New Releases by Steven D. Levitt

Here’s a first-year book that encourages critical thinking and sparks discussion. Freakonomics addresses current social questions that students will enjoy arguing about both in the classroom and over coffee in the student union: • Which is more dangerous—a gun or a swimming? • Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers? • What makes a perfect parent? These may not sound like typical questions an economist asks, but Levitt is not your typical economist. He studies the mysteries of everyday life—from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing—and his conclusions regularly turn conventional wisdom on its head, helping students develop a critical eye to many things that are presented as fact. Freshman Common Read: Appalachian State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Louisville

Miért húzta le az ausztrál orvos a veszélyes baktériumokkal teli lombikot? Hány életet mentene meg egy vezető nélküli autó? Miért olyan nehéz kimondani, hogy „nem tudom”? Miért hívják fel a figyelmet a nigériai emailes csalók, hogy Nigériából írnak? Steven D. Levitt és Stephen J. Dubner a Lökonómia (Freakonomics) című könyvük után ismét a dolgok mélyére néznek. Azokba a gondolkodási mechanizmusokba vezetnek be, amelyek révén egy kissé termékenyebben, kreatívabban és racionálisabban gondolkodhatunk – vagyis elsajátíthatjuk az agyament gondolkodást. A közgazdász-újságíró páros egy merőben új probléma-megoldási módszert körvonalaz, legyen szó üzletről, jótékonykodásról, sportról, politikáról vagy átfogó, globális reformokról. A lebilincselő történetmesélés és a rendhagyó elemzés rájuk jellemző egyvelegével mindent megvizsgálnak, mindezt annak érdekében, hogy a világ és saját magunk problémáira jobb kérdésekkel és még jobb ötletekkel rukkolhassunk elő.

"Con su mezcla de narracion cautivante y analisis no convencional, Steven D. Levitt y Stephen J. Dubner nos llevan dentro de su proceso de pensamiento y nos ensenan como pensar de una forma un poco mas productiva, mas creativa, mas racional. Los temas van desde los negocios a la filantropia a los deportes a la politica, todo ello con el objetivo de re-entrenar su cerebro, "--Amazon.com.

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the landmark book Freakonomics comes this curated collection from the most readable economics blog in the universe. It’s the perfect solution for the millions of readers who love all things Freakonomics. Surprising and erudite, eloquent and witty, When to Rob a Bank demonstrates the brilliance that has made the Freakonomics guys an international sensation, with more than 7 million books sold in 40 languages, and 150 million downloads of their Freakonomics Radio podcast. When Freakonomics was first published, the authors started a blog—and they’ve kept it up. The writing is more casual, more personal, even more outlandish than in their books. In When to Rob a Bank, they ask a host of typically off-center questions: Why don’t flight attendants get tipped? If you were a terrorist, how would you attack? And why does KFC always run out of fried chicken? Over the past decade, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have published more than 8,000 blog posts on the Freakonomics website. Many of them, they freely admit, were rubbish. But now they’ve gone through and picked the best of the best. You’ll discover what people lie about, and why; the best way to cut gun deaths; why it might be time for a sex tax; and, yes, when to rob a bank. (Short answer: never; the ROI is terrible.) You’ll also learn a great deal about Levitt and Dubner’s own quirks and passions, from gambling and golf to backgammon and the abolition of the penny.

Why do educated women get fewer responses on online dating websites? Is buying local food economically efficient? Does bribing kids improve their performance on school tests? Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the quirky geniuses behind Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics and Think Like a Freak, are back at it. For the last ten years, they’ve used the tools of economics to answer some of our most unanswerable questions on the Freakonomics.com blog. Here, for the first time, the very best of their more than 8,000 posts are together in a single place. We learn why it’s so hard to predict the Kentucky Derby, why babies born in summer tend to score lower on standardized tests, and why rich people tend to be happier than poor people, but rich countries no happier than poor ones. When to Rob a Bank showcases the brilliance that has made Levitt and Dubner an international sensation, and the eloquence and wit that has always made them such a joy to read.

Missa inte nya boken från Levitt och Dubner – Tänk som ett freak. I butik september 2014. Vad är farligast, en revolver eller en swimmingpool? Vad har skollärare och sumobrottare gemensamt? Varför bor knarklangare fortfarande hemma hos sina mammor? Det här kanske inte låter som typiska frågor som en ekonom eller journalist ställer sig. Men Steven D. Levitt är ingen typisk ekonom. Och Stephen J. Dubner är ingen vanlig journalist. Tillsammans är de hjärnorna bakom Freakonomics – och allt började med den här boken. Freakonomics har sålt i sex miljoner exemplar världen över, blivit en prisbelönt dokumentärfilm och en podcast med fem miljoner lyssnare varje månad. Levitt och Dubner har visat att världen alltid är intressantare än vi tror; allt som krävs är att vi ställer de rätta frågorna. »Chicagoekonomen Steven D. Levitt använder siffror och tabeller ungefär som Janne Josefsson använder mikrofon och kamera.« —Jan Gradvall »Om Indiana Jones var en ekonom skulle han vara Steven Levitt ... Att kritisera Freakonomics skulle vara som att kritisera glass med varm kolasås.« —Wall Steet Journal »En bok som faktiskt får en att se på omvärlden på ett nytt sätt.« —Sydsvenskan »Steven Levitt är den mest intressanta tänkaren i USA ... Förbered dig på att bli bländad.« —Malcolm Gladwell

