"Freakonomics" by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Review by Borodutch

The authors published "Freakonomics" in 2005, and only 18 years later, I read it. Even though I love funky economics and cognitive psychology books, I have missed out on this title for so long. One could say that "Freakonomics" is a grandparent of "Thinking, Fast and Slow" as it exposes many counter-intuitive concepts from everyday life.

I loved the book! Even being 18 years old, it still surprised me with the presented concepts, which tells you how deep the biases and fallacies are enrooted into our psyche! The authors cover the following topics:

  1. Why and how do people cheat — and how to prevent it?
  2. How information asymmetry works and the ways to overcome it.
  3. How do drug gangs operate and coordinate, and why is the bottom of the operation poor?
  4. What is the connection between banning abortions and rising crime in 20 years?
  5. How does systematic racism work, and why parenting matters less than we think?

Because I live in 2023 and not in 2005, I also enjoyed the additional chapters that go into depth on how the book's central concepts were conceived. The authors surprised me because the main ideas weren't brought up for the book but instead were the result of multiple research papers and publications. The more you know!

If you haven't read "Freakonomics" just yet, I highly suggest consuming this brilliant content!