Steven D. Levitt – Author Biography
Steven D. Levitt is an American economist and bestselling author whose book Freakonomics — written with journalist Stephen J. Dubner — brought economic thinking to millions of readers and helped create the modern genre of pop-economics writing.
Early Life
Steven David Levitt was born on May 29, 1967, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and his PhD in economics from MIT. His academic work was unconventional from the start: instead of studying traditional economic topics, he applied economic tools to questions about crime, cheating, and everyday behavior.
Career
Levitt joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, one of the world’s leading economics departments, where his creative empirical research — on topics like the economics of drug dealing, the effects of legalized abortion on crime rates, and cheating among sumo wrestlers and teachers — made him famous within the profession. In 2003 he won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the most promising American economist under forty. His collaboration with New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner produced Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (2005), a runaway bestseller that argued incentives explain far more of human behavior than conventional wisdom admits. Sequels followed: SuperFreakonomics (2009), Think Like a Freak (2014), and When to Rob a Bank (2015). He also co-hosts the People I (Mostly) Admire podcast.
Major Works
His major works, all co-authored with Stephen J. Dubner, include Freakonomics (2005), SuperFreakonomics (2009), Think Like a Freak (2014), and When to Rob a Bank (2015).
Writing Style and Themes
Levitt and Dubner write with the curiosity of detectives: every chapter poses a puzzle (“Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?”) and solves it with data. The style is breezy, contrarian, and story-driven, translating academic research into vivid narratives. The central theme is that incentives — often hidden, often perverse — drive human behavior, and that careful measurement can overturn expert consensus and common sense alike.
Legacy
Freakonomics sold millions of copies and spawned an entire shelf of imitators, effectively inventing pop economics as a publishing category. Levitt’s work also influenced how a generation thinks about data and causation — for better and worse, as some of his more provocative findings (particularly on abortion and crime) remain hotly debated. He remains a professor at the University of Chicago and a prominent voice in debates about evidence-based policy.
