Rather overrated--just okay
I did think the authors did a good job using statistical analysis to bring out interesting facts about novel questions. And their reasoning from the data was usually sound (the abortion/crime-rate link was particularly well-documented, from both angles using the Romanian case as well as the American). But there were some serious problems. I think one reason it didn't hold my interest was its acknowledged "lack of a unifying theme." That made it little better than a book of trivia, albeit one that only takes a handful of topics and looks at them a little more in-depth. Some of those topics were very interesting (I found the chapter on names especially entertaining, perhaps since it's an important topic to me as a writer), while others were of merely esoteric interest (cheating sumo wrestlers?). The worst chapter, however, was their outrageous comparison of real estate agents to the Ku Klux Klan. Suddenly gone was their mountain of data organized by penetrating logic, and in its place we were offered a couple of stories about "acquaintances" of the authors, who apparently hold some sort of personal grudge against real estate agents. Such testimonials are notoriously misleading, indicating that they had little real data to back up their claims. But to the extent that they did offer data, their argument was insultingly ludicrous. Real estate agents are the moral equivalent of murderous bigots, we are told, because they have knowledge that they withhold from us for their own personal gain. First of all, what the authors call "informational asymmetry" or whatever, is simply another term for specialization, which anyone with the least bit of education about economics knows is what makes our advanced industrial civilization possible. While it is true that there are unscrupulous real estate agents (I know one who happens to be a cousin of mine), and even that whole industries are notorious on this account (such as the coffin industry that the authors mention), it would be ludicrous to say that anyone who has specialized knowledge--be it doctors or lawyers or auto mechanics--by that very fact has an interest in hiding the facts from you in order to exploit you. Yet this is precisely the claim that the authors are making. I could go on and on about the fallacies, both logical and empirical, involved in this view, but I think all you have to do is look at your own motives for wanting to go into your chosen field to see what nonsense this is. As to their specific claims about real estate agents, well, why should they put extra weeks worth of work into selling your house when they will see relatively little added benefit to themselves? The authors are operating on a very Christian, altruistic premise here, that it is their duty to serve others, even if that means sacrificing themselves. Rather, if homeowners think that they can get a better price for their house, and the additional money is worth it for them to put it on the market and represent it on their own, then they should do so. Otherwise, they must either accept their agent's terms, or try to negotiate better terms with them that will not involve a sacrifice on anyone's part (for instance, the agent could get a larger cut of the difference on any subsequent offers if they agree to keep it on the market). And incidentally, what made the KKK evil was not their knowledge of stupid secret rituals which supposedly made them feared and gave them power, it was their use of violence and the threat of it against innocent individuals--while most real estate agents, by contrast, could not even legitimately be charged with fraud. Finally, even where the authors did demonstrate valid connections, such as the abortion/crime-rate case, I found it somewhat unsatisfying, because, while interesting, this does not really address the cause of crime. While it is true, as they ably demonstrated, that legalizing abortion caused the crime rate to drop, it did so only indirectly, since it would not be true to say that the unavailability of abortions is the cause of crime. If we took that reasoning to its logical conclusion, we could say that forced abortions in every pregnancy would eliminate crime altogether--which it ultimately would, since it would lead to the extermination of the human race, but that ignores that such a program of forced abortions would itself be a massive crime (not because they are abortions, but because they are forced). So that's my two cents (or two dollars) about Freakonomics. I'm just glad I checked it out from the library instead of dropping $22 for it.