MASTERY QUIZ

SuperFreakonomics

Test your knowledge with 45 questions across 3 challenge tiers

Based on the book SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

🥉 Fundamentals

🥈 Deep Dive

🥇 Expert

Externality

A cost or benefit that affects parties not directly involved in a transaction

Example

Pollution from a factory affects neighbors who are not part of the production process

Incentives

The rewards or punishments that motivate human behavior and decision-making

Example

Understanding incentives helps predict how people will respond to policies and changes

Unintended Consequences

Outcomes that were not foreseen or intended by a particular action or policy

Example

The Americans with Disabilities Act may have reduced employment of disabled workers

Cheap and Simple Solution

An inexpensive fix that solves a problem more effectively than expensive complex alternatives

Example

Hand washing saves more lives than expensive medical interventions

Geoengineering

Deliberate large-scale intervention in Earth climate system to counteract global warming

Example

Injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere could cool the planet cheaply

Altruism

Selfless concern for the welfare of others often examined skeptically by economists

Example

What appears altruistic may have hidden self-interested motivations

Regression to the Mean

The statistical tendency for extreme results to be followed by more average results

Example

A sports player with an exceptional season will likely perform closer to average next year

Natural Experiment

A real-world situation that approximates experimental conditions allowing causal inference

Example

The Vietnam draft lottery created random assignment useful for studying war effects

Selection Bias

Distortion in data caused by the non-random selection of subjects

Example

Comparing drunk drivers who crash to those who do not ignores that most drunk drivers arrive safely

Moral Hazard

When protection from risk encourages riskier behavior

Example

Car insurance may lead people to drive less carefully since they are protected from costs

Prostitution Economics

The economic analysis of sex work examining supply demand and pricing

Example

Street prostitutes earn less than earlier generations partly due to increased competition from amateurs

Terrorism Economics

Economic analysis of terrorist behavior strategies and effective countermeasures

Example

Terrorists respond to incentives and their organizations can be analyzed like other groups

Fundamentals

TIER 1 • READER BADGE

10 Questions ~5 min 80% to pass

Start Quiz →

🔒

Deep Dive

TIER 2 • SCHOLAR BADGE

15 Questions ~10 min 80% to pass

🔒 Pass Fundamentals to Unlock

🔒

Expert

TIER 3 • MASTER BADGE

20 Questions ~15 min 85% to pass

🔒 Pass Deep Dive to Unlock

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