Steven Levitt

Esquire, December, 2004

Levitt's work applying basic economic theory to solve unusually tough social and cultural questions led the American Economic Association to honor him this year with the John Bates Clark medal, an award given biannually to the country's most promising economist under age forty. Recently, his research has tackled such questions as why drug dealers live with their mothers and whether sumo wrestling is corrupt. His first book (coauthored with Stephen Dubner), Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explains the Hidden Side of Everything , will be published in April.

I TRY TO TAKE QUESTIONS that other people have abandoned and then answer them in simple and convincing ways. Sometimes they are important questions, or reasonably important questions, like why crime falls. Other times they...