Steven Levitt on Abortion and Crime: Old Economics in New Bottles

This article explores the work of Steven Levitt on abortion and crime as representative of a new wave of economists that are redefining the mainstream of the discipline. Levitt has moved away from formalized modeling of narrow self‐interested maximization that was a hallmark of the “old” mainstream. However, he retains the “old” mainstream linchpins of a focus on the individual by abstracting from the social context, and an emphasis on the ability of econometric testing to reveal the truth. These crucial elements that Levitt retains from the “old” mainstream create some problems of both emphasis and analysis for his explanation for the drop in crime in the United States.