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Steven Levitt

Steven Levitt is the Alvin H. Baum Professor in Economics and the College at The University of Chicago where he studies a wide range of topics including the economic aspects of crime, corruption, sports and gambling, and education.

Levitt received a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University in 1989, and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1994.

In 2003, Levitt received the John Bates Clark medal of the American Economic Association as the most outstanding American economist under the age of forty.

Levitt is no stranger to gambling. Although no longer a frequent poker player, playing poker and betting horses were his main hobbies many years ago. Levitt wrote his senior thesis on thoroughbreds winning the award for "Best Undergraduate Thesis in Economics". He has also studied how gambling markets in the NFL function and how bookies optimally set lines.

Levitt is also co-author of a New York Times Bestselling book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Levitt has a website www.freakonomics.com where he maintains a blog and has a monthly column in the New York Times Magazine. His articles for that column can be found here.

To get more of an idea of the kind of economist that Steven Levitt is and the interesting topics he researches, you may read an article that appeared in The New York Times about him and his research, "The Economist of Odd Questions: Inside the Astonishingly Curious Mind of Steven D. Levitt".