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It’s rare for a book to become a major international best-seller. It’s even rarer for a business book to do so. According to the Bangkok Post, Steven Levitt and his book Freakonomics rank right up there with J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown.
The book’s popularity has made Levitt, Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics and the College and director of the University of Chicago Initiative on Chicago Price Theory, a public speaker in demand around the world. Recently, he addressed the 12th annual investor’s forum sponsored by CLSA, a brokerage, investment banking and private equity group, is a unit of France's Credit Agricole. Levitt’s unique statistical-based take on economics drew an audience that was only slightly smaller than the one former President Bill Clinton drew two days earlier, reported FinanceAsia.
The forum offers senior executives from the leading corporations in the Asia Pacific region to strengthen their understanding of the local economic, political and business landscape.
So how did Freakonomics come to be?
According to FinanceAsia, Levitt admits that as an economist his idea of good reading is the Statistical Abstract of the United States. It was while leafing through the data on abortion that the idea came to him to study the relation between unwanted children and crime. The resulting book landed on the New York Times best seller list two weeks after publication.
The book review in the Bangkok Post appeared on August 22, 2005.
The FinanceAsia article discussing Levitt’s appearance in Hong Kong ran on September 15, 2005.
The Jakarta Post carried an article on Freakonomics on September 18, 2005
Freakonomics was cited by the Evansville Courier & Press as one of several recent books that make ecomonics a good read. (September 11, 2005)