Steven David "Steve" Levitt is an American economist known for his work in the field of crime, in particular on the link between legalized abortion and crime rates. Winner of the 2004 John Bates Clark Medal, he is currently the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, director of the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy published by the University of Chicago Press until December 2007. He co-authored the best-selling book Freakonomics ... and its sequel Superfreakonomics . He is a grand-nephew of Robert L. May, the lyricist of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In 2009, Levitt co-founded The Greatest Good, a business and philanthropy consulting company. He was chosen as one of Time magazine's "100 People Who Shape Our World" in 2006. Levitt was born in 1967 and attended St. Paul Academy and Summit School, graduated from Harvard University in 1989 with his B.A. in economics summa cum laude, and received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1994. He is currently the William B.
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