Steven D. Levitt is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life-from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing-and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these question concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this audiobook: freakonomics. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co ...
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Steven D. Levitt is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life-from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing-and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these question concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this audiobook: freakonomics. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives-how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In FREAKONOMICS, they set out to explore the hidden side of...well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan. FREAKONOMICS establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But FREAKONOMICS can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world. "If Indiana Jones were an economist, he'd be Steven Levitt. . .Criticizing FREAKONOMICS would be like criticizing a hot fudge sundae." -"Wall Street Journal"
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