A genre of economics writings popularized by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner''s book - Freakonomics - is on a rapid rise. In the last two years alone, no less than a dozen such books have been published. The
good thing is that economists are finally claiming their rightful places at the table of pop-culture. Freedomnomics is just one such claim. It delivers its message in five chapters on current affairs, ranging from erroneous beliefs that corporations exploit almost everyone to the notion that secret ballot voting is an inefficient method for producing
public goods and services. The topics are just as fascinating as are the explanations and the solutions the book offers. The book clearly makes good points in all its five chapters. The general proposition that individual
Freedom is essential to good
economic performance is excellent. For a normal reader there is no need to invoke Milton Friedman as the author''s "immunization stratagem" as Mark Blaug would have said it. Nevertheless, although freedom and economic performance are correlated, they do not cause one another. In bad economic times, all
nations tend to lose some degrees of freedom, suggesting that it is good economic performance that fosters freedom rather than the other way around. On the other hand, China is beating the pants off everyone''s butts, even as she (China) ignores individual freedoms (at least in the Western sense of the word). A lot can be said in this debate, and kudoos to the
author for raising the issues. One thing that I did not like about the book is that it sets up too many straw men, chief among them the book Freakonomics. This is a cheap shot since even the title of the current book seems to derive from Freakonomics. Another weak point is overdone criticism of the "academia" of which the author is clearly a member. It is true that academics live in ivory towers at the theoretical level; it may even be true that some of their theories are currently incomprehensible to industry. It is simply incorrect to conclude from the preceding statement that public colleges and universities are useless. The process of human capital formation, even in nations where freedom reigns, would have fared poorly without public education. I still think this is a very good book, and recommend it to all readers. Gutsy, insightful, provocative, and all that - five stars!
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