Superfreakonomics—the smash hit follow-up to the remarkable New York Times bestselling phenomenon Freakonomics—is back in a new full-color, fully illustrated and expanded edition. The brainchild of rogue economist Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner that once again brilliantly challenges our view of the way the world really works is presented with a new, visual, superfreaky dimension added, enhancing the already provocative thinking about street prostitutes, hurricanes, heart attacks, and other seemingly mundane matters that made Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics part of the national zeitgeist.

CHI edition of SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner challenges with its extraordinary Vietnamesews and unique perspectives on the hidden side of everything again. In CHI. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

Whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically, Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling to show how people respond to incentives.

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 the way the world really works.

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What''s more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it''s so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary? SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa? Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands? How much good do car seats do? What''s the best way to catch a terrorist? Did TV cause a rise in crime? What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness? Can eating kangaroo save the planet? Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor? Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is – good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times over – but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.

We document and analyze the emergence of a substantial gender gap in mathematics in the early years of schooling using a large, recent, and nationally representative panel of children in the United States. There are no mean differences between boys and girls upon entry to school, but girls lose more than two-tenths of a standard deviation relative to boys over the first six years of school. The ground lost by girls relative to boys is roughly half as large as the black-white test score gap that appears over these same ages. We document the presence of this gender math gap across every strata of society. We explore a wide range of possible explanations in the U.S. data, including less investment by girls in math, low parental expectations, and biased tests, but find little support for any of these theories. Moving to cross-country comparisons, we find that earlier results linking the gender gap in math to measures of gender equality are sensitive to the inclusion of Muslim countries, where in spite of women''s low status, there is little or no gender gap in math.

The minimax argument represents game theory in its most elegant form: simple but with stark predictions. Although some of these predictions have been met with reasonable success in the field, experimental data have generally not provided results close to the theoretical predictions. In a striking study, Palacios-Huerta and Volij (2007) present evidence that potentially resolves this puzzle: both amateur and professional soccer players play nearly exact minimax strategies in laboratory experiments. In this paper, we establish important bounds on these results by examining the behavior of four distinct subject pools: college students, bridge professionals, world-class poker players, who have vast experience with high-stakes randomization in card games, and American professional soccer players. In contrast to Palacios-Huerta and Volij''s results, we find little evidence that real-world experience transfers to the lab in these games--indeed, similar to previous experimental results, all four subject pools provide choices that are generally not close to minimax predictions. We use two additional pieces of evidence to explore why professionals do not perform well in the lab: (1) complementary experimental treatments that pit professionals against preprogrammed computers, and (2) post-experiment questionnaires. The most likely explanation is that these professionals are unable to transfer their skills at randomization from the familiar context of the field to the unfamiliar context of the lab.

أيهما أشد خطراً، المسدس أم حوض السباحة؟ ما هي الأشياء المشتركة بين معلمي المدارس ومصارعي السومو؟ لماذا ما يزال تجار المخدرات يعيشون مع أمهاتهم؟ ما هو مقدار اهتمام الوالدين حقاً؟ ما هو تأثير قضية «رو» و«ويد» في جرائم العنف؟ قد لا تبدو هذه الأسئلة مثل الأسئلة النمطية التي يسألها الاقتصادي، لكن ستيفن د. ليفيت ليس اقتصادياً نمطياً؛ إنه عالم شجاع أكثر من أي شيء آخر، يدرس المادة والأحاجي في الحياة اليومية ــ من الغش والجريمة إلى الرياضة وتربية الأطفال ــ وتقوم استنتاجاته عادة على قلب الحكمة التقليدية رأساً على عقب. وغالباً ما يبدأ بتل كبير من المعطيات وبسؤال بسيط لم يطرح من قبل. إنه يهتم ببعض هذه الأسئلة مثل قضايا الحياة والموت، وبعضها الآخر ذو ميزات استثنائية دون شك. وهكذا يحتوي هذا الكتاب على حقل جديد من الدراسة، وهو (الاقتصاد العجيب). ومن خلال سرده للقصص الآسرة ومن النظرة العميقة غير المباشرة، يبين ليفيت وزميله ستيفن ج. دوبنر أن الاقتصاد -في جذوره- دراسة للحوافز ـــ كيف يحصل الناس على ما يريدون أو يحتاجون، لاسيما عندما يريد الناس الآخرون الشيء ذاته أو يحتاجونه. في كتابهما (الاقتصاد العجيب)، يشرع المؤلفان في استكشاف الجانب الخفي ـــ من كل شيء؛ الأعمال الداخلية لعصابة مخدرات، وحقيقة الوسطاء العقاريين، وأساطير تمويل الحملات. وقصص الغش لدى معلمي المدارس. وأسرار جمعية كوكلوكس كلان (العرقية). ومن هنا فإذا كانت الأخلاق تمثل كيف نريد للعالم أن يسير، فإن الاقتصاد يمثل كيف يعمل العالم فعلاً. صحيح إن قراء هذا الكتاب سيتسلحون بقصص وأحاجٍ تكفي لتروى في آلاف الحفلات، لكن كتاب (الاقتصاد العجيب) يستطيع أن يقدم أكثر من ذلك، إنه يعيد تعريف الطريقة التي ننظر بها إلى العالم الحديث تعريفاً حرفياً. العبيكان للنشر

