is probably not the way to do it. We have what evidence for this judgment?

Right. But it’s also an oddity because it is so much more empirically dubious. I enjoyed most of “Freakonomics,” although its egomania gets on my nerves, but the abortion-cut-crime theory stands out for it’s importance, it’s fame, and it’s weak foundations.

Levitt doesn’t tell you this in “Freakonomics,” but his theory fails most obvious tests of historical plausibility because he failed to look at narrowly defined age-groups when making it up in 1999. For example, the first cohort born after abortion was legalized went on the worst murder and serious violent crime sprees in American history among 14-17 year olds, committing up to three times as many homicides per year as the last cohort born before legalization. Moreover, this huge wave of violent crime among 14-17 year olds in the late 1980s and early 1990s started where legal abortion was most popular first, both geographically and demographically.

There is about as much empirical evidence that legalizing abortion drove up the violent crime rate as drove it down. Large assertions require large evidence, and Levitt doesn’t come close to meeting the burden of proof. Nonetheless, his theory has proven wildly popular in the many softball book reviews he’s gotten.

I realize that many, many academics are rooting for Levitt because they hope to follow him into best-selling authordom and media-celebrityhood, but is it doing the economics profession any long term good to accept without skepticism Levitt’s most famous theory?

To learn what Levitt won’t tell you in Freakonomics about the complex relationship between abortion and crime, please see
http://www.iSteve.com/abortion.htm

The abortion paper is an oddity among Levitt’s better known works because it addressed such highly politicized issues. Economics seems typically to come in 2 flavors – obstruse musing on theory, modeling and technique, or partisan assertions about public policy that far too often border on dishonesty. Levitt usually avods both. He charms us with kicking strategies, baby names and lots and lots of cheating. This is Bates medal quality economics of an “Economist Reads the Newspaper” sort. We have our popularizers and our great original thinkers. Levitt isn’t a bit of each. Rather, he is the two together. His topics bring economics out of the tawdry realm of lying partisans and the often pointless realm of work-a-day specialization to show us that economics, or whatever it is that Levitt does, can tell us things we want to know.

But it’s important to support people who make academic fields accessible to non-experts. A lot of academics get jealous and touchy about their colleagues’ success in the public arena, but discovering new things is only half of our job—the other half is telling people about what we’ve discovered.

This entails no disrespect to Levitt—or to tim harford, whom I read to my advantage every week.

Maybe Steven D. Levitt isn’t the only economist with something fun to say about everyday life. He’s led the way – it’s up to the rest of us to follow.

Two words: Dolph Lundgren.

Nothing like imperiled funding to make one’s academic priorities clear.