I’ll admit, I really like Freakonomics. Of course, I like economics and the study of incentives, but a large part of what excites me about the Econ degree is being able to take this course eventually. Is the course as awesome as I presume it to be? Is Levitt an interesting professor? Is the class taught with a Freakonomics philosophy/tint or is it something entirely different?
I’ve never taken it but the evaluations are very good.
It seems like point of the course is to show how basic economic and statistical principles like MC/MB, correlation/causation, experimental design and evaluation, etc. can be applied to the real world. It focuses on economic analysis and logically and methodically examining problems.
People really liked his lectures:
“We emphasize the analysis of the optimal role for public policy.”
This suggest they look at the social costs, making the punishment fit the crime, etc. etc. Becker did groundbreaking work in this area once upon a time. I would take any course taught by a famous guy like Leavitt but this one should be very instructive in terms of the broad applicability of economic theory. You’ll probably really enjoy it.
Hopefully he keeps the war stories to a minimim. That’s the problem with the commercially famous guys. Although his might be very interesting. Someone once told me he had his co-author hang out with a gang.
Leavitt is an outlier on the Chicago Economics faculty, if only because he claims not to know any math. His deal is data-heavy analyses of real-world decisions and markets.
He didn’t “have” a co-author hang out with a gang. He worked with a sociology PhD student who had already been studying gangs to bring economic analysis to bear on data about gang activity.
^^ Venkatesh definitely hung out with a gang - that’s how he got his data set. And wasn’t he faculty at Columbia when he and Leavitt first published their work in QJE (2000)? - although it’s possible to be both a co-author AND a grad student 
Yes, of course Venkatesh hung out with a gang. His entire career has been based on that. My impression was/is that he did that while he was a graduate student at Chicago.
I just looked at a 1998 NBER paper that was an early version of the 2000 QJE article. Venkatesh’s professional affiliation is listed as Harvard Society of Fellows, which is essentially a prestigious post-doc. So that looks like he was probably a grad student (or a newly-minted PhD) when he started working with Leavitt. His first book that looks like an expansion of his thesis was published in 2000, too. He was born in 1966, so that would have made him 32 in 1998, which is actually pretty young to have a completed PhD in Sociology, where the average time to degree tends to be pretty long and relatively few graduate students start right out of college.
I think he was a grad student for about seven years but could be off on that one. The gang was Chicago-based so your impression makes sense. At any rate, this is fascinating work and it’s not hard to see why Leavitt found the data set to be relevant. One could imagine fellow Clark medal-winner Gary Becker being similarly interested. Leavitt’s work is very creative in that way. Another reason to favor UChicago if you are interested in social sciences.
Leavitt has an engaging whimsical touch which comes through in interviews and in the Freakonomics books as well as in a learned tome that might be relevant to this course - “How to Rob a Bank”. He would surely be a dynamite teacher. I have sometimes wondered whether his personal style and popular appeal - with the royalties to prove it - could keep him from being taken completely seriously by his colleagues in the Department of Economics. Is he indeed a superior sort of popularizer of the Malcolm Gladwell sort or a guy with real scholarly chops to boot?
He’s a Clark Medal winner and that’s considered a very big deal in the academy. Esp. because, at the time, it was only awarded every other year. Leavitt joins other notable UChicago medalists who are current or former faculty: Schleifer, Murphy, Grossman, Heckman, Becker , Friedman . . I’ve heard it described as an early indicator of Nobel potential. Given that the Nobel in Economics is typically awarded decades after you’ve done your groundbreaking work, not sure how accurate it is as a predictor. Here’s the info for those interested:
“One of the most prestigious and eagerly anticipated AEA awards, the John Bates Clark Medal is awarded annually each April (formerly biennially from 1947-2009) to that American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. If there is a significant body of joint work, the Clark Medal may be awarded jointly to two recipients. Established as an American prize, it is sufficient that the candidate works in the US at the time of the award and US citizenship is not required.”
https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/bates-clark
Whether he’s done anything substantive SINCE the Clark medal is a good topic for discussion. He wouldn’t be the first economist to commercialize on decent social and communication skills coupled with a great idea.