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday life-from cheating and crime to parenting and sports-and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they 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. Book jacket.

In most settings, it is difficult to measure discrimination, and even more challenging to distinguish between competing theories of discrimination (taste-based versus information-based). Using contestant voting behavior on the television game show Weakest Link, one can in principle empirically address both of these questions. On the show, contestants answer questions and vote off other players, competing for a winner-take-all prize. In early rounds, strategic incentives encourage voting for the weakest competitors. In later rounds, the incentives reverse, and the strongest competitors become the logical target. Controlling for other observable characteristics including the number of correct answers thus far, both theories of discrimination predict that in early rounds, excess votes will be made against groups targeted for discrimination. In later rounds, however, taste-based models predict continued excess votes, whereas statistical discrimination predicts fewer votes against the target group. Empirically, I find some evidence of information-based discrimination towards Hispanics (i.e., other players perceive them as having low ability) and taste-based discrimination against older players (i.e., other players treat them with animus). There is little in the data to suggest discrimination against women and Blacks

The number of prisoners incarcerated on drug-related offenses rose fifteen-fold between 1980 and 2000. This paper provides the first systematic empirical analysis of the implications of that dramatic shift in public policy. We show that the increase in drug prisoners led to reductions in expected time served for other crimes, especially for less serious offenses. Reductions in time served, however, increased other crimes by no more than a few percent. Moreover, incarcerating drug offenders is found to be almost as effective in reducing violent and property crime as locking up other types of offenders. We estimate that cocaine prices are 10-15 percent higher today as a consequence of increases in drug punishment since 1985. Based on previous estimates of the price elasticity of demand for cocaine, this implies a reduction in cocaine consumed of as much as 20 percent

This paper demonstrates that rising crime rates in cities are correlated with city depopulation. Instrumental variables estimates, using measures of the certainty and severity of a state?s criminal justice system as instruments for city crime rates, imply that the direction of causality runs from crime to urban flight. Using annual city-level panel data, our estimates suggest that each additional reported crime is associated with a one person decline in city residents. There is some evidence that increases in suburban crime tend to keep people in cities, although the magnitude of this effect is small. Analysis of individual-level data from the 1980 census confirms the city-level results and demonstrates that almost all of the crime-related population decline is attributable to increased outmigration rather than a decrease in new arrivals to a city. Those households that leave the city because of crime are much more likely to remain within the SMSA than those leaving the city for other reasons. The migration decisions of high-income households and those with children are much more responsive to changes in crime than other households. Crime-related mobility imposes costs on those who choose to remain in the city through declining property values and a shrinking tax base.

Mọi người thường có xu hướng suy nghĩ và hành động theo đám đông, do vậy với những vấn đề quan trọng, chúng ta thường phải hỏi xin lời khuyên từ bạn bè, đồng nghiệp và người thân. Điều này đương nhiên không có hại trong ngắn hạn. Thế nhưng về lâu về dài việc hỏi ý kiến những người xung quanh sẽ dẫn bạn đi theo lối mòn đã mở sẵn, một tư duy kém đổi mới mà nếu tự suy ngẫm, theo một hướng khác hơn, đột phá hơn, lập dị hơn, bạn sẽ mở ra một hướng giải quyết thông minh hơn và khôn ngoan hơn. Trong cuốn sách Tư duy như một kẻ lập dị, Steve D.Levitt & Steph J.Dubner, đồng tác giả của hai cuốn sách Tư duy vô cùng lý thú pha chút hóm hỉnh Kinh Tế Học Hài Hước và Siêu Kinh Tế Học Hài Hước, sẽ một lần nữa dùng lối văn phong phá cách của mình để “mở khóa tư duy” của độc giả. Xin nhắc lại đây không phải là một cuốn sách Kỹ năng có tính hài hước, đơn giản chỉ là để giải trí, mà ngoài những yếu tố, những ví dụ vui nhộn, hai tác giả này còn muốn người đọc có được một thái độ tích cực hơn với những gì bất ngờ xảy đến, hãy luôn thoát khỏi lối mòn và trang bị cho mình những cách giải thích đơn giản nhất có thể. Tư Duy Như Một Kẻ Lập Dị xứng đáng là cuốn sách bán chạy viết về Tư duy cho tất cả những độc giả đam mê phát triển lối tư duy của mình.