SuperFreakonomics — Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Did you read and like the first Freakonomics, with its blend of improbable statistics and counterintuitive but frequently disputed conclusions, especially about abortion? Then, as the advertisers say, you’ll probably love SuperFreakonomics, which brings more of the same in a package that, at five chapters and an intro seems smaller. The Freakonomics approach is not dissimilar from the Malcolm Gladwell approach discussed at the link, although their emphasis is slightly different. Gladwell looks at metaphors more than anything else; Levitt and Dubner prefer, as they put it:

People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable or manifest. Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences. This applies to schoolteachers and Realtors and crack dealers as well as expectant mothers, sumo wrestlers, bagel salesmen, and the Ku Klux Klan

In other words, we don’t have good ways of reliably understanding people in all circumstances and are unlikely to ever develop such ways. That being said, through careful study or clever tricks (which you view SuperFreakonomics as employing probably varies by your level of knowledge), we can learn some useful or interesting stuff anyway. The first and third chapters are the most interesting, especially for their citations; they deal with unexpected outcomes of the women’s movement (worse teachers, fewer prostitutes: can you guess why?) and how environment affects morality (cf Ariely, Dan, work of), respectively.

I especially liked the first chapter, which regards issues of prostitution that don’t get a lot of play, like how the principal-agent problem applies to prostitutes and pimps. And apparently a fair portion of the wage premium that goes to high-end prostitutes like Belle de Jour (née Dr. Brooke Magnanti) comes from the illegality and social opprobrium that such work still inspires in the United States. In other words, if prostitution were legal and mostly socially sanctioned, prostitutes would probably make less money because the supply would go up. On the other hand, the demand might also rise; the trouble is deciding which might happen more, which is what economists spend a lot of their time doing.

Some of the other chapters are weaker, especially the last one, but those issues have been widely noted elsewhere, and well. Slate discusses SuperFreakonomics here. The problem with reading about the book is that it’s not nearly as satisfying as reading the book; the arguments are complex enough that they can’t be easily summarized without losing vital details—unlike, say, Rapt or $20 per Gallon. But SuperFreakonomics probably isn’t worth buying: better get it from the library. One of my tests of non-fiction books is whether they could have appeared as an essay in The New Yorker or The Atlantic and lost little or no important details? If so, it shouldn’t be a book. SuperFreakonomics at least passes this test.

The fifth chapter of SuperFreakonomics, regarding the feasibility of geo-engineering as a solution to climate change, has received the most criticism, and from my vantage it appears to be deserved. Elizabeth Kolbert does the best job of it here, in The New Yorker, but you can no doubt find other examples online. It also shows the dangers of the Freakonomics approach: speculation combined with little knowledge of the problem domain can lead to glib ignorance.