...FREAKONOMICS A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything Revised and Expanded Edition Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner CONTENTS AN EXPLANATORY NOTE In which the origins of this book are clarified. vii PREFACE TO THE REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION xi 1 INTRODUCTION: The Hidden Side of Everything In which the book’s central idea is set forth: namely, if morality represents how people would like the world to work, then economics shows how it actually does work. Why the conventional wisdom is so often wrong . . . How “experts”— from criminologists to real-estate agents to political scientists—bend the facts . . . Why knowing what to measure, and how to measure it, is the key to understanding modern life . . . What is “freakonomics,” anyway? 1. What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common? 15 In which we explore the beauty of incentives, as well as their dark side—cheating. Contents Who cheats? Just about everyone . . . How cheaters cheat, and how to catch them . . . Stories from an Israeli day-care center . . . The sudden disappearance of seven million American children . . . Cheating schoolteachers in Chicago . . . Why cheating to lose is worse than cheating to win . . . Could sumo wrestling, the national sport of Japan, be corrupt? . . . What the Bagel Man saw: mankind may be more honest than we think. 2. How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents? 49 In which it is argued that nothing is more powerful than information,...
Words: 105214 - Pages: 421
...This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Organization The overarching logic of the book is intuitive—organized around answers to the what, where, why, and how of international business. WHAT? Section one introduces what is international business and who has an interest in it. Students will sift through the globalization debate and understanding the impact of ethics on global businesses. Additionally, students will explore the evolution of international trade from past to present, with a focus on how firms and professionals can better understand today’s complex global business arena by understanding the impact of political and legal factors. The section concludes with a chapter on understanding how cultures are defined and the impact on business interactions and practices with tangible tips for negotiating across cultures. WHERE? Section two develops student knowledge about key facets of the global business environment and the key elements of trade and cooperation between nations and global organizations. Today, with increasing numbers of companies of all sizes operating internationally, no business or country can remain an island. Rather, the interconnections between countries, businesses, and institutions are inextricable. Even how we define the world is changing. No longer classified into simple and neat...
Words: 239764 - Pages: 960
