Freakonomics Rev Ed

Economics is above all a science of measurement.

There are three basic flavors of incentive: economic, social, and moral. Very often a single incentive scheme will include all three varieties.

Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work—whereas economics represents how it actually does work.

It comprises an extraordinarily powerful and flexible set of tools that can reliably assess a thicket of information to determine the effect of any one factor, or even the whole effect. That’s what “the economy” is, after all: a thicket of information about jobs and real estate and banking and investment.

Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work—whereas economics represents how it actually does work. Economics is above all a science of measurement. It comprises an extraordinarily powerful and flexible set of tools that can reliably assess a thicket of information to determine the effect of any one fac