Tài liệu FREAKONOMICS A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Revised and Expanded Edition
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner


CONTENTS
AN EXPLANATORY NOTE vii
In which the origins of this book are clarified.
PREFACE TO THE REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION xi
INTRODUCTION: The Hidden Side of Everything 1
In which the book’s central idea is set forth: namely, if morality represents
how people would like the world to work, then economics shows
how it actually does work.
Why the conventional wisdom is so often wrong . How “experts”—
from criminologists to real-estate agents to political scientists—bend the
facts . Why knowing what to measure, and how to measure it, is the key
to understanding modern life . What is “freakonomics,” anyway?
1. What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have
in Common? 15
In which we explore the beauty of incentives, as well as their dark
side—cheating.
Who cheats? Just about everyone . How cheaters cheat, and how to
catch them . Stories from an Israeli day-care center . The sudden disappearance
of seven million American children . Cheating schoolteachers
in Chicago . Why cheating to lose is worse than cheating to win .
Could sumo wrestling, the national sport of Japan, be corrupt? . What
the Bagel Man saw: mankind may be more honest than we think.
2. How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group
of Real-Estate Agents? 49
In which it is argued that nothing is more powerful than information,
especially when its power is abused.
Spilling the Ku Klux Klan’s secrets . Why experts of every kind are in
the perfect position to exploit you . The antidote to information abuse:
the Internet . Why a new car is suddenly worth so much less the moment
it leaves the lot . Breaking the real-estate agent code: what “well maintained”
really means . Is Trent Lott more racist than the average Weakest
Link contestant? . What do online daters lie about?
3. Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms? 79
In which the conventional wisdom is often found to be a web of fabrication,
self-interest, and convenience.
Why experts routinely make up statistics; the invention of chronic halitosis
. How to ask a good question . Sudhir Venkatesh’s long, strange
trip into the crack den . Life is a tournament . Why prostitutes earn
more than architects . What a drug dealer, a high-school quarterback,
and an editorial assistant have in common . How the invention of crack
cocaine mirrored the invention of nylon stockings . Was crack the worst
thing to hit black Americans since Jim Crow?
4. Where Have All the Criminals Gone? 105
In which the facts of crime are sorted out from the fictions.
What Nicolae Ceaus¸escu learned—the hard way—about abortion .
Why the 1960s was a great time to be a criminal . Think the roaring
1990s economy put a crimp on crime? Think again . Why capital punishment
doesn’t deter criminals . Do police actually lower crime rates?
. Prisons, prisons everywhere . Seeing through the New York City police
“miracle” . What is a gun, really? . Why early crack dealers were
like Microsoft millionaires and later crack dealers were like Pets.com .
The superpredator versus the senior citizen . Jane Roe, crime stopper:
how the legalization of abortion changed everything.
5. What Makes a Perfect Parent? 133
In which we ask, from a variety of angles, a pressing question: do parents
really matter?
The conversion of parenting from an art to a science . Why parenting
experts like to scare parents to death . Which is more dangerous: a gun or
a swimming pool? . The economics of fear . Obsessive parents and the
nature-nurture quagmire . Why a good school isn’t as good as you might
think . The black-white test gap and “acting white” . Eight things
that make a child do better in school and eight that don’t.
6. Perfect Parenting, Part II; or: Would a
Roshanda by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet? 163
In which we weigh the importance of a parent’s first official act—naming
the baby.
A boy named Winner and his brother, Loser . The blackest names
and the whitest names . The segregation of culture: why Seinfeld never
made the top fifty among black viewers . If you have a really bad name,
should you just change it? . High-end names and low-end names (and
how one becomes the other) . Britney Spears: a symptom, not a cause .
Is Aviva the next Madison? . What your parents were telling the world
when they gave you your name.
EPILOGUE: Two Paths to Harvard 189
In which the dependability of data meets the randomness of life.
Bonus Material Added to the Revised and Expanded
2006 Edition 193
Notes 285
Acknowledgments 309
Index 311
About the Authors

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