Steven Levitt

Steven David Levitt (born May 29, 1967) is a prominent American economist best known for his work on crime, in particular on the link between legalized abortion and crime rates. Winner of the 2003 John Bates Clark Medal, he is currently the Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and the director of the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He is one of the most well known economists amongst laymen, having co-authored the best-selling book Freakonomics (2005). Levitt was chosen as one of Time Magazine's "100 People Who Shape Our World" in 2006.

He attended St. Paul Academy and Summit School, graduated from Harvard University in 1989, and received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1994. He is currently the Alvin H. Baum Professor in Economics and the director of the The Becker Center on Price Theory at the University of Chicago.

In 2003 he won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded bi-annually 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 (www.freakonomics.com).

His work on various economics topics, including crime, politics and sports, includes over 60 academic publications. For example, his An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang's Finances (2000) analyzes a hand-written "accounting" of a criminal gang, and draws conclusions about the income distribution among gang members.

In his most well-known and controversial paper (The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (2001), co-authored with John Donohue), he demonstrates from statistics that the legalization of abortion in the US was followed approximately sixteen years later by a reduction in crime, then argues that unwanted children commit more crime than wanted children and that the legalization of abortion resulted in fewer unwanted children, and thus a reduction in crime as these children reached the age at which many criminals begin committing crimes. (See Legalized abortion and crime effect.)