Here's the article from today's Toronto Star:
Freakonomics answers surprisingly simple
October 20, 2009
Jennifer Wells
It would appear that Stephen Dubner's rock star years failed to prepare him for the ardour of economics groupies.
There was Dubner last week in Roanoke, Va., fresh off a lecture and seated behind his book-signing table, when a woman approached and said – Dubner's voice drops to a come-hither breathiness as he recounts the moment – "There's nothing sexier than an intelligent man."
"I did not know what the hell I was supposed to do with that," says a still-stumped Dubner. "Was I supposed to invite her back to the hotel?"
The superstar (and happily married) journalist/author is a long way from his performing days with The Right Profile, an '80s band that drew its name from a Clash song that recalled the way gorgeous actor Montgomery Clift could be photographed only in right profile after a nasty car accident.
But that's another story.
Today Dubner, 46, is half of the creative team behind Freakonomics and the just-released Superfreakonomics, which carries the enticing and unscholarly subtitle: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. It's nothing if not a come-on. Which makes Dubner and Steven Levitt – the economist in the duo – the most welcome agents provocateurs of the dismal science.
Let's take "global cooling" as a case in point. In summation: wind power is cute, but essentially pointless, solar panels contribute to global warming and certain trees planted in certain locations exacerbate global warming.
On the upside, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo was a stratospherically efficient coolant, as evidenced by the two-year drop in the earth's temperature.
So why not try a little geo-engineering? Simply replicate Pinatubo's cooling haze by spritzing the Earth with colourless, liquefied sulphur dioxide by means of a giant hose.
It sounds, appropriately, freakish. "I'm sure some people will freak out," Dubner says of the idea, brainchild of former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold. "I'm sure there are going to be all kinds of global warming activists who say we're insane and that we don't know what we're talking about, that we're evil and so on ... I think the point, however, is that it's helpful for people who are not entrenched in an industry to come in and take a look. The upside is that you may see things differently."
Taking a look – or what the authors called in their first book exploring "the hidden side of everything" – is the currency of Freakonomics. Book No. 1, published in 2005, fuelled innumerable cocktail parties with tasty talking points. There was the contentious take on falling crime rates in the U.S.: "Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime." And the exposing of parents as lousy risk assessors, as expressed in this scene: "Molly's parents know that Amy's parents keep a gun in their house, so they have forbidden Molly to play there. Instead, Molly spends a lot of time at Imani's house, which has a swimming pool in the backyard."
Stupid parents. Molly is far more likely to die in a swimming accident at Imani's than as a result of gunplay at Amy's. (Death by pool: 1 in 11,000; death by gun: 1 in 1 million-plus.)
Book No. 2 offers some of that. On a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed than a drunk driver. (An excellent marketing tip for the taxi industry and a can't-lose holiday party conversation starter.) And kangaroo farts are methane-free, making roos less damaging to the atmosphere than such cud-chewing, flatulent ruminants as cows. (What wonders could the locavore movement do with such information?)
And the authors have conducted extensive tracking of prostitutes and their tricks. In the Chicago neighbourhood of Washington Park, Dubner and Levitt report, demand for prostitutes skyrockets over the Fourth of July holiday – hence the "Patriotic Prostitutes" in the book's subtitle. The spike in demand leads to the predictable market-driven outcome: prices rise (by about 30 per cent, apparently). Thus the answer to this question posed by the authors – "How is a street prostitute like a department store Santa?" – lies here: "They both take advantage of short-term job opportunities brought about by holiday spikes in demand."
Hardly a shocker.
Here's a handy fast fact: the data show that a Chicago street prostitute is more likely to have sex with a cop than be arrested by one.
It's tricky territory to mine, especially when the authors attempt to amuse the reader by casting high-end hooker Allie as the ideal wife: "Beautiful, attentive, smart, laughing at your jokes and satisfying your lust. She is happy to see you every time you show up at her door. Your favourite music is already playing and your favourite beverage is on ice. She will never ask you to take out the trash."
They're being ironic.
"Some people are going to see it as a sex story," Dubner admits. "I see it more as a wage story – any time you can kind of explain the way wages move up and down, you're learning a lot about society."
How we behave, and particularly how we behave in unpredictable ways, is what readers now expect from the pair, who have emerged as the Lewis and Martin of economics. "I feel economics right now is kind of entering that phase of public awareness or acceptance or interest that psychology did 50 or 60 years ago," says Dubner. "It goes from being this fairly arcane academic pursuit that is thought to probably not provide that much value to the average person to being this thing that becomes broadly accessible and maybe even useful."
The biggest take-away from the book? "I think the biggest idea and the most encouraging one is the idea of cheap and simple fixes," says Dubner. He chats about seat belts and car seats – according to Superfreakonomics there's no evidence that car seats are better than seat belts at saving the lives of children above the age of 2. In certain types of crashes – the book cites rear-enders – the car seats perform slightly worse.
The authors wonder: instead of raising the age at which children can graduate from car seats, why not design seat belts to fit children in the first place? It sounds so ... simple. Ever the journalist, Dubner offers a tart, if not very superfreaky, rationale: "Institutions and firms tend not to want to do things that will put them out of business."
