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What Surgeons Get Paid, and What Patients Think Surgeons Get Paid

Jared Foran, an orthopedic surgeon in Denver, is a co-author of a new study called “Patient Perception of Physician Reimbursement in Elective Total Hip and Knee Arthroplasty” (PDF here). The authors surveyed 1,200 patients to see how much they thought orthopedic surgeons should make and what Medicare actually pays for a hip or knee replacement.

In an e-mail, Foran describes their results:

On average, patients thought that surgeons should receive $18,501 for total hip replacements,  and $16,822 for total knee replacements. Patients estimated actual Medicare reimbursement to be $11,151 for total hip replacements and $8,902 for total knee replacements.  Seventy per cent of patients stated that Medicare reimbursement was “much lower” than what it should be, and only 1% felt that it was higher than it should be.

6/6/12

A Year in the Life of an American Soldier

In honor of Memorial Day, Foreign Policy  published a fantastic photo essay on a year in the life of an American soldier.  “It has been a tumultuous year for the U.S. Armed Services,” the magazine writes, “one that included the complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and preparations for a dramatic drawdown of combat troops in Afghanistan, the end of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, the removal of a dictator in Libya, and a strategic pivot to Asia. At the same time, the American military has weathered a scandal over burning Qurans in Afghanistan and stared down the barrel of a looming budget fight in Congress.”  The essay includes images of soldiers training in the U.S. and elsewhere, patrolling and in combat in Afghanistan, and returning home.

6/4/12

FREAK-est Links

1. The Associated Press wants prostitutes to stay away from its D.C. bureau.

2. Are CEOs with military experience more honest?

3. The relationship between reading and being skinny.

4. Can exercise be bad for you? (HT: Eric M. Jones)

6/4/12

What Would Tyler Say?

Economist Tyler Cowen‘s Twitter feed was recently hacked — for the purposes of selling a weight-loss product.  In response, and following in the heels of his successful and hilarious #FedValentines economics meme, our own Justin Wolfers proposed a new project — #tylertweets.  Some of our favorites:

  • The best Whoppers are to be found at BKs attached to gas stations, but avoid if they advertise clean restrooms. –Art Carden @artcarden
  • cannibalism is wrong, but not for the reasons its critics say. We ignore the wisdom of cannibals at our peril. -@ModeledBehavior
  • My #tylertweets involve the Gold Standard, two albino goldfish, a braised goat and Paul Krugman in a small town in Mexico. –Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers
6/1/12

Mexican Food in America

In our latest podcast “You Eat What You Are, Part 1,” Tyler Cowen talked about the relationship between immigration and food. Gustavo Arellano, author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, has written in Reason a more sentimental account (with historic nuggets) of how Mexican food went mainstream:

Food is a natural conduit of change, evolution, and innovation. Wishing for a foodstuff to remain static, uncorrupted by outside influence — especially in these United States — is as ludicrous an idea as barring new immigrants from entering the country. Yet for more than a century, both sides of the political spectrum have fought to keep Mexican food in a ghetto. From the right has come the canard that the cuisine is unhealthy and alien, a stereotype dating to the days of the Mexican-American War, when urban legend had it that animals wouldn’t eat the corpses of fallen Mexican soldiers due to the high chile content in the decaying flesh. Noah Smithwick, an observer of the aftermath of the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, claimed “the cattle got to chewing the bones [of Mexican soldiers], which so affected the milk that residents in the vicinity had to dig trenches and bury them.”

5/31/12

Long Commutes: Bad for the Heart

A new study finds that, in addition to being a real downer, long commutes are related to bad health. Conducted by Christine Hoehner, Carolyn E. Barlow, Peg Allen, and Mario Schootman, the study found that long commutes are correlated with higher blood pressure and bigger waistlines.  “This is the first study to show that people who commute long distances to work were less fit, weighed more, were less physically active and had higher blood pressure,” said Hoehner. “All those are strong predictors of heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers.”

5/30/12

Motorcycle Deaths Hold Steady

In SuperFreakonomics: The Illustrated Edition, we explored the bizarre, unintended consequence of repealing motorcycle helmet laws: an increase in human organs available for transplantation.

