Steven Levitt | |
---|---|
Born |
Steven David Levitt May 29, 1967 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Institution | University of Chicago |
Field | Social economics |
School or tradition |
Chicago School of Economics |
Alma mater |
Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
Doctoral advisor |
James M. Poterba |
Influences |
Gary Becker James Heckman Robert Nozick |
Influenced |
Roland Fryer Jesse Shapiro |
Contributions | Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics |
Awards | John Bates Clark Medal (2003) |
Information at IDEAS / RePEc |
Steven David "Steve" Levitt (born May 29, 1967) is an American economist known for his work in the field of crime, in particular on the link between legalized abortion and crime rates. Winner of the 2003 John Bates Clark Medal, he is currently the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, director of the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy published by the University of Chicago Press until December 2007. He co-authored the best-selling book Freakonomics (2005) and its sequels SuperFreakonomics (2009) and Think Like a Freak (2014). In 2009, Levitt co-founded TGG Group, a business and philanthropy consulting company. He was chosen as one of Time magazine's "100 People Who Shape Our World" in 2006. A 2011 survey of economics professors named Levitt their fourth favorite living economist under the age of 60, after Paul Krugman, Greg Mankiw and Daron Acemoglu.
Levitt was born to a Jewish family in new Orleans in 1967, and attended St. Paul Academy and Summit School in St. Paul, Minnesota. He graduated from Harvard University in 1989 with his B.A. in economics summa cum laude, and then worked as a consultant at Corporate Decisions, Inc. (CDI) in Boston advising Fortune 500 companies. He received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1994. He is currently the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor and the director of The Becker Center on Price Theory at the University of Chicago. In 2003 he won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years by the American Economic Association to the most promising U.S. economist under the age of 40. In April 2005 Levitt published his first book, Freakonomics (coauthored with Stephen J. Dubner), which became a New York Times bestseller. Levitt and Dubner also started a blog devoted to Freakonomics.