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Archive for April, 2011

Fill Up the Tank in Luxembourg

The price of gasoline is currently outrageous in the Netherlands, about €1.60/liter (about $8.80 per U.S. gallon). What do residents do? They arbitrage, so that if they’re headed south they plan to drive through and fill up in Luxembourg, where the price is “only” about €1/liter. This is a bad idea, unless your trip would take you near there anyway. Also, because there are often long lines of liked-minded arbitrageurs waiting to fill up, this is a bad idea if your time is valuable.


Women Continue to Make Education, Labor Gains

A new Census report finds that for the first time, more women in the workforce have bachelor’s degrees than men (37 percent vs. 35). Women are gaining on the education front in general: for ages 25 to 29, 36 percent of women had a bachelor’s or advanced degree versus 28 percent for men. Women were also slightly more likely to have a high school diploma than men: for age 25 and above, it’s 87.6 percent versus 86.6 percent.


Keynes Vs. Hayek, Round 2

Remember Round 1? Here now, the two economics heavyweights square off again, in spectacular rap-ified fashion: You can find more related material here. It is the co-creation of Russ Roberts, who you may remember making some provocative arguments in our “What Would the World Look Like If Economists Were in Charge?” podcast. And here‘s a Q&A with Roberts about the . . .


Will New HTML Unlock the True Power of Smartphones?

Photo: Nokia Connect A new report from the consultants at McKinsey touts the impact that a new generation of HTML code will have on the world’s smartphones. HTML is the programming standard that’s the backbone of the Internet. The latest version, HTML5, will essentially allow mobile programs to run through a Web browser rather than a specific operating system. That . . .


Did the Sale of Pyrex Hurt the Crack-Cocaine Industry?

We’ve written a lot about the economics of drugs, both legal and illegal. There’s an interesting article in Popular Science about Pyrex bake ware, crack cocaine, and the unintended consequences of reducing a product’s quality.


The 100 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur

This is a cross-post from James Altucher‘s blog Altucher Confidential. His previous appearances on the Freakonomics blog can be found here. If you Google “entrepreneur” you get a lot of mindless cliches like “Think Big!” For me, being an “entrepreneur” doesn’t mean starting the next Facebook, or even starting any business at all. It means finding the challenges you have . . .


FREAK-est Links

Children in Armenia are now required to learn chess at school. For New York taxi drivers, economics is always on the mind. Cost benefit analysis of actions from the movie Star Wars. Royal wedding to add £1 billion to UK economy. 120 years later, an uncensored version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is published. Professor Charles De . . .


East Coast Nostalgia in the Netherlands

One of my biggest thrills as a kid in the 1950s when we visited New York City was to go to the Horn & Hardart Automat. The last one closed in 1991—and I haven’t seen anything similar in the U.S. since. But: Walking around Eindhoven, Netherlands, there was the automat concept visible in the doorway of an eatery. Why here in the Netherlands, but not in the U.S.?


India's Worsening Gender Imbalance

We’ve written a lot about gender on this blog, and the preference for boys over girls has been a hallmark of Asian societies for centuries. This has led to large gender imbalances across much of Asia, particularly in China and India. In China, there are 119 boys born for every 100 girls. According to India’s recently completed census, among children six and under, there are only 914 girls counted for every 1,000 boys.


Why Water Will Never Be the Next Oil: A Guest Post by Charles Fishman

Here now is the second in a series of guest posts from Charles Fishman, whose new book is called The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water. (Fishman’s last book is The Wal-Mart Effect.) In The Big Thirst, Fishman tackles the debate around water as an increasingly precious resource while reminding us that water can’t actually be . . .


What Can Movie Stars Tell Us About Marriage And Education?

According to a study published in the Journal of Human Capital, marriages among movie stars may help unravel the mystery behind why people tend to marry partners of similar education levels. It’s a question that’s been puzzling social scientists for years. Some reason that it is mostly due to monetary reasons: a partner with similar education should have similar salary . . .