A new report shows that motorcycle deaths are not dropping. From the Wall Street Journal

A report released today by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) finds that no progress was made in reducing motorcyclist deaths in 2011. Based upon preliminary data from 50 states and the District of Columbia, GHSA projects that motorcycle fatalities remained at about 4,500 in 2011, the same level as 2010. Meanwhile, earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration projected that overall motor vehicle fatalities declined 1.7 percent in 2011, reaching their lowest level since 1949. Motorcycle deaths remain one of the few areas in highway safety where progress is not being made.

5/29/12

FREAKest Links

1. Why are used TVs so expensive?

2. A New York Times Opinionator piece questions the reliability of social sciences.

3. Does sweating give away how you’ll play the Ultimatum game?

4. Does eating organic make you a jerk?

5. New study says obesity affects one-third of homeless.
6. Can happiness be bad sometimes?
7. Is coffee inversely related to death?

5/25/12

Men, Women, and Taxi Fare

A study on the taxi market in Lima, Peru examines price differences between men and women. Taxi prices in Lima are set by bargaining, and the market of sellers is extremely competitive. The authors initially found, surprisingly, that “men face higher initial prices and rejection rates.”

However, when the experiment was performed again with a strategic move, the discrimination disappeared:

Passengers in this study begin by rejecting a first taxi to send a signal of low valuation to a second (waiting) taxi which they then negotiate with. Despite passengers otherwise using an identical bargaining script, we find that negotiated outcomes at the second taxi are gender blind. The second taxi treats men and women the same.

5/23/12

Why Do American Women Work More Than Europeans?

Economists Indraneel Chakraborty and Hans Holter have an explanation for all those extra hours Americans work as compared to Europeans: divorce rates (and tax rates)  Here’s their theory:

We believe this is because marriage provides an implicit social insurance since the spouses are able to share their income. However, if divorce rates are higher in a society, women have a higher incentive to obtain work experience in case they find themselves alone in the future. The reason the incentive is higher is because in our data, women happen to be the second earner in the household more often than men. European women anticipate not getting divorced as often and hence find less reason to insure themselves by working as much as American women.

Chakraborty and Holter use U.S data to run a model testing their theory; their findings are interesting:

5/23/12

Hope and Poverty

Is there a role for hope in poverty alleviation programs?  According to a recent speech by economist Esther Duflo, there is. Duflo looked at a BRAC program in West Bengal; program participants were given a “small productive asset” (a cow, a goat, or some chickens) and a small stipend to encourage participants not to immediately eat the animal. The results were significant:

Well after the financial help and hand-holding had stopped, the families of those who had been randomly chosen for the BRAC programme were eating 15% more, earning 20% more each month and skipping fewer meals than people in a comparison group. They were also saving a lot. The effects were so large and persistent that they could not be attributed to the direct effects of the grants: people could not have sold enough milk, eggs or meat to explain the income gains. Nor were they simply selling the assets (although some did).

5/23/12

The Advantages of Looking "Trustworthy"

We’ve blogged before about the many advantages of being beautiful.  New research indicates that looking “trustworthy” carries some benefits as well:

In a paper recently published in the PLoS One journal, researchers from Warwick Business School, the University College London and Dartmouth College, USA, carried out a series of experiments to see if people made decisions to trust others based on their faces.

They found people are more likely to invest money in someone whose face is generally perceived as trustworthy, even when they are given negative information about this person’s reputation.

“Trustworthiness is one of the most important traits for social and economic interactions and our study examines whether people take potentially costly actions in line with their face-based trustworthiness judgments,” said Dr. Chris Olivola, one of the study’s authors. “It seems we are still willing to go with our own instincts about whether we think someone looks like we can trust them.”

Now the only trick is for people who aren’t in fact trustworthy at all to appear as if they are. Or, as it’s been said before: Once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.

(HT: Naked Capitalism)

5/22/12

The Economics of For-Profit Prisons

The Times-Picayune reports on Louisiana’s prison ecosystem — and the perverse incentives for sheriffs to keep inmate numbers high:

Louisiana’s incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran’s, seven times China’s and 10 times Germany’s.

The hidden engine behind the state’s well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.

Several homegrown private prison companies command a slice of the market. But in a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations.

