Another book that explores ‘the hidden side of everything’. Unlike the Dubner and Levitt books the topics explored here are quite narrow although not less interesting. Rather than separate chapters on different subjects this book looks at some very specific issues and the evidence connecting them. The main focus of the book the ‘new field’ of economic experiments, controlling for factors and seeing how groups react to different incentives with the aim being to solve problems such as underachievement in schools and discrimination.
Style
Nothing too technical here to put off a casual reader, this is another of many books trying to increase awareness of microeconomics and therefore it has to be accessible to everyone. One thing that did annoy me was that some parts start a story but you can’t find out what happens until it is used to illustrate the conclusion. Although you can’t really fault a literary device being used in a book.
Content
The main topics explored relate to discrimination and the achievement gap between students. Exploration happens through looking at field experiments, most of which were engineered by the authors or their colleagues during their careers. Other topics that the authors have looked into include how to get people to donate to charity, experiment to get ahead in business and a number of interesting by products besides this. Some topics span multiple chapters which other topics are only a few pages long.
Conclusions
‘The Why Axis’ covers a few subjects in a great deal of detail and although all of these topics are interesting the ties between them are vague. ‘The Why Axis’ was a very interesting read and I learnt a lot from it that I hope I’ll have power to put into practice some of the suggestions to combat discrimination and inequality. The only criticism I have is that the topics don’t really ‘flow’ together all that well, it can’t be helped as there’s not enough material for a singular book on a singular topic so it has to be a mash-up of previous work in a nicely digestible holiday novel.
Usefulness
In terms of classes I don’t think this is a very useful book. Yes it was interesting and yes I enjoyed reading it but I don’t think I would ever be able to reference this book in an essay. Still, if you enjoyed ‘Freakonomics’ you’ll enjoy this one too!
