University of Chicago
Graduate School of Business
5807 S. Woodlawn Ave.
Chicago IL, 60637
Phone: (773) 834-1862
Fax: (773) 834-3040
e-mail: s-levitt@uchicago.edu

Personal:

Born May 29, 1967

Married(Jeannette), four children (Amanda, Olivia, Nicholas, Sophie)

Positions Held:

University of Chicago Department of Economics

Director, Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory, Sept. 2004 - present

Alvin H. Baum Professor, July 2002 - present

Professor, June 1999 - June 2002

Associate Professor, August 1998 - May 1999

Assistant Professor, July 1997 - July 1998

American Bar Foundation

Research fellow, July 1997 - present

Harvard Society of Fellows

Junior Fellow, July 1994 - June 1997

CorporateDecisions, Inc.

Management Consultant, August 1989 - July 1991

Education:

MassachusettsInstitute of Technology

Ph.D., Economics, 1994

National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (1992 - 1994)

Harvard University

B.A., Summa Cum Laude, Economics, 1989

Phi Beta Kappa (1989)

Young prize for best undergraduate thesis in economics

Editorial Positions:

Editor, Journal of Political Economy (August 1999 - present)

Associate Editor, Quarterly Journal of Economics(1998-1999)

Honors, Awards, and Activities:

Quill Award for Best Business Book of the Year for Freakonomics, 2005

Booksense Independent Booksellers Nonfiction Book of the Year for Freakonomics, 2005

John Bates Clark Medal, 2003

Garvin Prize (given annually to the most outstanding presentation in the Univeristy of California at Berkeley Law and Economics Workshop), 2003

Economics Journal Lecture, Royal Economic Association Meetings, 2003

Fellow, Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA., In residence, September 2002-May 2003

Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, April 2002

Panel Member, National Academy of Sciences Panel Evaluating Guns, 2001-2002

AEA Program Committee, 2001

National Science Foundation Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, February 2000

Faculty Appreciation Award from the graduate students in the University of Chicago Department of Economics, April 2000

AEA Program Committee, 2000

Duncan Black Prize (given annually to the paper published in Public Choice judged to be most outstanding), for a paper written jointly with James Poterba, April 2000

Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, May 1999

National Science Foundation CAREER Award, April 1999

National Fellow, Harvard University Program in Inequality and Social Policy, September 1998-present

Quantrell Award (recognizing outstanding undergraduate teaching at the University of Chicago), May 1998

Review of Economic Studies European Tour, Presenter, May 1997

John M. Olin Research Fellow in Law and Economics, Harvard Law School, July 1995-June 1997

Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 1994-Present

Books:

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, April 2005, published by William Morrow (a Harper Collins imprint). Co-written with Stephen Dubner. "New York Times Best Seller for more than a year" Visit the Website

Publications In Academic Journals:

"A skeptical but sympathetic appraisal of the prospects for nurturant crime-control policies." Politics & the Life Sciences, 1997, 16(Issue 1), pp. 34. Download

"Alternative Strategies for Identifying the Link Between Unemployment and Crime." Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2001, 17(Issue 4), pp. 377. Download

"An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang's Finances." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000, 115(3), pp. 755-89. (with Venkatesh, Sudhir A.) Download

"An Empirical Analysis of Imprisoning Drug Offenders." Journal of Public Economics, 2004, 88(9-10), pp. 2043-66. (with Kuziemko, Ilyana) Download

"An Empirical Test of Competing Explanations for the Midterm Gap in the U S House." Economics and Politics , 1994, 6(1), pp. 25-37. Download (coming soon)

"An Examination of the Influence of Theory and Individual Theorists on Empirical Research in Microeconomics." American Economic Review, 2003, 93(2), pp. 151-55. (with Chiappori, Pierre-Andre) Download

"Are PACs Trying to Influence Politicians or Voters?" Economics and Politics, 1998, 10(1), pp. 19-35. Download

""Are we a family or a business?" History and disjuncture in the urban American street gang." Theory & Society, 2000, 29(Issue 4), pp. 427. (with Venkatesh, Sudhir A.) Download

"The Black-White Test Score Gap Through Third Grade"; Forthcoming, American Law and Economics Review, 2005. (with Fryer, Roland G.) Download

"Catching Cheating Teachers: The Results of an Unusual Experiment in Implementing Theory." Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs, 2003, pp. 185-209. (with Jacob, Brian A.) Download

"The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2004, 119(3), pp. 767-805. (with Fryer, Roland G., Jr.) Download

"The Changing Relationship between Income and Crime Victimization." Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review, 1999, 5(3), pp. 87-98. Download

"Comparing Interest Group Scores across Time and Chambers: Adjusted ADA Scores for the U S Congress." American Political Science Review, 1999, 93(1), pp. 33-50. (with Groseclose, Tim and Snyder, James M., Jr.) Download

"Congressional Distributive Politics and State Economic Performance." Public Choice, 1999, 99(1-2), pp. 185-216. (Poterba, James M.) Download

"Crime, Urban Flight, and the Consequences for Cities." Review of Economics and Statistics, 1999, 81(2), pp. 159-69. (with Cullen, Julie B.) Download

