Don't blame me. That's the name of the latest book! The sub-title is "A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything". Its by Steven Levitt (the economist) and Stephen Dubner (a journalist). Levitt is a major, up-and-coming economist at the University of Chicago who's won the "best young economist" award several times. His approach is pretty interesting. The typical "what will the market do? what will the dollar do?" economic studies don't interest him very much. What he does is apply economic analysis tools to random questions that he finds interesting.
He made a big splash in the news last year on a topic that's included in detail in the book -- his assertion that the unexpected drop in crime that started in the mid-90s was primarily a result of the legalization of abortion, not better policing techniques or a better economy as others have claimed. His work is pretty convincing, but I'll leave you to draw your own conclusion.
To give you an idea how broad his interests are, some of the things he discusses include:
- cheating by teachers in giving standardized exams
- cheating among Japanese sumo wrestlers
- why so many crack dealers still live with their mothers
- why who you are matters more than what you do when it comes to parenting.
In general, he achieves his goal of making you question whether to believe the "conventional wisdom" about just about everything. The book gets a little dry towards the end but, all in all, an interesting read.
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