Superfreakonomics_ global cooling, patri - Steven D. Levitt [9]
The economic approach isn’t meant to describe the world as any one of us might want it to be, or fear that it is, or pray that it becomes—but rather to explain what it actually is. Most of us want to fix or change the world in some fashion. But to change the world, you first have to understand it.
As of this writing, we are roughly one year into a financial crisis that began with a subprime-mortgage binge in the United States and spread, like an extremely communicable disease, around the world. There will be hundreds, if not thousands, of books published on the topic.
This is not one of them.
Why? Mainly because the macroeconomy and its multitude of complex, moving parts is simply not our domain. After recent events, one might wonder if the macroeconomy is the domain of any economist. Most economists the public encounters are presented as oracles who can tell you, with alluring certainty, where the stock market or inflation or interest rates are heading. But as we’ve seen lately, such predictions are generally worthless. Economists have a hard enough time explaining the past, much less predicting the future. (They are still arguing over whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policy moves quelled the Great Depression or exacerbated it!) They are not alone, of course. It seems to be part of the human condition to believe in our own predictive abilities—and, just as well, to quickly forget how bad our predictions turned out to be.
So we have practically nothing to say in this book about what people call “the economy.” Our best defense (slim as it may be) is that the topics we do write about, while not directly connected to “the economy,” may give some insights into actual human behavior. Believe it or not, if you can understand the incentives that lead a schoolteacher or a sumo wrestler to cheat, you can understand how the subprime-mortgage bubble came to pass.
The stories you will read are set in many realms, from the rarefied corridors of academia to the grimiest street corners. Many are based on Levitt’s recent academic research; others have been inspired by fellow economists as well as engineers and astrophysicists, psychotic killers and emergency-room doctors, amateur historians and transgender neuroscientists.* Most of the stories fall into one of two categories: things you always thought you knew but didn’t; and things you never knew you wanted to know but do.
Many of our findings may not be all that useful, or even conclusive. But that’s all right. We are trying to start a conversation, not have the last word. Which means you may find a few things in the following pages to quarrel with.
In fact, we’d be disappointed if you didn’t.
SuperFreakonomics
SuperFreakonomics
CHAPTER 1
HOW IS A STREET PROSTITUTE LIKE A DEPARTMENT-STORE SANTA?
One afternoon not long ago, on a welcoming cool day toward the end of summer, a twenty-nine-year-old woman named LaSheena sat on the hood of an SUV outside the Dearborn Homes, a housing project on the South Side of Chicago. She had a beaten-down look in her eyes but otherwise seemed youthful, her pretty face framed by straightened hair. She was dressed in a baggy black-and-red tracksuit, the kind she’d worn since she was a kid. Her parents rarely had money for new clothes, so she used to get her male cousins’ hand-me-downs, and the habit stuck.
LaSheena was talking about how she