More Freedom, Less Freakonomics

American Spectator ^ | 10 aug 07 | Richard Kirk

[rellimpank]

Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't by John Lott (Regnery, 275 pages, $27.95)

Freedomnomics is John Lott's free market retort to the wildly popular book, Freakonomics -- that pastiche of thin analysis that skims over topics as diverse as sumo wrestling, real estate rip-offs, used car prices, and children's names.

In particular, Lott disputes the most explosive claim in Levitt and Dubner's work -- that Roe v. Wade was a major factor in the stunning drop in crime in the 1990s. That huge assertion, based on four pages of analysis that included the negative impact of Communist Romania's no-abortion policy, could easily have been labeled "fewer blacks, less crime."

Lott argues, by contrast, that the Supreme Court's legislative fiat in 1973 actually increased crime by boosting out-of-wedlock births and single-parent households. These crime-correlated statistics exploded in the 1970s and '80s as social sanctions against extra-marital sex disappeared and as the legal but odious option of abortion was rejected by millions of now-pregnant unmarried women.

[marktwain]

I need to get a copy of this book.

[gcruse]

I’ve read it. You won’t be disappointed.

[Clintonfatigued]

I’ve read Freakonomics. It’s moderately interesting, but its claim to expose “the hidden side of everything” is false. It never lived up to its promises.

[KC_Conspirator]

I think I am going to buy that book for the heck of it. I can already tell that I won’t come to the same conclusions as the authors, but it might be a fun read.