SuperFreakonomics
Sequel applying incentive analysis to climate, crime and altruism
Summary
The sequel to Freakonomics applies the same method: take a question people assume they understand, find data that bears on it, and report what the data says regardless of whether the answer is comfortable. The chapters cover the economics of street prostitution in Chicago, the effect of television on women's status in India, terrorist detection through banking data, hospital and doctor quality measurement, altruism experiments and their design flaws, the history of childbirth and hand washing, and geoengineering as a response to climate change.
The strongest material is on measurement. Levitt and Dubner show that laboratory altruism experiments produce results that reverse when subjects are given the option to take rather than only to give, which undermines a substantial literature. They show that doctor quality varies enormously and is measurable from patient outcomes if the data is examined. They show that simple cheap interventions, including hand washing and seat belts, produced larger mortality gains than expensive medical technology.
The climate chapter caused sustained controversy. The authors present geoengineering through stratospheric sulphate injection as a cheap alternative to emissions reduction, quoting Nathan Myhrvold at length, and climate scientists documented specific errors in the chapter's characterisation of solar power, of atmospheric science and of the researchers quoted. That chapter is the book's main reliability problem. More broadly, the book is a collection of contrarian findings rather than an argument, several of the underlying studies have not replicated, and the willingness to be provocative sometimes outruns the evidence.
Key takeaways 7
- Laboratory experiments demonstrating human altruism reverse when subjects can take as well as give, which suggests the effect measured was an artefact of the experimental design.
- Cheap simple interventions such as hand washing and seat belts have saved more lives than expensive medical technology.
- Individual doctor quality varies enormously and is measurable from patient outcome data, but hospitals do not measure it.
- Behaviour responds to incentives in ways that defeat well-intentioned policy, and unintended consequences are the normal case rather than the exception.
- Terrorists can be identified statistically from banking behaviour patterns, because they differ systematically from ordinary customers in identifiable ways.
- Geoengineering through stratospheric aerosols would be far cheaper than emissions reduction, a claim the authors present as underexamined and which climate scientists dispute.
- Television access in Indian villages was associated with measurable improvements in women's autonomy and reductions in reported acceptance of domestic violence.
Who should read it
Readers who want examples of applying data to questions where intuition misleads, treated with awareness that several chapters are contested and the climate chapter contains documented errors.
Who recommended it 2 · 2 direct
“I recommend this book to anyone who reads nonfiction. It is very well written and full of great insights.”
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