Widely Published New York Short Discussion 2 Repl

One of the few books about economics to recently hit the New York Times bestseller’s list was Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner. The book was so popular they even made a movie about it. The specialty of Levitt and Dubner is applying economics to unconventional, controversial, or sometimes even downright bizarre topics. Some praise them for bringing economics to a wider audience, while others criticize them for not tackling serious issues or for delving into overly conversional areas.

So what’s all the fuss about? Take a look for yourself by viewing some of their videos from YouTube, including clips from their movie, or take a look at some articles at their blog. The links are below:

https://www.youtube.com/user/FreakonomicsVideos/playlists

http://freakonomics.com/category/freakonomics-blog/

Choose one of the videos or blog articles that you find most interesting, and share the link with your classmates. Discuss some of the following issues based on what you have viewed or read:

1. 1. What did you find interesting about the video or article that you found?
   2. Did you find anything from any of the videos or articles that might help you understand some concepts from the class, or is their stuff too odd or far out there to be useful for this class?
   3. Overall, what is your impression of Levitt and Dubner? Silly? Interesting? Bizarre? Informative? Boring? Other?

2. Reply one -The faces of Freakonomics are Steven D. Levitt, an award-winning professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and Stephen J. Dubner, a widely published New York–based journalist(FreakonomicsVideos. 2011).There was a lot of different video’s I found interesting like the video on Making the majors and hitting a curveball. Levitt and Dubnerdescrobe how aU.S.-born male is approximately 50 percent more likely to make the majors if they are born in August instead of July. Seems kind of hard to believe that someone is better based on the month they are born. However, it is hard to argue that someone is 50 percent better at hitting a big-league curveball simply on birth month (Gelman & Fung. 2018)Another video I found the most interesting since I am a big football fan was football freakonomics video. This shows how NFL General Managers picks the next Tom Brady or franchise player. Every year the NFL tries to value Quarter Back postion like they are expensive fine wine. What are the good years and what will predict performance. It is interesting to see how many times they choose the best player who ends up a bust. I am not going to lie I was shocked at the stats that Levitt and Dubner brought up in the video about how much a franchise, first round draft pick QB is paid per win, touchdown and completion. This kind of made me wonder if any player is worth that price tag per game or win. It really is all in the luck of the draw if they will be a success. One way the GM can try to separate the members is at the NFL Combine. This is where NFL prospects players go through rigorous drills and are graded on how they perform. Interesting that during this combine the players take the Wonderlic Personnel Test to measure their cognitive ability. The wonderlic test was created to help employers measure general intelligence. What was interesting is they interviewed coaches and most said they have seen good scores on the wonderlic test do bad and low scores be great players (Football Freakonomics. 2011)Economics is the study of scarcity. Freakanomics uses the same paradigms and applying it to different topics. This way we collectively look at topics or content. This is a simple way to look at idea versus making it complex. It seems almost as a way to dumb it down to make it understandable for real world. These videos helped me understand some concepts from the class and why General Managers are looking for that football player that is going to get them to the next level. (Football Freakonomics. 2011). Overall, I am impressed on how Levitt and Dubner are able to apply these techniques to any topic. It was interesting how they break down tough topics using the baseline concepts of economics and what people value. They do this in laymen terms to make it easy to understand. I also really enjoyed the videos and found them entertaining. I recall this movie, but had no idea Freakonomicshas passed its sixth anniversary. The word “freakonomics” has slowly changed to a light-hearted and contrarian, yet demanding and measurable, way of looking at the world.(Gelman & Fung. 2018).
3. reply 2The Interesting Point of the Video The interesting part of the video came at the summary when Levitt discusses the one element that matters in everything economist do, which is understanding human incentives. By understanding how a person responds to an incentive, businesses can better predict the demand of a product at a specific price point which will then provide a more efficient supply and minimize production cost. While I agree with Levitt’s comments and assess his statements to initially be an easy concept to understand, in execution people respond differently to incentives causing the modeling and predictive analysis to be extremely difficult and time intensive. The general concepts are easy to discuss, but the concepts would seem to take significant resources to research. How the Video Helped with Concepts for the ClassManagerial economics can be defined as the study of scarce resources and the choice related to how they are allocated (Stengel, 2012). The consumer demand will help inform how a manager will allocate the resources. The demand curve will provide a manager the different ways people will respond to a change in price to include high value uses for consumers that have no other options for a substitute product and will pay a high price point or low value uses for consumers that will utilize substitute products if the price rises above an unjustified point to use the substitute (Tabarrok, 2015). Using the price as an incentive, manager can maximize the use of the demand curve to inform their production and sales. The video made it clear to me that by understanding the consumer incentives, a business can better predict the equilibrium of the supply and demand to maximize sales and minimize production costs. Overall Impression Overall, I found the Freakonomics’ concepts interesting. I think that searching for demand trends in uncharacteristic business markets can help inform decisions if a business has the resources and time to conduct the additional analysis. By understanding and conducting additional research on uncharacteristic markets, a business could identify and draw consumers not typically targeted in traditional marketing which is beneficial in a growing global economy. While I do think it is interesting, I still have concerns about how well the studies of these uncharacteristic markets inform the more traditional mainstream markets and would like to see further analysis or results of mainstream businesses that were successful in integrating Freakonomics’ principles.After watching the Freakonomics video about Real Estate Agents, there are many relatable topics to Managerial Economics. The interesting part of the video was understanding that managers must understand human incentives as they apply to the manager’s respective market. The incentive concept transitions to the classroom by understanding the diverse ways consumers respond to demand and a changing price. Overall, the video gave an interesting impression of Levitt and Dubner’s theories.