'Rogue economist' details some eyebrow-raising findings

CHICAGO — Steve Levitt's world is economics, but he has no patience for inflation charts or stockmarket tables. He'd much prefer to plunge into a scholarly study of . . . cheating sumo wrestlers.

Or slippery real-estate agents.

Or drug-dealing gang members.

Levitt is a maverick economist at the University of Chicago, a school known for esteemed scholars who've paved a path to Stockholm, Sweden: Five Nobel Prize winners in economics are on the faculty. Eighteen others were students, researchers or professors at Chicago.

With a boyish curiosity and a powerhouse resume (Harvard, M.I.T., Chicago), Levitt has explored everything from provocative social issues — linking abortion and lower crime rates — to patterns of ethnic and age bias among TV game show contestants.

"It's not like I go looking for trouble," Levitt says. "But I try to find unusual ways to ask questions that people care about. And the most interesting answers you can come up with are the ones that are absolutely true and completely unexpected."

Levitt summarizes his unorthodox research in a new book, "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything." With co-author Stephen Dubner, he details some eyebrow-raising findings:

Guns kill fewer kids than swimming pools.

Gang members may not be mama's boys, but they often share mama's house.

The Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents have something in common. (More on that later.)

Not typical fodder for an economics book — one that manages to mention both W.C. Fields and John Kenneth Galbraith — but that probably helped it climb to No. 2 on Amazon.com's nonfiction list.

Levitt claims his father wasn't all that impressed and teasingly told his son: "This is the Levitt family's biggest accomplishment THIS week."

At age 37, Levitt already has compiled some impressive accomplishments: In 2003, he won the John Bates Clark medal, an award given to the leading U.S. economist under age 40 that is regarded by some as a junior Nobel. He has a legion of admirers and his share of critics. And a host of businesses are knocking on his door — everyone from the New York Yankees to General Motors.

Levitt has always been fascinated by corruption and crime. Growing up in Minneapolis, the reality-based "Cops" was his favorite TV show. "Ever since I was a kid, I've been attracted to the dark side," he says.