Freakonomics is a documentary whose background is on a book written byStephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt. It determines what motivates people to do what they do and if the availability of incentives will influence the way that they will work. The documentary is divided into different sections.

Thefilm starts with an example of a real estate agent and a buyer who wants to buy a house. The mechanism that agents make money is if the clients are able to pay the full price of the house. Whenever they are supposed to sell a house, they will convince the seller to settle at a price lower than what they will be asking the buyer. One the agent convinces the seller to sell a house; they can sell the house immediately. In the film, the seller wants to sell his home for $300,000.He gets an offer for $ 290,000 which the agent tries to convince him that it is the best offer that he will get and urges him to take it.Whenever a person quotes the price that they are willing to sell their house for, the agent has the mandate to sell it. In the documentary, a client is willing to sell his house for $300,000. The nearest offer he gets is $ 290,000.If the agent does not manage to convince the seller to take the offer and the seller decides to wait for another week, then the agent will end up getting only $ 9,850 instead if the initial$ 10,000.He wastes time that he could have used to make another deal.

The next example is about the naming of a child. It was named A Roshanda by Any Other Name by Jeremy Chilnick and Morgan Spurlock. This section the way a naming of children will impact in their lives.He seeks to find whether the name will determine how he child will end up or if it the way that the child is brought up and the environment that they live in. People sometimes judge race and class depending on the name that the person is given.In an experiment, people were asked about which names they considered black and which were considered white. In order to determine the effect that a name had on the individual’s life, they made a resume with the same credentials but different names. The resume that had the name Greg received 67% of call backs while the one that had the name Tyrone received only 33% percent of calls.Naming of children has been so commercialized that parents are giving their children names that would sell. Studies however indicate that it does not matter what a child is named rather people determine how they will live their lives. This section of the documentary ends with a couple naming their child Barrack Obama.

Directors Peter Bull and Alex Gibney explore the incentive of cheating. Tis section says that people will always cheat whenever they can. It views sumo wrestling and how the players cheat. For instance, if there are two wrestlers fighting and one has already attained the goal that they would want, they could easily let the other person win so that they can meet in the subsequent matches where he will automatically win. The two people who were about to expose this form of corruption but died before they could do so. Ironically, they died two weeks before they were to expose the corruption through a press conference, and they died of the same illness. The matter was neverinvestigated.Whenever a sumo wrestler died, the management would claim that they died of natural causes rather than because of a fight. This analogy was used to indicate the financial market of the United States and how the media covered up the scam. It seems to indicate that the truth will always come out.

The next section was directed by Eugene Jarecki. It was about how the rate of crime in New York and other states was reduced. The rate of crime in the 1990s declined despite officials believing that the rate of crime wouldincrease. Officials had many reasons as to why the rate of crime reduced which included a stronger and better economy and gun control. The population in Romania doubled in 1966. This was because women were forced to get pregnant, and abortion was illegalized so that the country could have a larger labor force. Due to the large population, the rate of crime also went up. When abortion was legalized, the rate of crime went down.

The final section investigates whether children can perform better in school if they are offered an incentive. This section was directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachael Grady. Ittries to investigate whether a child who is given money so that they attain better grades will work or whether it would make the student perform even worse. The experiment was conducted on 900 students. The target was put at grade C. If a student scored grade C and above, they would be given $ 50. Other requirements included no absenteeism from school and no suspension. The grand prizewas $ 500 and a ride home in a limo. The incentive, however, did not motivate all the students, and only 40% of the students passed their exams. However, plans are underway to carry out an experiment with a larger and younger group of students.