kewpid.net

Just fin­ished read­ing Freako­nom­ics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dub­ner. For a full review, here’s one by Orson Scott Card.

Freako­nom­ics What About Bob? trailer

• Frame of Mind psp

Phant­asm III: Lord of the Dead download

should be required read­ing for all eco­nom­ics stu­dents. The num­ber of under­gradu­ates study­ing it, who have no idea about basic eco­nomic con­cepts is wor­ry­ing. Though the rhet­oric among aca­demia is that uni­ver­sit­ies are insti­tu­tions of crit­ical think­ing, there is often a tend­ency for dogma to take hold, espe­cially in eco­nomic the­ory where polit­ics is rarely far from the surface.

Levitt and Dub­ner attack con­ven­tional wis­dom with con­ven­tional micro-economic tools, and arrive at some seem­ingly con­tro­ver­sial res­ults. Appar­ently abor­tion reduces crime, real estate agents’ beha­viour is like the Ku Klux Klan, and Par­ents aren’t all that import­ant. These sorts of pro­nounce­ments have a tend­ency to raise the ire of mor­al­istic wowsers, but the authors con­clude very wisely that rational crit­ical think­ing doesn’t traffic in mor­al­ity, it seeks hard truths.

That is all.