The hubris of the economists laidbare: a cautionary tale aboutquirky overconfidence | Editorial
It began with a question: what do teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? It ended in a phenomenon. When Freakonomics (and its all-important subtitle: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything) was published 10 years ago, it became much bigger than a bestseller - the book of quirky questions with answers drawn from economics signalled nothing less than a cultural change. It sold millions in the first year alone, was translated into more than 30 languages and got turned into a film. Its authors, economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner, have spent the following decade writing enough follow-ups to sustain a franchise: Superfreakonomics, Think Like a Freak" the latest, When To Rob a Bank, is out this month and surprises mainly by not having freak in its title. Not a bad harvest for a work of micro-economics, co-written by a university academic. And - here's where a commercial triumph turns into a cultural turn - soon every publisher felt it needed a Freakonomics equivalent, or 17.
Before Levitt and Dubner, the work in America of popularising big ideas had fallen almost solely on the slim shoulders of Malcolm Gladwell. After them, it became a boom industry. Readers have spent most of the past decade surfing a wave of titles proffering social-science research to help navigate life. The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life; Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions" further references are available on your nearest table of three-for-two offers.
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