Steven D Levitt

Economist who wrote Freakonomics. The Hidden Side of Everything.

Steven Levitts eye-opening Freakonomics took economic theory into the real world of suburban parenting and urban drug gangs, turning conventional wisdom upside-down.

Co-Author of the Phenomenal Bestselling Business Book FREAKONOMICS, and Winner of the highly esteemed John Bates Clark Medal, as the most influential economist in America under the age of 40, Steven D. Levitt not only discusses the financial crisis in simple terms that anyone can understand, he also works with businesses to apply his FREAKONOMICS approach (combining data, economic theory, and unorthodox thinking) to the business world.

He asks provocative questions: If selling crack is so lucrative, why do dealers live with their mothers? Does parental doting really improve childrens test scores? Did New York Citys crime rate really drop because of police tactics (or population trends)? His controversial answers stir debate, and sometimes backlash.
"Imagine a whip-smart economist with a sprawling imagination. Now imagine hes 9 years old and wants to know everything. That is the basic profile of Steven Levitt."
Time

Unconventional Thinking for an Unpredictable Economy
Levitt talks about the importance of using unconventional thinking to address the pros and cons of your current business model and how to succeed as well as excel in the midst of the current economic crisis. He works with business audiences to apply his FREAKONOMICS approach (combining data, economic theory, and unorthodox thinking) to the business world and how this type of creative, out-of-the box thinking can help businesses shine in an unstable market. Steve Levitt shows audiences that economics (and ultimately business) is about incentives - how people can get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

FREAKONOMICS & SUPERFREAKONOMICS: Tales from the Original Bestseller, A Peek at the New Book, and Other Entertaining and Unconventional Wisdom
In the bestselling cultural phenomenon FREAKONOMICS, Levitt explores the hidden side of everything – the innerworkings of a crack gang, the truth about real-estate agents, the tell-tale marks of a cheating schoolteacher or the perfect parent. His lectures are as entertaining as they are illuminating, using humor and first-rate storytelling to discuss compelling topics such as ways to create behavior change, the incentives that work and don’t work, and the value of asking unpopular questions. His unconventional wisdom continues with SUPERFREAKONOMICS, which he and co-author Stephen Dubner are in the midst of writing. The new book will hit topics as divergent as terrorism, global warming, and prostitution and audiences will delight in getting a sneak peek at these new stories and theories, before it hits stands in the Fall of 2009.

A Rogue Economist
The Wall Street Journal has said, "If Indiana Jones were an economist, he´d be Steven Levitt." When Stephen Dubner (co-author of FREAKONOMICS) profiled Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, he was beset by questions, queries, riddles and requests - from General Motors and the New York Yankees to U.S. senators but also from prisoners and parents and a man who sold bagels. A former Tour de France champion called him to ask his help in proving that the current Tour is rife with doping; the Central Intelligence Agency wanted to know how Levitt might use data to catch terrorists. Winner of the highly esteemed John Bates Clark Medal, as the most influential economist in America under the age of 40 (which is frequently a precursor to the Nobel Prize), Mr. Levitt has an enormous curiosity and is set on course by personal experiences and the incongruities he sees in everyday life. He is an intuitionist. He sifts through a pile of data to find a story that no one else has found and devistes ways to measure an effect that veteran economists have declared unmeasurable. He has shown other economists just how well their tools can make sense of the real world.

The FREAKONOMICS Phenomenon
The No. 1 business book hit the bestseller lists on its first day in print and continues to be phenomenally popular in the U.S., Europe, Canada, and around the world. FREAKONOMICS has introduced to the world a new way of thinking – a way of getting beneath the surface of modern life – and the title itself has become a catchphrase spoken everywhere from college campuses to corporate boardrooms. The book has won numerous awards and is now being made into a TV show and a documentary film; its way of thinking also lives on the popular FREAKONOMICS blog, which has been called "the most readable economics blog in the universe," and is hosted exclusively on the The New York Times website.