2005-12-07T14:42:00.000-08:00

Have you read Freakonomics? I read it this summer, then read it again recently. Now I'm reading some of the debate surrounding the book and the reasons why its self-aggrandising authors are wrong in their number crunching on issues such as crime and its relationship to Roe vs Wade. I think the feminist critique of this book is more interesting than the antler bashing of critics and supporters and their phallocentric attempts to poke holes in Levitt's data. But then, I would, wouldn't I? If I'm geeky about economics, I'm even more geeky about a gendered analysis of economics. What follows is, as the title suggests, a (short) feminist exploration of the gendered nature of 'freakonomics' in its broadest sense, without the aforementioned data penetration. I don't think it matters if you haven't read the book - you'll have doubtless absorbed the hype.

Written by celebrated economist Steven D Levitt and writer Stephen J Dubner, the book claims to be "turning conventional economics on its head" but in actual fact, takes conventional economics to the nth degree.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: if morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

In taking an econometric approach (largely the application of advanced statistical modelling) to analysis of such 'problems' such as the propensity for professional sumo wrestlers to cheat, Steven and Stephen do provide an entertaining read. But as a polemic on how to think about the economy, society or even 'the world', it's a step too far.

The underlying premise of the freakonomics method is that human beings respond only to incentives and that their behaviour is consistent and can be modelled. This is the Robinson Crusoe conception of human behaviour that underpins all modern economic theory and applications. The prototypical economic agent is detached, rational, calculating, infinitely predictable and lives in a utopia of free choice and luxuriant autonomy. While there's difficulty in applying this abstraction to anyone in the real world, it's obvious this simpleton is 'male'. The adjectives associated with homo economicus are very firmly on the macho side of cultural coding. The opposing 'feminine' aspects don't get a look because a. most economists are men and b. the rigidity of their methodology needs the 'masculine' heuristic to keep it afloat.

Far from being a new insight into socio-economic dynamics, the analyses presented are populist interpretations of some of Levitt's "idiosyncratic" academic papers. For "idiosyncratic", read 'pointless'. I can't comment on Levitt's overall contribution to economics, which I'm sure is sizeable and worthwhile, but Freakonomics has that "so what?" aftertaste, distinctive of so many exercises in econometric fetishism (click here for a seasonal example). The amusement of such is derived from the authors' dexterity in applying their method to 'novel' issues. It is entertaining, fun almost, but as a social science, I think economics has a duty to give a shit about social problems. The tools of economic analysis should be used, where appropriate, to better the lives of people experiencing poverty in an age of affluence, amongst other inequalities. Even where the issues discussed in the book could be socially relevant and the conclusions drawn have a vague sense of pertinence (such as the 'cheating' school teachers) the analysis is myopic, a-contextual and, ultimately, of little use. The economics needs to be heavily supplemented with insights from psychology, sociology and political science to be of any actual value to the world.

It worries me that so much of the heavily gendered distortions of modern economics, in conjunction with its methodological fetishism, is unnoticed or ignored. Economics could turn out to be the new morality and it needs to be exposed for what it really is: a male chauvinist pig of a discipline, suffering from severe monomania. In Freakonomics, its flawed methods are pointlessly applied to "everything" resulting in an agreeable, but ultimately meaningless encounter. It deserves to sell (I guess) but not to be taken so seriously.

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