Freakonomics
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40 free Freakonomics trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Freakonomics turned economics into a bestseller by asking questions nobody expected an economist to ask. Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner dug into cheating, crime, parenting and baby names, and their answers started arguments that are still running. This quiz covers the famous case studies from the 2005 book, then moves on to SuperFreakonomics, Think Like a Freak, the documentary film and Freakonomics Radio. A few questions look at the authors themselves and at the critics who pushed back. It suits readers who remember the book's big surprises, podcast listeners, and economics students who want a quick test before a class discussion.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sport does Freakonomics mine for evidence that competitors with seven wins are gifted an eighth?
Sumo wrestling
Sumo wrestling data showed 7–7 wrestlers beating 8–6 opponents about 80% of the time on the final day, far above the odds. Eight wins from fifteen bouts saves a wrestler from demotion.
Q 02Freakonomics argues that which backyard feature is far likelier than a gun to kill a young child?
A swimming pool
A swimming pool is about 100 times likelier than any one gun to cause a child's death, Steven Levitt calculated. He noted that parents still fear the gun far more.
Q 03Freakonomics links the 1990s fall in American crime to which Supreme Court ruling of two decades earlier?
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade legalised abortion nationwide in 1973, and the book argues that fewer unwanted births meant fewer young offenders roughly eighteen years later.
Q 04Freakonomics reveals the surprisingly low pay of Chicago street dealers selling which drug for a gang?
Crack cocaine
Crack cocaine paid its street sellers so little that many still lived with their mothers, the puzzle that gives the chapter its title.
Q 05Paul Feldman, whose honor-system sales data fill a Freakonomics chapter on cheating, left economics to sell which food?
Bagels
Bagels sold on an honor system let Feldman, a former economist, measure exactly how often customers paid when nobody was checking.
Q 06Which profession does Freakonomics compare to the Ku Klux Klan for profiting from information that outsiders lack?
Real-estate agents
Real-estate agents share chapter two with the Klan, both cast as groups whose power rested on controlling what outsiders were allowed to know.
Q 07In Freakonomics, Loser Lane grew up to hold which job while his brother Winner became a lifelong criminal?
Police detective
Police detective Loser Lane served in the NYPD, which the authors offer as neat proof that a name does not decide a child's fate.
Q 08The SuperFreakonomics subtitle lists global cooling, patriotic prostitutes and why suicide bombers should buy what?
Life insurance
Life insurance points to the chapter on how a British bank's customer data helped track down terror suspects.
Q 09Freakonomics argues that economics is at root the study of what, defined as how people get what they want?
Incentives
Incentives matter so much to the authors that the idea earns a full chapter of its own in their third book, Think Like a Freak.
Q 10Which superhero's 1946 radio serial pitted him against a thinly disguised Ku Klux Klan, a story retold in Freakonomics?
Superman
Superman battled the Clan of the Fiery Cross across 16 episodes. Activist Stetson Kennedy claimed he pitched the idea, a tale the book's revised edition had to tone down.
Q 11Which adjective describes the economist who explores the hidden side of everything in the subtitle of Freakonomics?
Rogue
Rogue caught on as a label: a gang researcher featured in the book later subtitled his own account A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets.
Q 12Freakonomics retells how which mouthwash became a household staple after a marketing push by Gerard Lambert?
Listerine
Listerine was developed in 1879 as a surgical antiseptic and named after surgeon Joseph Lister, decades before marketing made it a bathroom fixture.
Q 13Freakonomics examines the 1966 abortion ban imposed by which Romanian dictator?
Nicolae Ceaușescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu wanted a far bigger population, and births almost doubled within a year of his decree. The book argues the children it produced helped overthrow him in 1989.
Q 21Steven Levitt won which honour two years before Freakonomics was published?
John Bates Clark Medal
John Bates Clark Medal honours a leading American economist under 40, and Levitt took it in 2003 for his work on crime. Its first winner, Paul Samuelson, later won a Nobel.
Q 22Stephen Dubner first met Steven Levitt when an editor sent him to write a profile for which publication?
