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Draw Your Own Conclusions
From the list of overrated books that Tyler links to we have this nomination from economist Diane Coyle:
Freakonomics, Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner (Penguin). Economics as freak show. Depressingly, this seems to be the only way to gain a wider audience for the empress of the social sciences, other than multinational bashing.
The only way to get attention? Not at all. You could always title your book, Sex, Drugs and Economics: An Unconventional Intro to Economics.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on December 14, 2006 at 07:36 PM in Books, Economics | Permalink
Comments
Things could be worse. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single analytic philosophy book as popular as Levitt's and Dubner's, freak show or otherwise.
Posted by: EC at Dec 14, 2006 8:13:18 PM
Freakonomics was a good thing overall.
Most overrated book I've read lately: The Kite Runner.
Most underrated book I've read: The Man Without Qualities.
Posted by: bhauth at Dec 14, 2006 8:30:16 PM
"a single analytic philosophy book as popular as Levitt's and Dubner's"
analytic philosophy. oh really?
Posted by: The Tsunami at Dec 14, 2006 9:25:06 PM
I think you are wrong about Freakonomics - there are some crazy comparisons and some of the data is a bit flaky. But it got a lot of people to use economic logic on things they could relate to. I would add almost anything by John Kenneth Galbraith or Paul Krugman. Both are popularizers who spount untruths almost consistently.
Posted by: drtaxsacto at Dec 14, 2006 9:34:14 PM
At least one can say that Ms Coyle knows of what she speaks.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Dec 14, 2006 9:50:25 PM
"Depressingly, this seems to be the only way to gain a wider audience for the empress of the social sciences, other than multinational bashing."
Tried it. didn't work.
Posted by: tom s. at Dec 14, 2006 10:21:27 PM
Thought about reading the Freak thing, but I'd read enough bad press from economists that I respect that I chose other things. I still might pick it up if given the time, but it's not on the short list.
I was almost surprised to see Bjorn Lomborg's book on that list, but then, the list of reviewers have their own personal views on things too don't they. . .
Posted by: Ray G at Dec 14, 2006 11:31:30 PM
Hey, multinational bashing worked for me.
Posted by: Lou Dobbs at Dec 15, 2006 12:16:09 AM
She has got new book coming out; The Soulful Science:
What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters.
http://bayesianheresy.blogspot.com/2006/12/freakonomics-overrated.html
Posted by: Marshall Jevons at Dec 15, 2006 2:24:31 AM
Ha HA HA... Oh... the poor, miserable masses...
Posted by: Kevin Baca at Dec 15, 2006 2:26:49 AM
I think the main problem people have with Freakonomics s not that it is bad economics but that it is not economics at all.
Posted by: Michael Greinecker at Dec 15, 2006 5:41:23 AM
Has Levitt apologized yet for implying that he controlled for state-by-year levels in that abortion chapter, even though he... uh... didn't.
And that when you do, the effect goes away?
Because that would seem to be a relevant question for economists before they choose to defend Freakonomics, either as good scholarship or for encouraging people to think rigorously...
Posted by: Omri Ceren at Dec 15, 2006 5:47:51 AM
The first, oh, about half, of Freakonomic was a GREAT read. After that it wsan't great for me as it started to exude a leftward spin, something like a NY Times writer might possess.
Posted by: indiana jim at Dec 15, 2006 6:18:55 AM
Or "Jesus loves Economists too".
Posted by: Weldon at Dec 15, 2006 8:20:36 AM
The Tsunami:
Obviously, I meant "Levitt's & Dubner's *BOOK*".
Yeesh...
Posted by: EC at Dec 15, 2006 1:22:57 PM
"I think the main problem people have with Freakonomics s not that it is bad economics but that it is not economics at all."
There's the rub. I honestly cannot think of how the statistical study of names remotely relates to the field of economics. Just because you use a lot of the same techniques that one would use in econometrics doesn't mean that you're talking about economics. Sociology, perhaps. The only chapter that remotely related was the one on systematic cheating.
Posted by: Chris at Dec 15, 2006 3:10:16 PM
Chris and others: Believe it or not, that's the point of Freakonomics--take economic and econometric methods and apply them to other things to see what's there.
Posted by: billb at Dec 15, 2006 7:37:40 PM
bilb,
You mean take data on a bunch of unrelated things, run some statistical correlations and regressions on the data, and come up with fallacious conclusions? I guess this is "thinking with economic logic" ?
Posted by: kvrm at Dec 15, 2006 9:15:25 PM
kvrm: I don't really care if there's any there there in Freakonomics. I was just correcting the characterization errors I found above. You'll notice that I didn't make any normative statements about the conclusions drawn in the book. Since you have, perhaps you can cite some references that support your assertion of fallacy in the book?
Posted by: billb at Dec 16, 2006 10:01:18 AM
Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan was excellent--very readable. I found it by chance at the library and it influenced me (a non-math person) to develop my interest by reading econ blogs and other books. The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto influenced my view of the world in ways that surprised me. And I found Jeffrey Sachs by watching the PBS series, The Commanding Heights. (I still love the story about measuring the recovery of the Polish economy by the price of eggs. It caused me to have have a little geek crush on JS.) So I'm not an expert but I no longer feel intimidated or bored by econ lingo. And thus I post my little comments to blogs here and there. :-)
Posted by: M at Dec 16, 2006 1:32:35 PM
The paper back of Freakonomics, at least in the UK, massively oversells itself with its super glossy, exciting front cover image. Books such as The Armchair Economist do a much better job than Freak, but Freak seems to have been published at just the right time, and the marketing has surely been leveraged to the hilt. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if the marketing guru's had tried to sell film rights to it.
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0141019018/sr=1-1/qid=1166489044/ref=sr_1_1/202-1683046-3136624?ie=UTF8&s=books)
Posted by: Caravaggio at Dec 18, 2006 7:49:01 PM
"I think the main problem people have with Freakonomics s not that it is bad economics but that it is not economics at all."
Precisely.
Posted by: Alex M Thomas at Feb 24, 2007 2:30:11 AM
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