Customer Rating:
Summary: fascinating
Comment: A great read with a variety of fascinating topics examined. Data is presented quite objectively, and users can draw own conclusions as to causality (though some possible hypotheses are presented).

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Un interesante enfoque económico
Comment: La primera parte del libro. La visión de Levitt - que Dubner se encarga de plasmar en palabras - del mundo actual es sorprendente, y uno se encuentra con un libro muy alejado de las interminables cifras y estadísticas que harían de cualquier libro de economía un desafio. De hecho, las curiosas preguntas que plantea acerca de la sociedad permiten obtener conclusiones sorprendentes que de otro modo hubieran sido impensables.
Ejemplos cómo el que la legalización del aborto en EEUU permitió que repentinamente - y pese a que todos los analistas preveían lo contrario - se redujera drásticamente el crimen en los años 90 en este pais es un ejemplo de los interesantes enfoques que Levitt afronta en este libro.
Sin embargo, aún asi los autores se desinflan con largas diatribas en las que reinciden una vez sobre la misma idea y en el que existe un fallo fundamental para el lector no estadounidense: las cuestiones abordadas sólo afectan a la historia y sociedad americanas, a excepción de el ejemplo, donde sugiere que "la elección del nombre de un niño está determinada por patrones socioeconómicos", creo que en latinoamerica eso es evidente!
Luego hay una interesante discusión sobre el sumo japonés. Un deporte que refleja la historia y tradición `honorable' y donde se puede preciar un trasfondo mucho más oscuro del que muchos podrían pensar.
Aparte de esos dos casos, lo cierto es que, este buen libro pudo haber incluido algunos otros enfoques económicos más globáticos.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: un libro sin "tema unificador"
Comment: el sr levitt escribe un libro en el que se pretende no tener un tema unificador, como prodría ser algún tópico de microeconomia o de calculo financiero. Pero el enfoque dado en el texto tiende a favorecer un analisis de diversas situaciones que ocurren en las sociedades desde el punto de vista de hechos verificables, a la luz de los datos confiables, y de un pensamiento no aprisionado bajo algún estereotipo fijado de antemano sino aquel de refutar las creencias populares convencionales.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not the sum of its parts
Comment: Let me preface this by saying how psyched I was to read this. Copies at the library were perpetually checked out so when I finally planned ahead and got it on hold I had some anticipation going. This wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't the sum of it's parts.

Each chapter goes into an interesting article on some topic. The best of these for me was the analysis of race and trends in baby names. Something like a third of black babies in California have a name that no other baby in the state has. White babies tend to have the same names as one another. One of the more blah chapters for me was about how the crime drop in the 90s was a result of abortion being legalized. The authors show coorellation but crime is very complex, and the treatment so brief that this seems political and not deep at all. Politics isn't taboo at all, but here it seems to be driving the authors and that doesn't lead to fun interesting eddies. Basically the chapters are a mixed bag. Some are pretty good. Some could easily have been left out, because they just weren't so well done and seem unfocused. They fit together to make a bunch of stand-alone articles, not a single whole book.

Almost any chapter from this book would be good to read. On the other hand, hearing about any one chapter is probably going to raise your expectations. If you like the snippets you hear, then buying the book will get you a heap of those snippets. If you are cool with that then go for it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent read - Inspired thinking
Comment: The basic premise of this book is that statistical analysis in the service of micro-economics can be used to illuminate how people actually behave. (This is distinct from the related question of how people ought to be behave, which properly belongs in the realm of ethics or, more dubiously, religion and politics.) In a world that is increasingly divided into murderous factions fueled by absurd beliefs based on centuries-old "wisdom", this book is a breath of fresh air, and its empirical approach to everyday life would do much good, if adopted by world leaders.

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