5/17/12

FREAK-est Links

1. Is a new cut of steak worthy of a patent? (HT: Eric M. Jones)

2. First there were metrosexuals; now meet the urban datasexual. (HT: Jeff Bladt)

3. Is flopping a problem in the NBA?

4. Fighter pilot Mary Cummings explains robotic crop dusting.

5. Corporate takeovers: they trim the fat, including corporate jets.

6. Does the ability to feel guilt make for great leaders?

7. Evidence that director John Waters still hitchhikes.

5/17/12

Mark Cuban on the "College Bubble"

Mark Cuban, who answered reader questions here a while back, compares rising college tuition costs to the housing bubble in a recent blog post.  Here’s his argument:

It’s just a matter of time until we see the same meltdown in traditional college education. Like the real estate industry, prices will rise until the market revolts. Then it will be too late. Students will stop taking out the loans traditional Universities expect them to. And when they do tuition will come down. And when prices come down Universities will have to cut costs beyond what they are able to. They will have so many legacy costs, from tenured professors to construction projects to research they will be saddled with legacy costs and debt in much the same way the newspaper industry was. Which will all lead to a de-levering and a de-stabilization of the University system as we know it.

And it can’t happen fast enough.

5/16/12

Evidence That Myopia Has a Strong Environmental Cause

Time reports on a new study on why Asians have a higher rate of nearsightedness:

It has long been thought that nearsightedness is mostly a hereditary problem, but researchers led by Ian Morgan of Australian National University say the data suggest that environment has a lot more to do with it.

Reporting in the journal Lancet, the authors note that up to 90% of young adults in major East Asian countries, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, are nearsighted. The overall rate of myopia in the U.K., by contrast, is about 20% to 30%.

5/15/12

The Economics of a Ransom

In The AtlanticMegan McArdle traces the economics of ransom negotiation:

Economists would describe hostage negotiation as a bilateral monopoly price negotiation that is structurally just a special case of chicken. That is, unlike a barrel of oil or a freight car full of soybeans which can trade on an extremely liquid market with innumerable buyers and sellers, a hostage has exactly one seller (the kidnappers) and exactly one buyer (the employer and/or family of the hostage). When there is only one buyer, the opportunity cost for ransoming the hostage is zero.

5/14/12

Portugal's Budget Cut: Public Holidays

The BBC reports that Portugal will be cutting 4 of its 14 public holidays as an “austerity measure”:

Two religious festivals and two other public holidays will be suspended for five years from 2013.

The decision over which Catholic festivals to cut was negotiated with the Vatican.

It is hoped the suspension of the public holidays will improve competitiveness and boost economic activity.

5/14/12

What Do Indian Politicians and Drug Dealers Have in Common?

Freakonomics described the economics of a crack-selling gang — a tournament model where you don’t earn much unless you can get to the top of the pyramid. Columbia Business School professor Ray Fisman, who has shown up on this blog before, argues that politics isn’t all that different.  In Slate, Fisman summarizes his new working paper, coauthored with Florian Schulz and Vikrant Vig, which uses disclosed finances of politicians in India in the last election cycle. The researchers found that being a politician doesn’t really pay off:

5/11/12

FREAK-est Links

1. Will putting your organ donor status on Facebook encourage organ donation?

2. Economist humor: When a physicist meets an economist.

3. Will the UAE outlaw junk food in schools?

4. CNN releases 13 years of transcripts.

5. Why fiction might be good for you.

6. The 10 Commandments of Twitter: Academics Edition.

5/11/12

Is Eyeglass Recycling a Waste of Money?

Recycling your old eyeglasses may make you feel better, but, in Bloomberg View, Virginia Postrel argues that it’s actually a waste of money.  Postrel tracks the journey from eyeglass donation box to final destination — glasses are first shipped to their destination, where they’re sorted and evaluated for usefulness (only 7 per cent of donations are actually useable).  The numbers aren’t pretty.

5/9/12

The Future of USAID

Foreign Policy has published an interesting interview with Rajiv Shah, a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) administrator and former Gates Foundation employee.  Here’s Shah on his efforts to bring a business-like mentality to USAID:

I’ve tried to bring that business-like rigor and the tendency to ask questions — some would say I ask far too many questions — to make sure that when we’re spending taxpayer resources, we’re doing it with that absolute focus that we are making an investment against generating a result.

