Excerpt: 'Freakonomics' by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Aug. 27, 2009 — -- Author Steven Levitt is not your typical economist. Levitt studies the riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child-rearing -- and usually turns conventional wisdom on its head.

In their blockbuster book, "Freakonomics," Levitt and co-author Stephen Dubner show that economics is, at the root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

In "Freakonomics," they set out to explore the hidden side of ... everything: The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

You can read an excerpt from the book below.

You can find out more about "Freakonomics" by Clicking Here.

"Freakonomics" is now available in paperback.

Imagine for a moment that you are the manager of a day-care center. You have a clearly stated policy that children are supposed to be picked up by 4 p.m. But very often parents are late. The result: at day's end, you have some anxious children and at least one teacher who must wait around for the parents to arrive. What to do?

A pair of economists who heard of this dilemma -- it turned out to be a rather common one -- offered a solution: fine the tardy parents. Why, after all, should the day-care center take care of these kids for free?

The economists decided to test their solution by conducting a study of ten day-care centers in Haifa, Israel. The study lasted twenty weeks, but the fine was not introduced immediately. For the first four weeks, the economists simply kept track of the number of parents who came late; there were, on average, eight late pickups per week per day-care center. In the fifth week, the fine was enacted. It was announced that any parent arriving more than ten minutes late would pay $3 per child for each incident. The fee would be added to the parents' monthly bill, which was roughly $380.