Steven D. Levitt

American · b. 1967

Steven D. Levitt won the John Bates Clark Medal — economics' under-40 prize — for torturing unusual data until it confessed: sumo records, crack-gang ledgers, baby names. Freakonomics, written with journalist Stephen Dubner, sold four million copies, spawned one of the longest-running podcasts on earth, and turned incentive-hunting into a household sport.