Who is Steven Levitt

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt is an audio book that will give you conclusive answer to many questions, based on the science of economic studies:

Which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime?

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 life-from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing-and whose conclusions turn the conventional wisdom on its head. Thus the new field of study contained in this audiobook: Freakonomics.

Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner 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. In Freakonomics, they explore the hidden side of . . . well, everything. The inner working of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The secrets of the Klu Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking, and Freakonomics will redefine the way we view the modern world.

Listen to an audio sample of this audio book here:
Freakonomics - Steven Levitt - Audio Book.
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John R. Lott, Jr. has a different oppinion and tells us why in his own audio book: Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Freaky Theories Don't

Economics can explain everything, from why people behave the way they do to how governments and businesses organize themselves.

As the blockbuster best-seller Freakonomics demonstrated, economics can explain everything from why people behave the way they do to how governments and businesses organize themselves. But are the basic assumptions and conclusions in Freakonomics true?

Does the free market usually lead to unintended and negative consequences? Quite the opposite, says John Lott, who holds a Ph.D. in economics. In fact, says Lott, a wide range of fascinating and peculiar case studies prove the simple adage that if something is more costly, people will do less of it. And, in a refutation of Freakonomics' most controversial idea, Lott shows why legalized abortion leads to family breakdown, which leads to more crime.

Listen to this audio book here:
Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Freaky Theories Don't.
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