BigShinyThing

The Conference Board reported its index of American consumer confidence had dropped by 19 points in September, the biggest fall in 15 years. Hurricane Katrina and high petrol prices were blamed, but analysts suggested a weakening housing market and inflationary fears may also affect consumers’ long-term confidence. The grim little graph pictured says it all…

The journalist Stephen J. Dubner and economist Steven D. Levitt are doing well flogging their rogue economics (dubbed ‘Freakonomics’) in the States at the moment; what with a bestselling book, a regular column in the New York Times and the obligatory blog. So far the term ‘freakonomics’ only picks up 938 mentions in the global press and no background info on Wikipedia. The book is currently at number 4 in the UK non-fiction bestsellers. In other words, it is teetering on a tipping point.

What freakonomics does is try to explain the weirdness of much of the modern world through data. So far this approach has had some pretty serious subscribers. According to the Freakonomics site:

Levitt’s blazing curiosity proved attractive to thousands of New York Times readers. He was beset by questions and queries, riddles and requests-from General Motors and the New York Yankees and U.S. senators but also from prisoners and parents and a man who for twenty years had kept precise data on his sales of bagels. A former Tour de France champion called Levitt to ask his help in proving that the current Tour is rife with doping; the Central Intelligence Agency wanted to know how Levitt might use data to catch money launderers and terrorists.

What they were all responding to was the force of Levitt’s underlying belief: that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and-if the right questions are asked-is even more intriguing than we think.

Through data analysis and good old fashioned reporting Levitt and Dubner “show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives - how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ,well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.”

To find out more, you’ll have to read the book.