Economics; is an important subject to understand the workings of finances. The common definition of economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution and consumption of goods. Freakonomics, the title of this book has the reader wondering what this book is about. From the title and even the cover picture it is clear it is not your average text book on economics. Yet, the authors have collected data and analyzed it to come to their conclusions on some unusual hypotheses. The photo on the cover is actually a good visual of the books content, it looks like apple on the outside but is an orange on the inside, signifying there is a hidden side of everything, just as the book subtitle reads. Authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner take on the economics of the day to day situations as their topic for this bestselling book.
Steve Levitt in the explanatory note in the beginning of the book is necessary to read to have a better understanding to the author’s purpose for writing the book. They explain they are taking a new way of looking the everyday riddles of life (xxiv). As the sub-title suggests they are investigating the hidden side of real world issues and the subtle connections that link them together. Levitt’s position is that the economics model is a science available to them with excellent tools for gaining answers to the questions he poses in the book. Levitt feels economics is not just finances and movement of goods. Even so the authors acknowledge a good number of Levitt’s’ peers may not recognize this work as economics at all (xxv).
Regardless of the controversy, Levitt points out economics is the science of measurements and he is using data and patterns in the data to gain insight (11). ...
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... yet the main benefit of the book is not in knowing that a drug dealer’s business model actually resembles a McDonald’s business model -as entertaining as that is. Instead the value of this book lies in realizing we should not accept society’s common wisdom, or take things at face value. The authors continued to say there was no unifying theme to the book, but stressed there is a common thread, it has to do with thinking sensibly about how people behave in the real world. Remember to look, discern, and measure (209). We should peel back the layers look at social trends and apply our understanding of incentives and what motivates people. Levitt wants us understand that economics is not just dollars and cents, but a way to understand incentives that molds behaviors. Just the picture on the cover reminds us apple or orange, there is a hidden side to everything.
Summary In chapter one of Freakonomics, the beginning portion of the chapter discusses information and the connection it shares with the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents. The Ku Klux Klan was founded right after the Civil War, in order to persecute and subdue the slaves that were newly freed. The popularity of the Klan increased in the early 20th century, around the time of World War I. In the late 19th century, the Klan had only discriminated, persecuted, and subdued Blacks, but in the 20th century they did these things to Blacks, Jews, and Gypsies.
In this chapter of Naked Economics, by Charles Wheelan, he describes many aspects of trade. It begins by showing the capabilities of trade and how it affects everyone as a whole. It makes it so that everyone is better off than normal. To put it into perspective, he put the image in your head of how hard your life would be without trade, you would have to make your own clothes, find a way to get/make your own food, make your own car, etc... After showing some of the advantages to trade, he applies it to a global persona and begins to introduce his opinion on how global trade (globalization) makes us richer. One of the key explanations of this point is that trade frees up time in our busy schedule, therefore allowing us to use that freed up
On the front cover of Freakonomics, the subheading reads, “A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” which is the purpose of the book. The economist Steven Levitt and the author Stephen Dubner wrote this book using several rhetorical devices to achieve that purpose. A few of those devices, style, ethos, pathos, and logos, were prominent within the book and helped to convey the message and purpose well.
The Island of Mocha in the video is an example of a traditional economic system evolving into a market system. Every person plays a key role in this traditional system. They had fisherman, coconut collector, melon seller, lumberman, barber, doctor, preacher, brownies seller, and a chief. The Mochans got sick of trading goods all across the island just to get the things that they want or needed. The Chief decided that they would use clam shell for currency instead of trading.
Their main focus is to engage and teach the ordinary person versatile concepts of economics in an inoffensive way. In doing so, they account for all manner of people who might be reading it, including drug dealers. That way, a drug dealer could read facts about their line of work and digest data concerning it, without feeling offended or attacked by the words the authors chose. Levitt and Dubner make their book an all inclusive reading because anyone can read it from any walk of life and not be offended in doing so.
SuperFreakonomics, a New York Times Bestseller by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, that tries to explain important and sometimes difficult economic principles, for a non-economist. The book achieves this by incorporating humour, sarcasm and real life statistics to provide a deeper understanding of economics while still using layman’s terms. For the purposes of this paper, we’ll be exploring chapter two of SuperFreakonomics titled “Why Should Suicide Bombers Buy Life Insurance” and we will be breaking it down while relating the information back to the main concepts of McKenzie et al.’s, The New World of Economics.
This chapter's main idea is that the study of economics is the study of incentives. We find a differentiation between economic incentives, social incentives and moral incentives. Incentives are described in a funny way as "means of urging people to do more of a good thing or less of a bad thing", and in this chapter we find some examples public school teachers in Chicago, sumo wrestling in Japan, take care center in Israel and Paul Feldman's bagel business of how incentives drive people and most of the time the conventional wisdom turns to be "wrong" when incentives are in place.
Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity, written by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, Dwight Lee and Tawni Ferrarini, explains the foundation of economics and how it all works in all aspects of our lives from the role of the government trickling down to personal credit cards and savings. This book was written with clear language for the audience to understand and comprehend the large amount of information within its condensed size. The authors’ target audience for this book seemed to be for those individuals wanting to learn the mechanics of economy including economic growth and stability. Gwartney separates his book into four parts: Part I, Twelve Key Elements of Economics, Part II Seven Major Sources of Economic Progress, Part Three Economic Progress and the Role of Government, and Part IV Twelve Key Elements of Practical Personal Finance.
Economics in reverse is the best way of describing the unconventional method preferred by economist, Steven D. Levitt. While most economists measure social situations and present the data as numbers and graphs Levitt takes anomalies within the data to reveal truths obscured. It’s Levitt’s sociological take on economics that has set him apart from his peers with his heavy focus on incentives, choices, and the consequences they have. Freakonomics mirrors Levitt’s method since it’s a collection of stories he has uncovered or read, and the core economic principles are hidden within each story throughout the book, sometimes even in plain sight like how there are exactly as many chapters as there are core economic principles.
Heilbroner, Robert. "The Economic Problem." The Making of the Economic Society. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1993. pp. 1-15
Shermer, Michael. The mind of the market: how biology and psychology shape our economic lives. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2009. Print.
Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus have all greatly influenced how people thought about modern economics, especially in areas relating to markets, in terms of the economy and whether certain things affected population rates. In this essay I will cover each of the three topic areas and how each economist interpreted these areas in order to explain why certain phenomena occur within British economics, most of which are still widely accepted today.
Finance is looked upon as a true technical and analytic subject by outsiders, and even by some insiders, but is it only just that? Does the finance professionals prefer to be seen as true math geniuses, when in reality luck has played a way bigger role in their successes? How do biases, probabilities, habits, our mind and other disciplines factor in? How about luck? Not only is the financial sector truly a summation of those factors, but other sectors and aspects of our daily lives are also subject to those forces. While we may not always understand how the world is shaped around us, reading the 5 books provides a way to be an outsider in our own discipline, how great! Through Hagstrom, Kahneman, Taleb, Haidt, and Duhigg, there is a very real
The crucial importance and relevance of economics related disciplines to the modern world have led me to want to pursue the study of these social sciences at a higher level. My study of Economics has shown me the fundamental part it plays in our lives and I would like to approach it with an open mind - interested but not yet fully informed.
Sullivan, A., & Steven M., (2003). Economics: Principles in action. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey : Pearson Prentice Hal