"Decomposing the Sources of Incumbency Advantage in the U. S. House." Legislative Studies Quarterly, 1997, 22(1), pp. 45-60. (with Wolfram, Catherine D.) Download

"The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation." The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1996, 111(2), pp. 319-51. Download

"Further Evidence that Legalized Abortion Lowered Crime: A Reply to Joyce." Journal of Human Resources, 2004, 39(1), pp. 29-49. (with Donohue, John J., III) Download

"Growing Up in the Projects: The Economic Lives of a Cohort of Men Who Came of Age in Chicago Public Housing." American Economic Review, 2001, 91(2), pp. 79-84. (with Venkatesh, Sudhir A.) Download

"Guns, Violence, and the Efficiency of Illegal Markets." American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 1998, Vol. 88 No. 2: pp. 463-67. (with Donohue, John J., III) Download

"The Hazards of Moral Hazard: Comment on Goff, Shughart, and Tollison." Economic Inquiry, 1998, 36(4), pp. 685-87. Download

"Honoring James Heckman's Contributions to Economics: Identification, Heterogeneity, and Economic Models." Law & Social Inquiry, 2002, 27(Issue 1), pp. 35. Download

"How Dangerous Are Drinking Drivers?" Journal of Political Economy, 2001, 109(6), pp. 1198-237. (with Porter, Jack) Download

"How do markets function? an empirical analysis of gambling on the National Football League", 2004, Economic Journal 114, 495: 2043-2066 Download

"How Do Senators Vote? Disentangling the Role of Voter Preferences, Party Affiliation, and Senator Ideology." The American Economic Review, 1996, 86(3), pp. 425-41. Download

"The Impact of Federal Spending on House Election Outcomes." Journal of Political Economy, 1997, 105(1), pp. 30-53. (with Snyder, James M., Jr.) Download

"The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2001, 116(2), pp. 379-420. (with Donohue, John J., III) Download

"The Impact of Race on Policing and Arrests." Journal of Law and Economics, 2001, 44(2), pp. 367-94. (with Donohue, John J., III) Download

"The Impact of School Choice on Student Outcomes: An Analysis of the Chicago Public Schools", 2004, Forthcoming Journal of Public Economics Download

"Incentive compatibility constraints as an explanation for the use of prison sentences instead of fines." International Review of Law and Economics, 1997, pp. 179-92. Download

"Is no News Bad News? Information Transmission and the Role of "Early Warning" in the Principal-Agent Model." The Rand Journal of Economics, 1997, 28(4), pp. 641-61. (with Snyder, Christopher M.) Download

"Juvenile Crime and Punishment." 1998, Journal of Political Economy , 106 (December): 1156-1185 Download

"The Limited Role of Changing Age Structure in Explaining Aggregate Crime Rates." Criminology, 1999, 37(Issue 3), pp. 581. Download

"Measuring Positive Externalities from Unobservable Victim Precaution: An Empirical Analysis of Lojack." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1998, 113(1), pp. 43-77 (with Ayres, Ian) Download

"Policy Watch: Congressional campaign finance reform." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1995, 9(Issue 1), pp. 183. Download

"Political Parties and the Distribution of Federal Outlays." American Journal of Political Science, 1995, 39(4), pp. 958-80. (with Snyder, James M., Jr.) Download

"Prison Conditions, Capital Punishment, and Deterrence." American Law and Economics Review, 2003, 5(2), pp. 318-43. (with Katz, Lawrence and Shustorovich, Ellen) Download

"Optimal Incentive Schemes when Only the Agents' "Best" Output Matters to the Principal." The Rand Journal of Economics, 1995, 26(4, Symposium on the Economics of Organization), pp. 744-60. Download

"The relationship between crime reporting and police: Implications for the use of uniform crime reports." Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 1998, 14(1), pp. 61-81. Download

"Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2003, 118(3), pp. 843-77. (with Jacob, Brian A.) Download

"Sample Selection in the Estimation of Air Bag and Seat Belt Effectiveness." Review of Economics and Statistics, 2001, 83(4), pp. 603-15. (with Porter, Jack) Download

"Testing Mixed-Strategy Equilibria When Players Are Heterogeneous: The Case of Penalty Kicks in Soccer." American Economic Review, 2002, 92 : 1138-1151 (With Chiappori, Pierre-Andre and Groseclose, Timothy) Download

"Testing the Economic Model of Crime: The National Hockey League's Two Referee Experiment." Contributions to Economic Analysis and Policy, 2002, 1(1), pp. na. Download

"Testing Theories Of Discrimination: Evidence From Weakest Link." Journal of Law and Economics, 2004, 47(2), pp. 431. Download

"Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors That Explain the Decline and Six That Do Not." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2004, 18(1), pp. 163-90. Download

"Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School." Review of Economics and Statistics, 2004, 86(2), pp. 447-64. (with Fryer, Roland G., Jr.) Download

"Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime." The American Economic Review, 1997, 87(3), pp. 270-90. Download

"Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effects of Police on Crime: Reply." American Economic Review, 2002, 92(4), pp. 1244-50. Download