Freakonomics answers surprisingly simple
October 20, 2009
Jennifer Wells
It would appear that Stephen Dubner's rock star years failed to prepare him for the ardour of economics groupies.
There was Dubner last week in Roanoke, Va., fresh off a lecture and seated behind his book-signing table, when a woman approached and said – Dubner's voice drops to a come-hither breathiness as he recounts the moment – "There's nothing sexier than an intelligent man."
"I did not know what the hell I was supposed to do with that," says a still-stumped Dubner. "Was I supposed to invite her back to the hotel?"
The superstar (and happily married) journalist/author is a long way from his performing days with The Right Profile, an '80s band that drew its name from a Clash song that recalled the way gorgeous actor Montgomery Clift could be photographed only in right profile after a nasty car accident.
But that's another story.
Today Dubner, 46, is half of the creative team behind Freakonomics and the just-released Superfreakonomics, which carries the enticing and unscholarly subtitle: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. It's nothing if not a come-on. Which makes Dubner and Steven Levitt – the economist in the duo – the most welcome agents provocateurs of the dismal science.
Let's take "global cooling" as a case in point. In summation: wind power is cute, but essentially pointless, solar panels contribute to global warming and certain trees planted in certain locations exacerbate global warming.
On the upside, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo was a stratospherically efficient coolant, as evidenced by the two-year drop in the earth's temperature.
So why not try a little geo-engineering? Simply replicate Pinatubo's cooling haze by spritzing the Earth with colourless, liquefied sulphur dioxide by means of a giant hose.
It sounds, appropriately, freakish. "I'm sure some people will freak out," Dubner says of the idea, brainchild of former Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold. "I'm sure there are going to be all kinds of global warming activists who say we're insane and that we don't know what we're talking about, that we're evil and so on ... I think the point, however, is that it's helpful for people who are not entrenched in an industry to come in and take a look. The upside is that you may see things differently."
Taking a look – or what the authors called in their first book exploring "the hidden side of everything" – is the currency of Freakonomics. Book No. 1, published in 2005, fuelled innumerable cocktail parties with tasty talking points. There was the contentious take on falling crime rates in the U.S.: "Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime." And the exposing of parents as lousy risk assessors, as expressed in this scene: "Molly's parents know that Amy's parents keep a gun in their house, so they have forbidden Molly to play there. Instead, Molly spends a lot of time at Imani's house, which has a swimming pool in the backyard."
Stupid parents. Molly is far more likely to die in a swimming accident at Imani's than as a result of gunplay at Amy's. (Death by pool: 1 in 11,000; death by gun: 1 in 1 million-plus.)
Book No. 2 offers some of that. On a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed than a drunk driver. (An excellent marketing tip for the taxi industry and a can't-lose holiday party conversation starter.) And kangaroo farts are methane-free, making roos less damaging to the atmosphere than such cud-chewing, flatulent ruminants as cows. (What wonders could the locavore movement do with such information?)
And the authors have conducted extensive tracking of prostitutes and their tricks. In the Chicago neighbourhood of Washington Park, Dubner and Levitt report, demand for prostitutes skyrockets over the Fourth of July holiday – hence the "Patriotic Prostitutes" in the book's subtitle. The spike in demand leads to the predictable market-driven outcome: prices rise (by about 30 per cent, apparently). Thus the answer to this question posed by the authors – "How is a street prostitute like a department store Santa?" – lies here: "They both take advantage of short-term job opportunities brought about by holiday spikes in demand."
Hardly a shocker.
Here's a handy fast fact: the data show that a Chicago street prostitute is more likely to have sex with a cop than be arrested by one.
It's tricky territory to mine, especially when the authors attempt to amuse the reader by casting high-end hooker Allie as the ideal wife: "Beautiful, attentive, smart, laughing at your jokes and satisfying your lust. She is happy to see you every time you show up at her door. Your favourite music is already playing and your favourite beverage is on ice. She will never ask you to take out the trash."
They're being ironic.
"Some people are going to see it as a sex story," Dubner admits. "I see it more as a wage story – any time you can kind of explain the way wages move up and down, you're learning a lot about society."
How we behave, and particularly how we behave in unpredictable ways, is what readers now expect from the pair, who have emerged as the Lewis and Martin of economics. "I feel economics right now is kind of entering that phase of public awareness or acceptance or interest that psychology did 50 or 60 years ago," says Dubner. "It goes from being this fairly arcane academic pursuit that is thought to probably not provide that much value to the average person to being this thing that becomes broadly accessible and maybe even useful."
The biggest take-away from the book? "I think the biggest idea and the most encouraging one is the idea of cheap and simple fixes," says Dubner. He chats about seat belts and car seats – according to Superfreakonomics there's no evidence that car seats are better than seat belts at saving the lives of children above the age of 2. In certain types of crashes – the book cites rear-enders – the car seats perform slightly worse.
The authors wonder: instead of raising the age at which children can graduate from car seats, why not design seat belts to fit children in the first place? It sounds so ... simple. Ever the journalist, Dubner offers a tart, if not very superfreaky, rationale: "Institutions and firms tend not to want to do things that will put them out of business."
