Freakonomics
Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner · 2005
A tour of how incentives quietly shape behaviour in places economics rarely looks. It reframes everyday puzzles as questions about who responds to what, and why people act the way they do once the costs and rewards are clear.
Simulations to go with this book
- Externalities & Pigovian TaxesIncentives at the core: how a tax can realign private choices with social costs.
- Tragedy of the Commons — The FisheryIncentives on a shared resource: when each person follows their own, the commons is overused and everyone loses — the externality trap the book keeps uncovering.
- Prisoner's DilemmaWhy rational individuals can land on a worse outcome together — the incentive trap the book keeps finding.
- Supply & DemandThe baseline model of incentives meeting in a market, behind many of the book's stories.