If the late Younis Shalaby had been cast as the economist in the play School of Troublemakers, with his comedic, disjointed style and illogical reasoning, it would have been a perfect embodiment of the renowned economist Steven Levitt, who won the John Bates Clark Award for the best economist under 40 for his book Freakonomics. Much like Shalaby’s performance, Levitt wrote his book in a similarly humorous and attention-grabbing manner, mocking the principles and foundations upon which most economists base their hypotheses and conclusions—ideas accepted as if handed down from the heavens. Levitt’s genius, along with his co-author Stephen Dubner, lies in their use of overlooked statistics and figures, dismissed by others, to uncover clearer concepts that often contradict what economic geniuses have preached for nearly a century.
This book, while heavily focused on American society, serves as a model to consider when someone in any country claims expertise on an economic issue and its relation to society. Levitt poses several questions across six chapters, built on statistics and figures seemingly unrelated to social economics. These include: investigating teacher and sumo wrestler cheating, information control in military firms and real estate brokerage, the economics of drugs and the low income of small-time dealers, the legalisation of abortion and its impact on crime rates, the negligible influence of ideal parents on education, and the socio-economic patterns of naming children. All these debates use economic tools to prove non-economic truths or, conversely, employ unconventional methods to debunk widely accepted economic axioms.
For example, Levitt uses sumo wrestling—a highly popular Japanese sport in the West—to prove the prevalence of cheating in its competitions. Sumo wrestlers compete in 15 matches and only reach the finals if they win at least eight. Known for their close-knit community, Levitt argues that they rig match outcomes by pre-determining winners so each can take turns claiming titles. Statistically, he found that 80% of wrestlers who reach the final match without a title end up winning—a non-economic truth revealed through economic tools.
Another example Levitt explores is the socio-economic truth that academic research and successive US governments attributed the 1990s decline in crime rates to economic growth, social rehabilitation programmes, and crime prevention. Levitt dismisses these reasons, attributing the decline instead to the legalisation of abortion in the 1970s. He successfully proves this relationship statistically, debunking the achievements of leading academics and economists on the issue and consigning their work to the dustbin of scientific history. This is especially evident when he confirms that states which implemented these laws three years earlier also saw crime rates drop sooner by the same margin.
With the help of his friend Dubner, Levitt comically and engagingly debunks many entrenched economic beliefs, proving their inaccuracy using unconventional methods and data. He follows his sceptical instincts, questioning established truths and levelling a long list of accusations against those he considers ‘pretenders of certainty’. He repeatedly reminds readers that economics is about proving ‘what is already true’, not ‘what should be true’. In other words, a shrewd economist is one who uncovers the truth regardless of the methodology or theory used, even if it contradicts preconceived notions. Levitt honestly applies this principle to himself, never claiming absolute certainty in his discoveries but leaving readers free to decide whether they agree with his conclusions as they journey through his book.
Perhaps not all economists can follow Levitt and Dubner’s method of seeing connections between things with the same talent. However, all economists should avoid becoming too comfortable with familiar, agreed-upon concepts, which are, after all, human-made and prone to error. While Younis Shalaby may have strung together disjointed ideas and sentences that amused audiences without being fully understood, Levitt excelled in logically connecting economic contradictions and fragments in a manner no less humorous, yet understood by all—even the general public.
This article is originally published by AlBorsa in Arabic and later AI-translated by South Push.