The Great Debate

What do you do when you are trained as an economist, but find economics too complex?

Become a freakonomist, of course.

Steven D. Levitt, co-author of  the freshly published  SuperFreakonomics, decided to "take the tools of economics and apply them to the kind of questions that no self-respecting economist would ever want to be related to -- like: does the name that you give your children affect their life outcomes; what are the underlying economics of prostitution; or, is your estate agent ripping you off?"

Levitt, who teaches economics at the University of Chicago, co-wrote SuperFreakonomics and an earlier book titled Freakonomics with New York journalist Stephen J. Dubner.

Before a talk at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London, Levitt explained to Reuters how he became a freakonomist.

Related vlog: A freakonomic view of climate change

- Alan Beattie is world trade editor at the Financial Times, and author of the recent book “False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World”. He studied history at Oxford and economics at Cambridge, and worked as a Bank of England economist before joining the FT. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Those who forget history are condemned to listen to historians going on and on about it, a fate almost as bad as listening to economists doing the same. (And I write as a double agent with a foot in both camps attempting the delicate task of bringing the two together in my new book)

As we are perpetually being told, the current global financial crisis and recession is the kind of event that comes along only once or twice in a century. So now the immediacy of the panic has subsided, perhaps this is a good time to ask if we been applying the correct lessons from the past, and particularly from the 1930s, in dealing with this one.