By Liz Coffin-KarlinThe Daily Northwestern

Self-titled “rogue economist” Steven Levitt, co-author of The New York Times best-seller “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” will speak Feb. 27 at Northwestern.

The event, sponsored by A&O Productions, is scheduled for 8 p.m. at Ryan Family Auditorium. Tickets will go on sale Wednesday for $3 at the Norris Box Office.

“He’s someone we’ve been thinking of since ‘Freakonomics’ came out,” said Rachel Cort, a Weinberg senior and A&O chairwoman. “He’s an interesting speaker because he straddles the line of education and entertainment, which is something new for A&O.”

Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, co-authored “Freakonomics” with journalist Stephen J. Dubner. “Freakonomics” has been on The New York Times Best-seller List for 92 weeks.

Levitt was the 2004 winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, recognizing the most influential economist in America younger than 40. He was described by National Public Radio reporter Scott Simon as “the most intensely watched economist of these times.”

But “Freakonomics” doesn’t assume its audience has a detailed knowledge of economics. The book is “economics for the layperson,” Cort said.

Levitt believes humans respond to social, moral and economic incentives.

“Economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing,” Levitt wrote in “Freakonomics.”

Levitt goes on to discuss the relative dangers of guns and swimming pools, the possibility of social mobility through membership in street gangs, and the similarities between sumo wrestlers and school teachers.

Levitt, who has been denounced by members of both left- and right-wing groups, said in an interview with NPR that the current Bush administration offered him a job as an adviser on crime.

He told them they had “better go back and look at the study (he) did on the link between abortion and crime.”

His study with Yale law professor John Donohue states that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s led to the decrease of crime in the 1990s, since unwanted children are at an increased risk for crime and the legalization of abortion decreased the number of unwanted children.

The pro-life Bush administration never contacted him again about the job, but Levitt said in the same interview that the ideas themselves were intuitive and not particularly contentious.

Levitt’s speech was supposed to be announced at the Sarah Silverman show last week, which was canceled because of inclement weather.

A&O will explore other methods of publicity, Cort said.

Reach Liz Coffin-Karlin at [email protected].