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine piece was meant to need a two-hour interview, which Dubner stretched to three days. Levitt only agreed because his mother liked the magazine.
Q 23Stephen Dubner's first book, Turbulent Souls, recounts his return to which faith that his parents had left?
Q 14Which sociologist, later author of Gang Leader for a Day, co-wrote the gang finances study used in Freakonomics?
Sudhir Venkatesh
Sudhir Venkatesh got hold of a gang's handwritten accounts while doing doctoral fieldwork in Chicago. He later hosted a podcast on the Freakonomics network.
Q 15Freakonomics tells how answer patterns exposed which Chicago school staff for changing responses on standardized tests?
Teachers
Teachers amounting to about 5 percent of the Chicago total were cheating, Steven Levitt estimated, and the schools chief let him retest classrooms to prove it.
Q 16Which animals are taught to use money in the study by Keith Chen that closes SuperFreakonomics?
Capuchin monkeys
Capuchin monkeys star in the epilogue, a study Chen ran with Laurie Santos. The authors had first written about it in a 2005 column, four years before the book.
Q 17SuperFreakonomics revisits which 1964 New York murder, long blamed on neighbours who supposedly watched and did nothing?
Kitty Genovese
Kitty Genovese was reported to have died in front of 38 passive witnesses, a figure that a 2007 study found no evidence for. The book uses her case to test ideas about altruism.
Q 18SuperFreakonomics praises which Hungarian doctor who cut maternity ward deaths by making colleagues wash their hands?
Ignaz Semmelweis
Ignaz Semmelweis proposed washing with chlorinated lime in Vienna in 1847, yet fellow doctors mocked him, offended at being told to clean their hands.
Q 19The stratoshield proposed in SuperFreakonomics would cool the planet by pumping which gas into the stratosphere?
Sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide would mimic the cooling haze of a big volcanic eruption such as Mount Pinatubo. The plan came from the Seattle invention firm Intellectual Ventures.
Q 20SuperFreakonomics claims that doing what while drunk is deadlier per mile than driving a car drunk?
Walking
Walking drunk is eight times likelier to kill you per mile, Steven Levitt estimated, though the authors end the passage by telling readers to take a cab.
Judaism
Judaism was the religion both his parents gave up before he was born. Dubner, the youngest of eight children in a devout Catholic home, converted back as an adult.
Q 24Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, had his first work published at age 11 in which children's magazine?
Highlights
Highlights for Children printed his first piece long before his journalism reached The New Yorker and Time. He also played in a rock band that signed with Arista Records.
Q 25Which documentary maker directed A Roshanda by Any Other Name, the baby-names segment of Freakonomics: The Movie?
Morgan Spurlock
Morgan Spurlock was one of six directors who split the anthology film between them. Alex Gibney took the section on match fixing.
Q 26Selected preview screenings of Freakonomics: The Movie tested which unusual ticket pricing scheme in major cities?
Pay what you want
Pay what you want pricing ran only at selected previews, before Magnolia Pictures gave the documentary its regular autumn release.
Q 27Which crime is named in the title of the Freakonomics authors' fourth book, a collection of their blog posts?
Robbing a bank
Robbing a bank heads the title of When to Rob a Bank, which gathers pieces from the website the authors launched alongside their first book.
Q 28Think Like a Freak studies which competitive eater who nearly doubled the hot dog record by rethinking the problem?
Takeru Kobayashi
Takeru Kobayashi ate 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes at Coney Island in 2001, when the record stood at just over 25. He won the contest six years running.
Q 29Think Like a Freak praises which rock band's contract ban on brown M&M's as a clever test of concert promoters?
Van Halen
Van Halen buried the clause in a 53-page rider. Singer David Lee Roth said promoters who skipped it had often skipped the stage safety requirements too.
Q 30Which psychologist and author of Grit co-founded the Freakonomics podcast No Stupid Questions with Stephen Dubner?
Angela Duckworth
Angela Duckworth launched the show with Dubner in 2020. He stepped away in 2023 and executive Mike Maughan took his chair.