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Thoughts on Superfreakonomics

“People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable or manifest,” write Levitt and Dubner in their new book Superfreakonomics.  “Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences.”

Their book, which is a sequel to their surprise bestseller Freakonomics, is a great series of case studies on unintended consequences and, on a higher level, understanding consumer behavior.   It’s surprisingly one of the funniest books I’ve read in years.  I found the book so entertaining, I pretty well put my life on hold this past weekend to finish reading it.  (My rapid reading of the book was, in itself, a beneficial unintended consequence of my recent buying of my Amazon Kindle.  The convenience of owning a Kindle has enabled me to read much faster and cover a lot more material.  Don’t underestimate the benefit of having a portable library in your briefcase.)

Some of the book’s chapters are better not mentioned in this blog (a large section of the book is dedicated to analyzing the economics of prostitution, calculating the marginal costs and benefits added by pimps, among other topics).

Below are some of the tamer subjects covered:

On the Television as a Cure to Spousal Abuse:

Rural Indian families who got cable TV began to have a lower birthrate than families without TV. (In a country like India, a lower birthrate generally means more autonomy for women and fewer health risks.) Families with TV were also more likely to keep their daughters in school, which suggests that girls were seen as more valuable, or at least deserving of equal treatment. (The enrollment rate for boys, notably, didn’t change.) These hard numbers made the self-reported survey data more believable. It appears that cable TV really did empower the women of rural India, even to the point of no longer tolerating domestic abuse.

It was unclear why exactly the television had this liberalizing effect.  Was it because it gave women confidence?  Or was it, perhaps less gloriously, simply the fact that the menfolk were too busy watching televised sports to spend as much time mistreating their wives and daughters?  The evidence was inconclusive.

On the Eating of Kangaroo as a Method of Combating Global Warming:

You could also switch from eating beef to eating kangaroo—because kangaroo farts, as fate would have it, don’t contain methane. But just imagine the marketing campaign that would be needed to get Americans to take up ’roo-burgers. And think how hard the cattle ranchers would lobby Washington to ban kangaroo meat. Fortunately, a team of Australian scientists is attacking this problem from the opposite direction, trying to replicate the digestive bacteria in kangaroos’ stomachs so it can be transplanted to cows.

So there you have it.  All the protein, none of the methane.

This will be one that men around the world will appreciate:

On the Necktie Being Unsanitary:

In the UK, some hospitals have taken to “forbidding doctors to wear neckties because, as the U.K. Department of Health has noted, they ‘are rarely laundered,’ ‘perform no beneficial function in patient care,’ and ‘have been shown to be colonized by pathogens.’

So in addition to being uncomfortble, the tie you wear with your suit might actually be bad for the health and safety of your co-workers.  Better leave it at home tomorrow.

At any rate, though much of the book borders on the absurd, we highly recommend it.  It is a book that will make you think about why people do the things they do.  We consider it a good compliment to HS Dent’s demographic research: Superfreakonomics

Charles Sizemore, CFA
Co-author of the recently-published Boom or Bust: Understanding and Profiting from a Changing Consumer Economy