The Man Who Asks too Many Questions

What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? Co-authors of Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner instantly landed in the “New York Times Bestsellers” section. Steven Levitt, in particular, is a great example of a modern day leader in his field.
A 1989 graduate from Harvard University, he received his Ph.D. at MIT in 1994. In 2003, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal which is awarded bi-annually to the most promising economist under the age of 40. He is quite an intellectual, and he is also one of the most recognized economists amongst laypeople. Today, he is a Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago.
When I hear the word “economist”, I think of Alan Greenspan and a group of old, boring conservatives who raise and lower the interest rate. Luckily, Steven Levitt crushes this stereotype. Jokingly calling himself a “rogue economist” Levitt is not just concerned in the interest rate. He applies his mathematic equations to questions that have social impact. What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Would you believe that they are both…cheaters? Levitt finds pretty convincing evidence of teachers cheating for students on standardized tests and sumo wrestlers throwing matches for a payoff.
Or, what about drug dealers’ living situations? Well, as they say in the book, “if you ask enough questions, strange as they may seem at the time, you may eventually learn something worthwhile”. The crack dealers that the study focus’ on worked in a gang that is structured like a corporation with franchises (different gangs in different areas) all under a (they literally were called this) “board of directors”.
Levitt likes to ask questions. One of the most controversial studies he did in 2001 in a paper titled Legal Abortion and Crime Effect. Levitt, and co-author Jon Donohue, argue that since Roe v. Wade, legalized abortion can account for almost half of the decrease in crime that occurred in the 1990s. Now, this is not a truth, this is just an argument. And it is a very interesting at that. There is much criticism to this argument. In 2005, two economists published a paper arguing against the methods used in determining the findings. The Economist notes the debate in a December 1, 2005 article:

Abortion, legalised throughout the United States by the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade ruling in 1973, prevents unwanted pregnancies from becoming unwanted children. Higher abortion rates from the 1970s onwards thus help to explain why crime rates fell in America about two decades later.
That's the theory. But a paper published last week by Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, finds an embarrassing hole in the evidence. Messrs Donohue and Levitt subjected the data to a battery of tests, some suggestive, others more systematic, in an effort to prove the links in the chain. The challenge is to distinguish the role of abortion from other potential influences on crime, many of which cannot be observed directly.

Donohue and Levitt have since responded to the argument. A key statement made to NPR by Steven Levitt is:

The numbers we're talking about, in terms of crime, are absolutely trivial when you compare it to the broader debate on abortion. From a pro-life view of the world: If abortion is murder then we have a million murders a year through abortion. And the few thousand homicides that will be prevented according to our analysis are just nothing—they are a pebble in the ocean relative to the tragedy that is abortion. So, my own view, when we [did] the study and it hasn't changed is that: our study shouldn't change anybody's opinion about whether abortion should be legal and easily available or not. It's really a study about crime, not abortion.

He shows himself as one who is both a humanitarian and a scientist. The duo has re-subjected their statistics to more tests in order to prove their legitimacy. But regardless, Steven Levitt is working not just to develop his field for the future, but also to change the public view of his field. So, is he a public intellectual?
Being that he has graduated from both Harvard and MIT, works as the director of University of Chicago’s The Becker Center on Price Theory, and is considered one of the best economists under 40, it is easy to call him an intellectual. So let us take it a step farther. In response to Stephen Mack’s piece The “Decline” of the Public Intellectual, I wrote a piece asking what, in fact, is a public intellectual? Really, the public intellectual evades a description and rather must fulfill a set of requirements. Among these requirements, Mack notes the importance of criticism. Steven Levitt is a social critic, though an economist. Through questions ranging in topic from the Ku Klux Klan to the drug trade to cheating teachers, Steven Levitt finds a way to contextualize the ways that these groups function and act within society. And he does it in a way that the layman can understand.
So to re-ask the question, is Steven Levitt a public intellectual? Yes, by all means. And not only is he a leader within his field but he is also helping others rise to level. After publishing his first book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and his co-author Stephen Dubner created a blog. Since picked up by The New York Times, they continue to run the site and they have expanded their influence even farther. Steven Levitt is not only a public intellectual, but he is also a young leader who has many more years of thought provoking social criticism that only an economist can give.