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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What basketball player's recollections does Roland G. Fryer, Jr., cite in his paper "The Economics of 'Acting White'"?

2. By how many percentage points did unemployment drop in America drop during the sudden curb of violent crime in the Nineties?

3. On what religious holiday were the dictator of Romania and his wife executed?

4. What does Levitt credit with the rise of distinctly black names in the twentieth century?

5. What is the main reason that the price of crack cocaine began to drop in the Nineties?

Short Essay Questions

1. What national trends regarding crime in the nineties belie the relevance of the Giuliani-Bratton strategy?

2. To what extent does every chapter in FREAKONOMICS involve a closed system?

3. How do the authors address the moral outrage their theories may elicit?

4. How is the quality of life of an aborted child different from one that is born?

5. In what two ways do larger prisons affect less crime in a community?

6. What is the history behind the emergence of distinctly black names in America?

7. What study is cited involving names and job hiring?

8. How is name-choice an indicator of parenting?

9. How does Ceausescu create an opposite ripple effect in Romania than what occurs in America at the same time?

10. What connection exists between celebrity and popular names?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay on crack cocaine, dealing with its societal role in two parts: its origin and its effect. Where did crack cocaine come from, and how did it fill a hole in American drug culture? Why did it become so immensely popular in America? Secondly, how did it affect social trends regarding udban black Americans?

Essay Topic 2

Much of the book is dedicated to parenting and the ramifications of parental influence. Write an essay about parenting, in three parts:

Part 1) Dubner and Levitt link Roe V. Wade to the drop in crime in the 1990's. How are these two connected? What does this connection say about parental influence and how it relates to the choices as child will make in life?

Part 2) The Early Child Longitudinal Study offers a broad cross-section data regarding influences on children. What factors actually have a correlative effect on a child's performance? What do these factors have in common? Can parents alter their behavior to affect performance?

Part 3) The final chapter of FREAKONOMICS deals with one of the first decisions a parent makes regarding her child: the child's name. What are child names indicative of? Do they indicate where the child is headed or where she came from? What do they say about the parent?

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay on the subject of honesty. What drives human beings either to act honestly or to cheat, according to the authors of FREAKONOMICS? What systems do they study in order to uncover trends and motivations behind honesty and deception? How do these systems create a dynamic in which cheating is incentivized?

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