks illustrate key economic principles and the importance of collecting data with colorful stories from human history, and offers surprising solutions for the global problems that we face today.
Key idea 1 of 9
Statistics can give us brilliant insights into our world.
Are you one of those people who gets irritated when someone around you leaves behind their rubbish? It might leave you wondering what it is that makes them behave so inconsiderately. You might even wish you could get into their heads and find out.
Of course, that’s a thought we often brush aside; we can’t get into other people’s heads. Even so, we can change their undesirable behaviors. After all, governments and public bodies do this all the time, by creating incentives that reward us for doing the right thing.
Unfortunately, incentive schemes rarely work out as planned. More often than not, they have rather damaging knock-on effects, putting the law of unintended consequences into action.
Take the introduction of volume-based trash pickup fees. This was supposed to be an incentive for people to produce less waste. Instead, people came up with creative ways to avoid the fee. In Germany, many people started flushing uneaten food down the toilet, increasing the rat population as a result.
But if we could predict people’s reactions to incentives before we put them in place, we’d save ourselves a lot of time and trouble. And how can we do this? By using statistics to get inside their heads.
By collecting and analyzing data and statistics, we can begin to understand why people behave the way they do. The following blinks reveal some fascinating and surprising stories gathered by the authors to highlight the importance of statistics in understanding human actions.
Key ideas in this title
- Statistics can give us brilliant insights into our world.
- Think like an economist and you’ll unlock the secrets to society.
- Statistics behind prostitution reveal several economic principles at work.
- Economic thinking can help us catch terrorists before they attack.
- In reality, people are neither truly altruistic nor totally apathetic.
- Some of the trickiest problems tend to have the simplest solutions.
- The confusion around global warming makes it hard to tackle.
- Statistics show that we can fight global warming with more pollution, not less.
- Final summary
