Freakonomics (1 Viewer)

[veloc1ty]

So how many of you economics students have read this?

I know it's not related to the economics syllabus itself, but my teacher recommended it for a more interesting take of economics, and it was pretty fascinating.

I heard there's a second one coming out some time, until then I just check their blog every now and then for other interesting tidbits...

 

[williamc]

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/the-economics-of-gold-digging/

fucken lol.

 

[taylor427]

yeah i read it,
they go on about names and drag on about things until the topic is near dead, but it is a good take on the feild of economics.
i especially like the abortion/crime rate theory

 

[5q7]

I read it, I thought it was shit boring.

 

[inasero]

yeah pretty interesting- though i should probably add that the basic tools levitt applies is more along the lines of basic stats and epidemiology rather than any exclusive economic principle as they seem to suggest, which make the matter even more accessible to the general reader.

would be good to see the second edition come out, i'd definitely read it! lol who would give their daughter the name "shithead"- "it's pronouced shuh-teed!"

 

[Conspirocy]

I'm reading it now. I thought it would have been better. It is basically just as you said about underlying stats.

The only thing you can take from it is the type of data sources people went to find to check certain relationships, which in a lot of the cases are pretty clever.

Still I guess this book was aimed at someone who hasn't already done undergraduate econ101 because all he really talks about is incentives. He goes the book has no theme but if I were to give it one I would say he is looking at the principal agent problem just applied to different scenarios other than business.

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

I read it, fairly interesting but I noted quite a few problems.