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Superfreakonomics tamed by global economic woes

Reviewed by: Douglas J. Johnston

28/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

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Superfreakonomics

Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

HarperCollins, 270 pages, $37

IN their 2005 smash bestseller, Freakonomics, University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt and former New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner breezily applied micro-economic theory to stuff orthodox economics generally ignores -- drug dealing, children's names, sumo wrestling.

Superfreakonomics reprises that role, but targets -- mostly successfully -- different phenomena.

Some of the better pieces in the collection deal with the intersection of economics and behavioural science.

One, describing the field experiments of University of Maryland economist John List that debunk the role and prevalence of altruism in human interactions, is stellar.

List's experiments, write Levitt and Dubner, "upended conventional wisdom on altruism," and trumped "research that had much won acclaim, including a Nobel prize." The bottom line: We're not as selfless as we like to think we are.

Another is a study that links the risk of defects in newborns among Muslim populations to the month of birth.

"[B]abies that were in utero during Ramadan," they write, "are more likely to exhibit developmental aftereffects," due to pregnant Muslim women participating in Ramadan's prescribed month-long dawn-to-sunset fast.

By their reckoning, such babies "will be roughly 20 per cent more likely to have visual, hearing or learning disabilities as an adult."

Levitt and Dubner's writing follows an easy-to-state but hard-to-execute recipe: Mix astute critical thinking with good storytelling.

And just when you think they're getting a bit too larky in their explorations of the hidden side of prostitution or emergency medicine or automobile safety, they rein it in enough to maintain intellectual credibility.

One of the more controversial ideas they highlight is a proposal by a Bellvue, Wash., company, Intellectual Ventures, to reduce global warming by pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere via an 29-kilometre-long "garden hose to the sky."

Former U.S. vice-president and celebrity environmentalist Al Gore's reaction to the scheme: "I think it's nuts."

Though the articles are uniformly well written, there are times you're left with the impression you're reading a Reader's Digest article whose language and analysis have been dressed up for the chattering classes.

Their consideration of a link between the amount of childhood television watching ("even the most innocuous family-friendly shows") and the likelihood of kids getting involved in crime when older is a case in point. It's interesting, but when you step back and analyze the evidence they marshal in support of their argument, it's pretty tenuous.

Likewise with their enthusiasm for a proposed anti-hurricane device that would prevent the topmost layers of ocean waters from warming above the threshold temperature (80 F or 26.7 C) required to generate massive storms.

Ultimately, you've got to wonder whether this volume can command the appeal of its predecessor, which came out in a far different economic environment.

In 2005 a survey of unusual microeconomic topics had some offbeat allure.

But both the public and media's focus has shifted. Macroeconomic events -- 2008's subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S., the ensuing financial meltdown on Wall Street and the continuing gyrations of equity markets -- are the hot ticket now.

In late 2009 the average Joe is more concerned about the declining value of his investment portfolio, the solvency of corporate pensions and ongoing taxpayer costs of deficit financing than whether a prostitute with a pimp nets proportionately more than a homeowner who sells through a realtor.

Douglas J. Johnston is a Winnipeg lawyer and writer.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 28, 2009 H9

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