I ripped through Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything this weekend. It was written by an economist and a journalist who teamed up to publish some really interesting statistical studies that Levitt (the economist) has done in the past couple of years. The book isn't really about anything specific: it's more a collection of essays, each of which is about a theme of its own.

As an economist, Levitt is highly interested in the behavior of people when their choices are impacted by incentives. For example, if a teacher is given financial incentive for his students performing well on standardized tests, what happens? The book digs into a number of possibilities, from the teacher continuing to teach as he always has to writing the answers to the test on the board. One of the things I loved about the book was that it dug into each problem from a number of different angles, trying to filter each set of data down to what was really significant.

The topics are all over the map economically, socially and politically. So while the first chapter is all about the presence of cheating when individuals (whether teachers or sumo wrestlers) are given the proper incentives, the second is about the asymmetrical access to information as it applies to the Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents. The comparisons seem wild, but they get pulled together nicely in the book. The authors mix history, data and explanations really well, so I was kept interested pretty much straight through.

Levitt is particularly interested in the economics of crime and poverty, so there are three or so chapters in that area. The third chapter is a full-blown financial analysis of the crack-dealing business, the fourth is about what Levitt believes to be the real cause of recent drops in the crime-rate (it's probably not what you think), and so on. One of the things Levitt and Dubner encourage in the epilogue is to think about things from different angles, and I think their book is a great example of the interesting nuggets you can come across if you do.