Economic page turners

Abstract

Economic page turners like Freakonomics are well written and there is much to be learned from them – not only about economics, but also about writing techniques. Their authors know how to build up suspense, i.e., they make readers want to know what comes. An uncountable number of pages in books and magazines are filled with advice on writing reportages or suspense novels. While many of the tips are specific to the respective genres, some carry over to economic page turners in an instructive way. After introducing some of these writing tools, I discuss whether these and other aspects of good writing lead to a biased presentation of economic theory and practice. I conclude that whatever the problems with certain economic page turners may be, they are not due to the need to write in an accessible, appealing way.

Keywords:

• economic page turners
• economics made fun
• Freakonomics
• popular writing
• storytelling devices

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to participants of the EIPE Symposium Economics Made Fun in the Face of the Economic Crisis for helpful comments and to Adriana Kramer for polishing the style of a previous draft.

Notes

 1. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/04/is-steve-levitt-ruining-economics.html, posted 24 April 2007; retrieved on 12 September 2010.

 2. In Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘The Art of Writing’, quoted from the Penn State Electronic Classics Series at http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/rlsteven/art_writ.pdf.

 3. This implies that there are some sentences in AER papers that one can imagine to be part of Freakonomics; here is an instant classic as an example from Akerlof's (1991) discussion of procrastination: ‘Each morning for over eight months I woke up and decided that the next morning would be the day to send the Stiglitz box’ (p. 3, emphasis in original). Scheiber (2007) is so consequent as to extend his criticism of Freakonomics to the fanciness of nontraditional topics in AER and JPE.

 4. Besides fact and logic, ‘a serious argument in economics will use metaphors and stories as well – not for ornament or teaching alone but for the very science’ (McCloskey 1998, p. 19).

 5. There is a reason why using different senses makes texts that are not easily forgotten: ‘Writing that honors the senses (…) engages not only the logical mind but also our visual, physical and emotional intelligences. Sensory-rich writing awakens the full spectrum of consciousness and our myriad ways of knowing’ (Hiestand 2007, p. 201).

 6. Another example is Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, a novelist who returned to his home country Kenya after a promising political change, and was then brutally assaulted, most probably in an act of revenge ordered by ‘Economic Gangsters’ (Fisman and Miguel 2010, pp. 1–3).

 7. The Marshall Jevons detective stories featuring Harvard professor Henry Spearman (e.g., Jevons 1993) are entertaining as well, but hardly provide an opportunity for readers to really get emotionally involved. But after all Spearman serves as the reader's proxy.

 8. I owe this qualification to Lodge (1992), chap. 17.

 9. Jute (1999, p. 75) doubts that this can consciously be planned, but advises writers to avoid ‘bad rhythm’. See Stein (1995, chap. 20) for more ambitious advice on pace variation.

10. Details on the construction of Figure 1 are available from the author, or in the manuscript version of this paper at http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb02/makro/forschung/magkspapers/26-2011_frank.pdf.

11. After subsections on opening a book and on keeping the readers from stopping to read, it seems natural to insert one on ending a book (or a chapter). However, this is a point where writing a journal paper and writing an economic page turner are almost indistinguishable. By training, academic writers are always looking for a powerful, well-founded conclusion to end their paper. However, there is one trick of the trade that economic page turner writers might have learned from other successful nonfiction writers, and this is the full circle ending, according to Hart (2007, p. 235) the ‘most satisfying story ending, it gives the sense that the story has come back to where it began’. For example, Landsburg (1993) starts his Chapter 16 like this: ‘“They pay you to think about things like that?” My airline seatmate didn't come right out with the question, but despite his best efforts, his expression revealed all”. And then, after 11 pages reflecting on why popcorn pricing in cinemas is only seemingly trivial, he elegantly ends: ‘It might have been fun to discuss these questions with my neighbor on the airplane. But I decided to let him sleep’. Note that Levitt and Dubner (2009) also bring their Chapter 3, summarized in Figure 1 above, full circle.

12. The Grateful Dead reappear in SuperFreakonomics (Levitt and Dubner 2009, p. 69), which suggests that Lodge's (1992, p. 168) conjecture ‘Symmetry (…) matters more to writers of fiction than readers consciously perceive’ extends to some cases of nonfiction.