Freakonomics

What do sumo wrestlers, real-estate agents, schoolteachers, and crack dealers have in common? According to economist Steven D. Levitt, more than you might think. In Freakonomics, Levitt teams up with journalist Stephen J. Dubner to apply the tools of economics not to interest rates or inflation, but to the hidden mechanics of everyday life.

Ranging across cheating in sumo and standardized testing, the inner economics of a drug gang, what really makes for good parenting, and the controversial claim that legalized abortion helped drive down crime, the book argues that incentives explain far more about human behavior than morality or conventional wisdom do. Its central habit of mind is simple but radical: follow the data, question what "everyone knows," and be willing to ask questions other people find uncomfortable.

A global bestseller that helped popularize behavioral and applied economics for general readers, Freakonomics is a playful, provocative, and genuinely surprising look at the concealed logic underneath the world.