What I’m Reading Now

This book is “money” related, so it gets its own dedicated post.

Miss Emily is giving thumbs up to: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Mr. Levitt is the Rogue Economist and Mr. Dubner is the (Rogue?) NYT journalist that helped him write the book.

First of all, this seemed a very “slim” book to deal with the hidden side of EVERYTHING.  I double-checked to make sure.  Yep-207 pages.  James Joyce wouldn’t even consider that to be a decent sentence.

But that is a mere quibble.  The discipline of Economics has always been extremely puzzling to me.  I had to take a year’s worth of the business in school, and those were probably among the hardest classes I ever took.

I think Economics is puzzling to professional Economists, too.  From what I can tell, none of them can agree on anything.

But I digress.  Mr. Levitt’s roguish specialty is to see economic connections between seemingly disparate entities.  He finds these connections by using tools in his Economist’s bag of tricks, and then applying his conclusions to the greater economy, adding to our understanding of how the world ticks, and not just in an economic sense.

He begins the process by asking himself questions.  Then he puts his Economist hat on and gets to work answering them.

Here are some of the questions he asks (and answers) in the book: What do Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have In Common?; How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real Estate Agents?; Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms?;  and Where Have All the Criminals Gone?.  That’s almost the whole book - is that “Everything“?.

I don’t want to be a spoiler, so you’ll have to read the book yourself to find out what conclusions he comes to. I’m pretty sure that lots of people would disagree with some of his thoughts, but that’s one of the good things about this book.  It’s kind of written in a way that encourages thinking-for-oneself.

Even if you have no interest whatsoever in Economics and/or the specific topics above, at heart this is a very lively and entertaining read.  Which is a great breakthrough for those of us who have always regarded Economics as a dismal discipline.

One part I found particularly interesting was an Appendix in the back that lists girls’ and boys’ names, and the years of the mother’s education.  This list is related to a chapter that explores whether or not first names given by parents have any influence on a child’s future success (or lack thereof) in life.  Turns out - not really. The authors cite the real-life case of two brothers named Winner and Loser.  In life, Winner turned out badly, and Loser was a success.

What is more important to a child’s future are the parents themselves, and one important factor is a given parent’s level of education (that’s not absolute, of course, it’s just an indicator). So actually, a child’s name says a lot more about the parent then the child. Apparently, certain names are associated with measurable levels of parental education.

So of course, I looked up my own name as well as my siblings.  Here’s what I found (years of mother’s education in parenthesis): Patrick (14.25); Deborah (13.70); Tess (14.83); Suzanne (14.37).

Hmmm.  This is weird. Those numbers above average out to 14.28 and it turns out that my mother does have 2 years of college (actually, so does my father, but that wasn’t listed).  It also turns out that every one of us kids has more than 2 years of college.  Sister Debbie even has a master’s degree. Great job with the names, Mom and Dad! (even though it doesn’t really matter from an Economist’s point of view).

By the way, here are the top boys’ and girls’ names that signify high-education mothers (as of 2003): for a girl, the name Lucienne is associated with a mother who has 16.6 years of education, and for a boy the name Dov is associated with a mother who has 16.5 years of education. So if you want people to know (or think) you’re a real smarty, then those are the names for your kids!

This book confirms what I’ve suspected for years about Economics: it is freaky freaky.  But, wow, I just didn’t know how much ’til I read this book!