SuperFreakonomics
Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
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Freakonomics lived on the New York Times bestseller list for an astonishing two years. Now authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with more iconoclastic insights and observations in SuperFreakonomics—the long awaited follow-up to their New York Times Notable blockbuster. Based on revolutionary research and original studies, SuperFreakonomics promises to once again challenge our view of human behavior and the way the world really works.
Applying their signature economic approach, Levitt and Dubner tackle a new set of provocative questions:
Behavioral Economics: Why do street prostitutes have more in common with a department-store Santa than you’d think, and what can monkeys teach us about the stock market?Counterintuitive Thinking: Explore the real data behind life-and-death decisions, from whether it’s safer to walk drunk or drive drunk to why a suicide bomber might buy life insurance.Unintended Consequences: Discover how the arrival of cable TV empowered women in rural India and why the invention of the car seat may not be the simple lifesaver we assume it is.Cheap and Simple Fixes: From a simple hand-washing protocol that saved thousands of lives to a garden hose that could reverse global warming, learn why the best solutions are often the easiest.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Economist Levitt and journalist Dubner capitalize on their megaselling Freakonomics with another effort to make the dismal science go gonzo. Freaky topics include the oldest profession (hookers charge less nowadays because the sexual revolution has produced so much free competition), money-hungry monkeys (yep, that involves prostitution, too) and the dunderheadedness of Al Gore. There's not much substance to the authors' project of applying economics to all of life. Their method is to notice some contrarian statistic (adult seat belts are as effective as child-safety seats in preventing car-crash fatalities in children older than two), turn it into "economics" by tacking on a perfunctory cost-benefit analysis (seat belts are cheaper and more convenient) and append a libertarian sermonette (governments "tend to prefer the costly-and-cumbersome route"). The point of these lessons is to bolster the economist's view of people as rational actors, altruism as an illusion and government regulation as a folly of unintended consequences. The intellectual content is pretty thin, but it's spiked with the crowd-pleasing provocations "'A pimp's services are considerably more valuable than a realtor's'" that spell bestseller.
