Free exchange
自由交流
Why “Freakonomics” failed to transform economics
为何“魔鬼经济学”没能魔改经济学
The approach was fun, but has fallen out of favour
这个方法有趣，但已失宠
“ECONOMICS IS A study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” So starts Alfred Marshall’s “Principles of Economics”, a 19th-century textbook that helped create the common language economists still use today. Marshall’s contention that economics studies the “ordinary” was not a dig, but a statement of intent. The discipline was to take seriously some of the most urgent questions in human life. How do I pay my bills? What do I do for a living? What happens if I get sick? Will I ever be able to retire?
“经济学是一门研究人类一般生活事务的学问。”阿尔弗雷德·马歇尔（Alfred Marshall）的《经济学原理》（Principles of Economics）一书的开篇如此写道。这本19世纪的教科书帮助创造了经济学家至今仍在使用的通用语言。马歇尔认为经济学研究的是“一般”事务，这并非嘲讽，而是陈述意图。这门学科就是要严肃地研究人类生活中一些最紧迫的问题。我怎么支付生活开销？我靠什么谋生？我生病了怎么办？我有退休那一天吗？
- contention 争吵、争执、争论；（尤指争论时的）看法，观点
- dig 挖苦；嘲讽
- 拓展学习：熟词僻义 | bill是一种什么器官？
In 2003 the New York Times published a profile of Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago, in which he expressed a very different perspective: “In Levitt’s view,” the article read, “economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions.” Mr Levitt and the article’s author, Stephen Dubner, would go on to write “Freakonomics” together. In their book there was little about the ordinary business of life. Through vignettes featuring cheating sumo wrestlers, minimum-wage-earning crack dealers and the Ku Klux Klan, a white-supremacist organisation, the authors explored how people respond to incentives and how the use of novel data can uncover what is really driving their behaviour.
2003年，《纽约时报》发表了一篇对芝加哥大学的经济学家史蒂芬·莱维特（Steven Levitt）的人物专访，文中莱维特表达了截然不同的观点。“在莱维特看来，”文章写道，“经济学这门科学有的是绝妙工具来找出答案，但有趣的问题却严重不足。”莱维特和该文章作者斯蒂芬·杜伯纳（Stephen Dubner）后来共同撰写了《魔鬼经济学》（Freakonomics）。他们在书中几乎完全不谈一般生活事务。两位作者通过各种小故事，例如作弊的相扑选手、拿最低工资的毒品贩子以及信奉白人至上主义的三K党，探讨了人们如何对激励做出反应，以及如何利用新颖的数据来揭示他们行为背后的真正动机。
- vignette （清晰展示人物特征、局势等的）短文，简介，花絮；（表演）片段，小品；（尤指书名页上的）小花饰，小插图
- sumo 相扑
- crack 也作 crack cocaine ，指“强效可卡因”
