ubbed “the most brilliant young economist in America,” the eccentric Steven Levitt has no interest in markets, financing, or gross national products. He views economics as a tool for measuring data, and his specialty is posing oddball questions about causation. Here he tackles a potpourri of topics including the lifestyle of drug dealers, the inner workings of the Ku Klux Klan, the duplicity of school teachers, real estate agents, and sumo wrestlers, and the sudden drop in the U.S. crime rate, which he attributes to the legalization of abortion.
Simply stated, with innumerable unwanted babies not being born, two decades later the declining birth rate translated into fewer juvenile delinquents. A lively and provocative read.
