Freakonomics Revised and Expanded Edition

The legendary bestseller that encouraged millions of readers to look at the hidden side of everything

Which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? What do real estate agents and the KKK have in common?

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much-heralded scholar who studies the riddles of everyday lifefrom cheating and crime to sports and child-rearingand whose conclusions turn conventional wisdom on its head.Freakonomicsis a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentiveshow people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. InFreakonomics, they explore the hidden side of everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, andif the right questions are askedis even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking.Freakonomicsestablishes 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.

This revised and expanded edition of the book contains a smattering of bonus material, including selected Freakonomics columns from The New York Times Magazine; a QA with Steven Levitt, Stephen Dubner, and Angela Duckworth; and theNew York Times Magazineprofile Dubner wrote about Levitt that started it all.