Apr 26
Freakonomics without the economics
Freakonomics was a fun book, and it got a lot of people interested in economics that wouldn't have been interested otherwise. The podcast based on the approach taken in the book has highlighted a lot of very interesting research and has been a pleasure to listen to. The writer Stephen Dubner runs the podcast and his co-author Steven Levitt occasionally co-hosts.A recent episode "Death by Fire? Probably Not" shows what can happen when the economist is left out of the show. It was a podcast about fire safety done by someone completely unfamiliar with the economic concept of opportunity cost. A new California regulation that went into effect this year requiring sprinkler systems in new homes was applauded as a natural step of fire safety regulation instead of analyzed from a cost benefit perspective. The additional cost of $4000 to $6000 dollars per house was not mentioned. With a national fire death rate of 13.2 deaths per million people, even if these regulations brought the fire deaths of those inside these houses down to zero it would be doing so at a cost of hundreds of million of dollars per life saved.
It's bad when normal journalists misses some basic economic idea that is important to their story, but it is worse when a journalist who has spent the last few years writing books about economics does it.
For people interested in a fun economics podcast Freakonomics does have a lot of good episodes. However, Dan Ariely's Arming the Donkeys also covers economic topics and does a better job of challenging the ideas of its guests.