"Using Repeat Challengers to Estimate the Effect of Campaign Spending on Election Outcomes in the U.S. House." Journal of Political Economy, 1994, 102(4), pp. 777-98. Download

"Using Sentence Enhancements to Distinguish between Deterrence and Incapacitation." Journal of Law and Economics, 1999, 42, pp. 343-63. (with Kessler, Daniel) Download

"Why Are Gambling Markets Organised So Differently from Financial Markets?" Economic Journal, 2004, 114(495), pp. 223-46. Download

"Why Do Increased Arrest Rates Appear to Reduce Crime: Deterrence, Incapacitation, or Measurement Error?" Economic Inquiry, 1998, 36(3), pp. 353-72. Download

"Winning Isn't Everything: Corruption in Sumo Wrestling." American Economic Review, 2002, 92(5), pp. 1594-605. (with Duggan, Mark) Download

Other Academic Publications:

"Aging in an American Street Gang: Toward a Life-Course Perspective on Gang Involvement." Forthcoming, in collection of articles to be published by American Bar Foundation. (with Sudhir Venkatesh). Download (coming soon)

"Comment on Ludwig and Raphael's Analysis of 'Project Exile.'" in Evaluating Gun Policy: Effects on Crime and Violence, edited by Jens Ludwig and Phil Cook, November 2002, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Download (coming soon)

"The Determinants of Juvenile Crime." in Risky Behavior by Youths, edited by Jonathan Gruber, University of Chicago Press, 2000. (with Lance Lochner) Download (coming soon)

"Deterrence." In Crime, edited by James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia. San Francisco: ICS press. 2001. Download (coming soon)

"The Economics of Inmate Labor Participation." 1999. Download (coming soon)

"Falling Behind." Education Next. Fall 2004. (with Fryer, Ronald) Download

"Review of Drug War Heresies by MacCoun and Reuter." Journal of Economic Literature, 2003, 41(2), pp. 540-44. Download

"To Catch a Cheat." Education Next . Winter 2004. (with Jacob, Brian) Download

"Understanding Colombia's Crime Situation and the Institutional Reforms Required to Alleviate the Problem." For a volume edited by Alberto Alesina, 2000. (with Mauricio Rubio) Download (coming soon)

Popular Writing:

"A Roshanda by Any Other Name" Slate Magazine, April 11, 2005 (with Stephen J. Dubner) Download

"Does Abortion Prevent Crime?" Slate Magazine, August 23, 1999 (with Steve Sailer) Download

"Monkey Business" New York Times, June 5, 2005 ( with Stephen J. Dubner). Download

"O Preco da Violencia" (On Preventing Violence) Exame, March 21, 2001, pp 90-94 (with Rodrigo Soares, published in Portugese) Download (coming soon)

OP-Ed in Los Angeles Times on Gangs Download (coming soon)

"Pools More Dangerous than Guns." Editorial published in Chicago Sum Times, July 28, 2001 Download (coming soon)

"The Search for 100 Million Missing Women." Slate Magazine, May 24, 2005 (with Stephen J. Dubner). Download

"The Seat-Belt Solution", New Tork Times, July 11, 2005 (with Stephe J. Dubner). Download

"Trading Up", Slate Magazine, April 12, 2005 (with Stephen J. Dubner) Download

"What the Bagel Man Saw," New York Times Magazine, June 6, 2004 (with Stephen J. Dubner) Download

Working Papers and Unpublished Papers:

"The effect of school choice on student outcomes evidence from randomized lotteries" NBER working paper series ;; no. 10113; National Bureau of Economic Research, 2003. (with Cullen, Julie B. and Jacob, Brian A.) Download

"Evaluating the Effectiveness of Child Safety Seat and Seat Belts in Protecting Children from Injury" August 2002. (with Joseph J. Doyle, Jr.) Download

"Evidence that Seat Belts are as Effective as Child Safety Seats in Preventing Death for Children Aged Two and Up." Unpublished paper, August 2005. Download

"The impact of legalized abortion on teen childbearing" ABF working paper ;; #2112;; Chicago, Ill.: American Bar Foundation, 2002. (with Donohue, John J. and Grogger, Jeff) Download (coming soon)

"Market Distortions when Agents are Better Informed: The Value of Information in Real Estate Transactions" NBER Working Paper Series No. 11053; National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005. (with Syverson, Chad) Download

"Measurement Error, Legalized Abortion, the Decline in Crime: A Response to Foote and Goetz(2005)" January 2006 (with Donohue, John J.) Download

"Measuring the Impact of Crack Cocaine." NBER Working Papers Series no. 11318; Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005. (with Fryer, Roland G., Heaton, Paul S. and Murphy, Kevin M.) Download

"Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children" NBER working paper series ;; no. 12066; National Bureau of Economic Research, 2006. (with Fryer) Download

"Testing for Racial Differences in the Mental Ability of Young Children" February 2006. (with Roland G. Fryer) Download

"Testing the Efficiency of Markets in the 2002 World Cup" June 2006 (with Ricard Gil) Download

"What Do Laboratory Experiments Tell Us About the Real World?" University of Chicago and NBER June 2006 (with John A List) Download