Freedomnomics: A Review

I was initially attracted to Freedomnomics because it purported to offer a riposte to Freakonomics, a book I read about 18 months ago. The more I saw of it on Amazon and suchlike convinced me that it would be a bit of a giggle. The author, John Lott Jr. is also the author of "More Guns, Less Crime" and several other right-wing tomes. Here, thought I, would be misinformed comment masquerading as economic analysis.

I could not have been more wrong. Freedomnomics is a plethora of contradictions. At once correct and incorrect, it suffers from the bias of the authors politics.

To use it's full title, "Freedomnomics: Why The Free Market Works and Other Halfbaked Ideas Don't - A Response To Freakonomics" is in it's primary aim successful. It looks at the claims made by Stephen Levitt in 'Freakonomics' and demolishes them in well-thought-out, logical analysis. In essence, it points out where Levitt overlooked several crucial factors, including prior statistical research, in reaching his conclusions.

I get the feeling that if John Lott Jr. had left it at that I would be hailing this book's praises from the rooftops as it is remarkably perceptive. Unfortunately, John Lott Jr. did not leave good enough alone. Not content with tearing the left-leaning Freakonomics to shreds, he then embarks on a journey into right-wing politics, attempting to prove (among other things) that big business is a force for good, that politicians are honest and that the death penalty is an effective deterrent for crime. He makes good cases for these but, as in his own rebuttal of Freakonomics, there are gaps in his logic. In the section on big business he shys away from any investigation of monopoly forces, in his article on crime he never even mentions the effect of insurance reporting on the rise in crime rates, and his piece on politicians simply compares apples and oranges (judges versus politicos).

This is not to say that the entire book is rubbish, because it isn't. The author is obviously quite intelligent but he suffers from the common ailment of academia in that he fails to rigorously test his own hypotheses. This would be merely unfortunate if he wasn't spending half of his book upbraiding another economist for doing the same. In this case, it becomes tedious.

The best I can say about this book is that it's got me back into some serious economic thought after far too long away. Like riding a bike, you never really forget, you just can't be bothered anymore...