Freakish

Economist Ariel Rubinstein responds to Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics (NB: link is to 164KB, 6 page PDF file):

Like Levitt, I have no central theme. My book will be a series of observations – some about economics, some about Freakonomics – that I hope the reader will find intriguing.

Chapter 1: is imperialism still alive?
Economists believe that they have a lot to contribute to any field – sociology, zoology or criminology. The academic imperialism of economics has something in common with political imperialism. Therefore, I will begin my chapter with a fascinating historical review where we will learn that imperialism stemmed from the perceived superiority of the conquering people over the conquered peoples, and that the role of the conqueror is to disseminate its lofty culture. From here, I will move to describe Freakonomics as a typical work of academic imperialism. The complex interplay of feelings of superiority and deficiency has driven every empire, and economics is no different. Levitt: “Economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers, but a serious shortage of interesting questions” (xi). Freakonomics makes statistical reasoning, which is used in all the sciences, look like a subdued colony of economics. Furthermore, Freakonomics expresses the aspiration to expand economics to encompass any question that requires the use of common sense.

Take, for example, Levitt’s tales of the big city. The Chicago Municipality administers an annual test for schoolchildren. A suspicion arose that teachers were “correcting” their students’ answers before sending the tests to be checked. Levitt obtained the data from the municipality and developed a computer program that looks for classes with suspicious combinations of answers. For example, if all of the students in a particular class responded correctly to questions 7, 8 and 10, and erred on question 9, a suspicion arises that the teacher falsified the answers to four questions. (On question 9, the teacher either made a mistake himself or tried unsuccessfully to avoid raising suspicion.) In this way, Levitt discovered dozens of deceitful teachers. The IDF’s intelligence units and credit card companies use similar algorithms. What have we learned about Levitt? He is a smart guy with connections in the municipality. What is the connection to economics? None. Like early imperialists, who conquered other nations in search of natural resources, economists like Levitt (and myself) have swaggered off into other fields in search of interesting questions.

[Via 3quarksdaily]