Are You Going to Wear a Bracelet?

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The plan would be, for instance, that people who are in prison right now would be offered a deal. In return for wearing a bracelet, say, for four years, we'll let you out of prison two years early. If you commit crime, we're going to put those two years of your of your sentence that are deferred, will put it back on. This is an idea, save money. It's good for everybody, right? Only you. Make that clearer. Who's who's going to wear i the om seeing you. And so we've been able to get these bracelets on ten hundred more people than anywhere else in the U.S.

Author and economist Steven Levitt is the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and host of the podcast "People I (Mostly) Admire." He is best known as the co-author, with Stephen Dubner, of Freakonomics. The book, published in 2005, became a phenomenon, selling more than 5 million copies in 40 languages. Levitt talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the book's surprising success, the controversy it generated, and how it shaped his career. Levitt says, for him, "economics is about going into the world and finding puzzles and thinking about how understanding incentives or markets might help us get a better grasp of what's really going on."