- Date: April 12, 2005
- Type: Book
This Book refers to Before His Time written by Ben Green
This book is mentioned in the Revised and Expanded Edition of the book which mentioned some problems with "The Klan Unmasked" which is discussed in great detail in Freakonomics.
The book is a collection of economic articles written by Levitt, an expert who has already gained a reputation for applying economic theory to diverse subjects not usually covered by "traditional" economists; he does, however, accept the standard neoclassical microeconomic model of rational utility-maximization. In Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner argue that economics is, at root, the study of incentives. The book's topics include: * Chapter 1: Discovering cheating as applied to teachers and sumo wrestlers (See below) * Chapter 2: Information control as applied to the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents * Chapter 3: The economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers * Chapter 4: The controversial role legalized abortion may have played in reducing crime. (Levitt explored this topic in an earlier paper entitled "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.") * Chapter 5: The negligible effects of good parenting on education * Chapter 6: The socioeconomic patterns of naming children