5/8/12

How to Be ExxonMobil

Foreign Policy interviews Steve Coll about his new book Private Empire, which is about ExxonMobil’s ongoing dominance. Coll explains the company’s competitive strategy, which it relies on when competing against other companies for African contracts as well as with state-owned oil companies in the Middle East:

I also think that the way they win these deals in a place like Chad or Papua New Guinea or Angola is, in effect, they go to the host country and say: “Look, we recognize that you can deal with the Chinese, and you’ll get soft loans and guns and things that you think are more valuable than what we can offer you, but what you’ll also get is really lousy project management. You’ll get less oil pumped, you’ll get less royalties, you’ll get less taxes, so you’ll end up net poorer. Why not come work with us under our rule of law, under a really straightforward contract? And what our record shows is that you’ll end up with more cash faster — and then you can use that cash to buy whatever guns you want? But you’ll have the money to carry out what ever plans you have; and we’re reliable, we’ll come in on time.”

5/8/12

Raghuram Rajan on the Recession

In Foreign Affairs, Raghuram Rajan (who’s appeared on this blog before) writes about the causes and lessons of the Great Recession:

In fact, today’s economic troubles are not simply the result of inadequate demand but the result, equally, of a distorted supply side. For decades before the financial crisis in 2008, advanced economies were losing their ability to grow by making useful things. But they needed to somehow replace the jobs that had been lost to technology and foreign competition and to pay for the pensions and health care of their aging populations. So in an effort to pump up growth, governments spent more than they could afford and promoted easy credit to get households to do the same. The growth that these countries engineered, with its dependence on borrowing, proved unsustainable.

5/7/12

Education and Ambition

When it comes to educational attainment, good intentions aren’t enough.  New research, led by Liz Todd of Newcastle University, looks at schemes to increase the educational attainment of low-income children by changing “aspirations and attitudes“:

“For more than 10 years national and local policy has focused attention on raising aspirations. But there is no evidence that if you want to impact on the attainment of lower-income pupils that changing attitudes and aspirations is the way to go. There is an urgent need to change direction,” says Todd.  “It’s not that aspirations aren’t important. It’s not about turning them on but keeping them on track. It’s highly unlikely that any child starts school wanting to be unemployed.”

5/4/12

FREAK-est Links

1. Do wind farms affect air temperature? And are we finally starting to solve the mysteries of clouds?

2. How dangerous are chairs?

3. Does playing music make kids more compassionate?

4. Strategic losing for Chinese Olympic badminton sweep? (HT: Mayur Misra)

5. Warren Buffett spots another winner.

5/4/12

The Appeal of the Middle

New research (summarized by the BPS Research Digest) from Paul RodwayAstrid Schepman, and Jordana Lambert demonstrates that people seem to prefer items located in the middle:

“In replication of the centre-stage effect, it was found that when participants were presented with a line of five pictures, they preferred pictures in the centre rather than at either end,” the authors write. “This applies when the line of pictures was arranged horizontally or vertically and when participants selected from five pairs of identical socks arranged vertically.”  

The authors also discuss the policy implications of their work:

“If item location influences preference during the millions of purchasing choices that occur every day, it will be exerting a substantial influence on consumer behaviour. Moreover, choices from a range of options are made in many other contexts (e.g. legal and occupational), and it remains to be investigated whether the central preference remains with other formats and whether it extends to other types of decision.”

5/3/12

Why Fruit and Veggies Aren't Obesity Cure-Alls

RAND reports on a healthy eating dilemma:

Is eating more fruits and vegetables the key to reducing obesity? A recent RAND study of more than 2,700 adults found that calorie intake from cookies, candy, salty snacks, and soda was approximately twice as high as the recommended daily amount. Consumption of fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, is only 20% shy of recommended guidelines.

5/1/12

Cutting Class, With the School's Help

Via the Globe & Mail: it used to be that when you wanted to cut class, you’d have to get a friend to sign you into class, or you’d have to beat your parents home to delete any incriminating messages on the answering machine. But those methods are bush league compared to a recent California initiative. United Press International reports that 50 high school students were caught colluding with a school administrator in an attendance scam:

4/30/12

Messing With Memory

New research finds that it’s alarmingly easy to create false memories for people, even when they know an event didn’t happen.  Psychologists Andrew Clark, Robert A. Nash, Gabrielle Fincham, and Giuliana Mazzoni conducted a three-stage experiment: 

In Session 1 participants imitated simple actions, and in Session 2 they saw doctored video-recordings containing clips that falsely suggested they had performed additional (fake) actions. As in earlier studies, this procedure created powerful false memories. In Session 3, participants were debriefed and told that specific actions in the video were not truly performed. Beliefs and memories for all critical actions were tested before and after the debriefing.

4/27/12

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