Bring Us Your Most Uninviting Ideas

I like this question: If you keep a folder of important/embarrassing material on your computer’s desktop (or I guess a real desktop, even) and want to make sure that no one ever opens it, what’s the best name to give the folder? “Actuarial Test Prep” maybe? Suggestions, please. Also, does anyone know the name for this dilemma?   ADDENDUM: Thanks . . .


The Value of Unpaid Work: Which Countries Do the Most and Why

A new report from the OECD paints a fascinating picture of how citizens from different countries stack up on an assortment of metrics: from who works the longest hours, who shops the most, to who is most trusting of others. The annual report, titled “Society at a Glance 2011 – OECD Social Indicators,” is chock-full with interesting data on all kinds of social behaviors.


How Prevalent Is Insider Trading? And What's to Be Done About It? A Freakonomics Quorum

As I type these words, the biggest insider-trading trial in years, that of Raj Rajaratnam, has just gone to the jury. I haven’t followed the trial too closely, but the gist is evident: the line between “insider trading” and the legitimate, if sharp-elbowed, acquisition of useful trading information is extremely blurry. This is hardly the only insider case at the moment. Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, famously said last fall that “illegal insider trading is rampant and may even be on the rise.” So it seemed a good time to put together a Freakonomics Quorum and ask a couple of straightforward questions.


Gary Becker in a Web-Chat, Interviewed by Dubner

Not long ago, Levitt solicited your questions for the economist Gary Becker. Dubner interviewed Becker for a new project called Expert Insight (see BusinessWeek writeup here), whereby various “experts” — in economics, poker, golf, etc. — can be booked for web-chats. Becker is, as always, fascinating and far-ranging, covering everything from immigration policy and organ transplantation to (at the suggestion . . .


"The Quarterback Quandary"

Selecting a player in the NFL draft is essentially trying to predict the future, and human beings are simply not very good at it. Things get even harder when trying to pick the most important position in all of sports: the quarterback.


Quotes Uncovered: Twain or Not Twain

I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research.


Does More Education Lead to Less Religion?

According to a new working paper that looks at Canadian compulsory schooling laws, an additional year of education leads to a 4 percent decline in the likelihood that someone identifies with a religious tradition.


How to Make the Perfect Cup of Coffee

On his trip to Seattle, Stephen Dubner encounters the best coffee he’s ever tasted. The recipe comes straight from two former World Barista Champions.


Concierge Service for the Masses

While the rich and famous can have subscriptions to concierge services (such as the famed Quintessentially) to plan a vacation or book opera tickets, a recent Princeton grad is trying to bring such amenities to the masses. Harry Schiff, class of 2010, has started an online market for errands. He says he was sitting around craving a sandwich when the . . .


Digging Up the Roots of Language

For years, linguists believed it impossible to trace the genealogy of human language past about 9,000 years ago, when Indo-European tongues split somewhere near present-day Turkey. A new study out of the University of Auckland indicates that split is but the first among many, in a tree whose roots extend all the way to southwestern Africa, some 70,000 years ago. . . .


The Nurture of Gretchen Carlson: A Guest Post by Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University and a blogger for EconLog, has written a new book called “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think.” And he’s been guest-blogging for us about parenting. I had a chance to interview Caplan yesterday for an upcoming Freakonomics Radio show called “An Economist’s Guide to Parenting.” He had a great deal to say on the topic, all of it interesting and much of it provocative. I think you will enjoy it as much as I did.


FREAK-est Links

Robot to throw out first pitch at Phillies game. Brown University study: Genes dictate whether we learn from own experience or from suggestions of others. German court sentences three men in Europe’s biggest soccer betting scandal. Charts on beer drinking: global consumption goes up.


"Conspicuous Conservation" and the Prius Effect

This month, Toyota sold its one millionth Prius hybrid in the U.S. In 10 years, this strange-looking vehicle with the revolutionary engine has claimed a spot among the best-selling cars. Pretty impressive. But are all those Prius owners thinking mainly about better mileage and a smaller carbon footprint, or is there another incentive at work?