In their May 6, 2007, column for the New York Times Magazine, Dubner and Levitt wonder: Why do Americans spend so much time and money performing menial tasks when they don’t have to? What’s with all the knitting, gardening, and – as the Census Bureau dubs it – “cooking for fun”? Why do we fill our hours with leisure activities that look an awful lot like work? Click here to read the article and here to comment. This blog post supplies additional research material.
The March 11, 2007, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine asks this question: Who really cares about identity theft? Dubner and Levitt clear up some misconceptions about the subject and get a guided tour of a hacker chat room where credit-card numbers, passwords, and PIN’s are bought and sold. This blog post supplies additional research material.
The executives at American Airlines must be crazy. I heard a rumor — and I believe it is true — that they have made the decision to replace plastic knives with honest-to-God metal table knives in the first class cabin. Are they crazy? Metal table knives were banned after 9-11 for good reason! Those things are dangerous. They could poke . . .
This is new territory as far as I can tell: Planned Parenthood is selling a wireless phone plan so that supporters can contribute directly to the organization with every phone call. This may be even more effective than Pledge-a-Picket. Here’s the Planned Parenthood e-mail pitching the idea: Dear Planned Parenthood? Supporter:Is it just us, or does it . . .
There is a large-print version of Freakonomics, an audio version, a board game in the making, and maybe even a documentary film. So why not a broadway musical? In tomorrow’s New York Times Book Review, Henry Alford takes a first crack at some ideas for the stage version of Freakonomics. Honestly, though, I think Dubner (who in his rock ‘n’ . . .
Maybe a good bit. Here’s what Obama said yesterday during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearing with Condoleezza Rice about sending more U.S. soldiers to Iraq: “And essentially the administration repeatedly has said: ‘We’re doubling down; we’re going to keep on going … because now we’ve got a lot in the pot and we can’t afford to lose what we . . .
A publicist at U.C.L.A. has alerted us that the university is offering an online course called “The Economic Secrets to Everything.” It will be taught by Meric Keskinel of Loyola Marymount University. Here is how the course is described: At its heart, economics is the study of society. The goal of this course is to demonstrate the usefulness of economics . . .
We’ve written before on what is generally called “talent,” which most people seem to define as some sort of innate skill that, if properly trained, can result in excellence. But in our article, which relied heavily on the research of Anders Ericsson, we presented a slightly different definition of talent. Here’s one key paragraph: “I think the most general claim . . .
In their Jan. 7, 2007, column for the New York Times Magazine, Dubner and Levitt ask the question we’ve all been asking: What do a gym membership, a bottle of prescription pills, and a holiday gift card have in common? This blog post supplies additional research material.
A dear friend of mine, Leon Morris, is a rabbi who runs a Jewish-studies institute in New York. He has just moved to Israel for a six-month study sabbatical, and noted a fascinating cultural difference. Here is what he wrote about being in Jerusalem when Teddy Kollek, longtime former mayor of that city, died: I just saw the death notice . . .
Classes started up yesterday at the University of Chicago. I’m teaching two classes this term, one to undergraduates and one to Ph.D. students. As I stood in front of the room looking over my notes as the last few students filed into class, one of the students approached me and pulled me aside, looking quite serious. Usually this means the . . .
Yesterday’s blog quiz invited you to guess which TV show I’ll soon be appearing on. The clues were pretty sparse. It was a show “that, if you think about it, fits pretty nicely with Freakonomics. … The show is in prime time and it’s taped, not live.” And yet just 35 minutes after the blog posting, the tenth commenter, “CakeEating,” . . .
The November 5, 2006, Freakonomics column examines the economic implications of a random series of ungovernable events: the weather. This post contains bonus material.
Read the Column » The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever By Ignaz Semmelweis Hand Hygiene Among Physicians: Performance, Beliefs, and Perceptions By Didier Pittet, MD et al Novel Antimicrobial Surface Coatings and the Potential For Reduced Fomite Transmission Of SARS And Other Pathogens By Craig Feied The September 25, 2006, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine . . .
The July 9, 2006, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine examines a simple supply-and-demand gap with tragic implications: the shortage of human organs for transplantation. This blog post supplies additional research material.
In Freakonomics, we wrote that children who watch TV don’t do any worse (or better) on early childhood test scores than kids who don’t watch. More recently, Matt Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro made a similar argument in a paper called “Does Television Rot Your Brain,” which Austan Goolsbee wrote about in Slate. But in two separate incidents in Brooklyn recently, . . .
The May 7, 2006, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine asks a fundamental — but very hard — question: When someone is very good at a given thing, what is it that actually makes him good? This blog post supplies additional research material.
University of Birmingham A reader sent in this picture of a student prospectus from University of Birmingham in the U.K. It sure does look familiar, but we can’t take credit– the Freakonomics cover in the U.K looks completely different.
The National Association of Realtors has started a blog. The lead item today is headlined “The Cost of Selling without a REALTOR?: $31,800.” Pretty scary, huh? Here’s the lead: “Real estate professionals do more for sellers than make the transaction easier. They make them money. In fact, the average seller who uses a real estate professional makes 16 percent more . . .
… on technology, futurism, etc., by a fellow named David Houle, called Evolution Shift. More original writing than mere linking; for fans of MarginalRevolution, kottke.org, etc.
The Japanese version of Freakonomics hits stores next week and looks like this: The academic version of my research with Mark Duggan alleging match rigging in sumo wrestling never got any exposure in Japan, so this will be the first time the results gets widely circulated there. If there are blog readers who read Japanese, maybe they can keep the . . .
For the past year or so, I’ve been blessed with a terrific assistant, Rachel F., who regular readers of this blog may appreciate as a fulfiller of many seminal tasks. Alas, it is time for Rachel to fly the coop. If you know of a meticulous, organized, enthusiastic person who would like to work somewhere between half- and full-time in . . .
Way back when, we wrote about the Berkeley psychology Seth Roberts and his yen for self-experimentation in the realms of mood, sleep, and especially weight control. Because there was such an intense interest in his work, we asked him to guest-blog on this site, which he did, for several days. (If you want to read a complete record of Seth . . .
Fresh on the heels of a great 20/20 show, Freakonomics returns to ABC, this time on Good Morning America. Stephen Dubner is scheduled to appear around 8:15 am EDT on Thursday, April 20th to discuss a favorite Freakonomics topic. Set your DVR or tune in to see what it will be. [Update: here’s a link.]
People often ask us how they can apply the “lessons” of Freakonomics to their daily lives. Here’s an interesting case: the city of Fresno is saying straight up to drug dealers — Hey, we know you don’t make much money doing what you’re doing, so why don’t you let us help you come in from the cold? Will be interesting . . .
In Chapter 5 of Freakonomics, which explores the art and science of parenting, we pose this question: Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? It turns out that far more children die each year in swimming pool accidents than in gun incidents. For parents in warm-weather states like Florida, California, and Arizona, this is plainly a year-round . . .
Here is one of Steve Sailer’s more amusing blog posts . He offers his typical, right-on-the-money assessment of me. And then he delivers some insightful social commentary. Some choice excerpts from it: I was pleased to see that Levitt has been replaced as a New York Times columnist by economist-aesthete Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution. Sorry, but believe it or . . .
Alex Tabarrok, of MarginalRevolution fame, relays the following story, in response to my posting yesterday about the textbook in India that compares wives and donkeys: I told my wife about the donkey to wife comparison. She responded, “they should have made the comparison between a husband and an ass. That’s a much more difficult choice.”
A while back I blogged about a man who was caught in a compromising position with a goat and forced to pay a dowry to the donkey’s owner. Now, from a Reuters story, a report that a textbook from India makes comparisons between a donkey and a wife: NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A textbook used at schools in the Indian . . .
The April 2, 2006, Freakonomics column is about tax cheating. This blog post supplies additional research material.
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