The blog turned one today. It was never meant to reach its first birthday. It was never supposed to exist at all. On a whim, Dubner suggested we do a blog. I was hesitant. He assured me that we would just do it for a few months after the book was released, then we would let it die. The only . . .
For those of you who read what we wrote last month about NASCAR’s recent safety record, or even for those of you who didn’t, here’s a really interesting paper on the subject by Russell S. Sobel and Todd M. Nesbit at West Virginia University.
The academic debate on the death penalty is heating up again. Three decades ago, Isaac Ehrlich went head to head with a dozen critics. In the end, most unbiased observers concluded that the results were too sensitive to minor changes in specifications to draw any strong conclusions. More recently, a host of authors have once again been arguing that the . . .
Here’s the article. This sort of story always makes me more than a little bit sad. But for me, the big question is this: Who on earth wants to own a bunch of trophies that someone else earned? (Especially if they cost half a million dollars.) What sort of benefit is to be gained by owning these trophies? For me, . . .
The subject this time around is real estate — more specifically, the plight of the modern real-estate agent. Our “Freakonomics” column is in the March 5 New York Times Magazine, an issue devoted solely to real estate. The article will be available online as of late Sat., March 4. Here’s a link to a separate page on this website with . . .
It’s Freakonomics that I’m referring to. In what way is it so weird? Well, leaving aside any discussions of its content, consider this strange fact: in the past 10 years (the only years for which we have data), only two books have spent more time on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list without ever reaching No. 1. That’s right. . . .
The February 19, 2006, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine concerns NASCAR, or the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, which in a previous incarnation was known, quite fittingly, as the Stock-Car Auto Racing Society, or SCARS. This post contains bonus material.
The February 5, 2006, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine isn’t really a Freakonomics column, and it’s not really in the New York Times Magazine, either. This blog post supplies additional research material.
By now, just about everyone has heard about the evidence on thesmokinggun.com regarding gross fabrications in the James Frey memoir “A Million Little Pieces.” Frey’s primary defense has been to say that his criminal history is a minor part of the book and these inconsistencies do not substantively change the meaning of the story. Of course, his criminal history is . . .
Today’s Wall Street Journal carries this article by Charles Forelle: “Why Game Shows Have Economists Glued to Their TV’s.” It cites, among others, Thierry Post, professor of finances at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago. “There is no doubt that these are real people making real choices for high stakes, and we rarely get . . .
We recently received the new Italian translation of Freakonomics. It is quite beautiful, and this image does it no justice. Only the Italians would think to combine yellow, purple, orange, and green and make it look so damn good. Since our knowledge of the Italian language leaves something to be desired, we had a little fun with Babel Fish online . . .
Freakonomics includes a chapter titled “How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?” This was our effort to bring to life the rather unlively economic concept known as information asymmetry.
The hero of the Klan story was Stetson Kennedy, a lifelong human-rights agitator who is best known for having infiltrated the Klan in the 1940’s in order to expose its shadowy secrets. He wrote a book about his exploits, called The Klan Unmasked.
As it turns out, however, Stetson Kennedy’s own history is pretty shadowy. This is the subject of “Hoodwinked,” our latest “Freakonomics” column in The New York Times Magazine.
In Freakonomics (the book), Levitt and Dubner often combine disparate subjects to sensible, if startling effect: the commonalities between sumo wrestlers and schoolteachers, for instance, or the KKK and the National Association of Realtors. In their latest Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine, they combine another seemingly unlikely pair of ideas: price theory and sexual preference. What does one have to do with the other? And what does it matter?
In the Novermber 6, 2005, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine, Dubner and Levitt take an age-old problem – complaints about low voter turnout in U.S. elections – and stand it on its head. That is, instead of wondering why so few people bother to vote, they ask why so many people vote. The answer may surprise you. This blog post supplies additional research material.
I have no idea what this means, but now a bunch of kind readers have sent me a link to the following website which purports to tell you what your blog is worth. The answer for the Freakonomics Blog, at least when I looked, was $996,413.10. Hmmm. That seems just a bit high. I talked to Dubner and we agreed . . .
I guess there won’t be a sequel to Moneyball written about Paul DePodesta and the Los Angeles Dodgers. After a 71-91 season, DePodesta was abruptly fired this week. Diehard readers of this blog know that I have been a longtime skeptic of the stories in Moneyball (see, for example, here, here, and here). There is, however, a new academic paper . . .
J. Eric Oliver has a new book called Fat Politics. I had lunch with the author (he is a professor in the Political Science department at the University of Chicago) about six months ago and was thoroughly entertained by the stories he told from this book. He let me read an early draft of the book, and I really liked . . .
Three of the current top non-fiction books in the U.S. are written by men who were born and/or raised in the Twin Cities: Tom Friedman, Al Franken, and our own Steve Levitt. My guess is that these were the only three guys who didn’t spend their entire childhoods playing hockey. The area’s most famous author is probably F. Scott Fitzgerald . . .
Someone asked to see the rest of the Levitt clan. (Click the photo for a larger version.) From left to right: Sophie (1), Nicholas (2), Olivia (5), and Amanda (5). Sophie’s name, for the record, was taken from the list of Freakonomics-approved names in Chapter 6 of the book.
A few days ago, we asked whether blogging is perhaps dangerous to professors seeking tenure. Here is proof that citing Freakonomics can be dangerous to your academic health as well. A reader sent in this e-mail the other day, which we now reprint in full — minus the young man’s name and college, for obvious reasons. Dr. Levitt: I was . . .
The playwright August Wilson died a few weeks ago. He was a powerful and unique writer, and a powerfully unique man. Five years ago, I had the chance to interview him for a book I was writing, Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper. I was interested in Wilson because Confessions was about my childhood infatuation with Franco Harris, a football player with . . .
A recent story on the AP wire: OKLAHOMA CITY — A man got a prison term longer than prosecutors and defense attorneys had agreed to because of Larry Bird. The lawyers reached a plea agreement Tuesday for a 30-year term for a man accused of shooting with an intent to kill and robbery. But Eric James Torpy wanted his prison . . .
Thomas Sowell wrote this about us recently: “Economist Steven Levitt’s best-selling book “Freakonomics” is not really about economics. It is about applying systematic reasoning to all sorts of social problems. Systematic reasoning is needed even more than economics.” I think it is supposed to be a compliment, but I’m not sure.
Maybe, maybe not. But here’s the story of how Daniel Drezner, an assistant professor in political science at the University of Chicago (and an active blogger) was just denied tenure.
Between the switch in blogging software, teaching, traveling, attending awards ceremonies, and so on, we have found ourselves incredibly busy over the last week. An avalanche of blogging activity is on the horizon. We promise.
Welcome to the new Freakonomics blog. We have changed content management systems. The old blog can still be found at www.freakonomics.com/blog.php. If you have subscribed using FeedBurner, then your feeds should stay the same. http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreakonomicsBlog Also, you now have the option of subscribing to the comments at http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreakonomicsBlogComments
The October 2, 2005, Freakonomics column appeared in the annual New York City issue of the New York Times Magazine. In keeping with the Freakonomic tenet that few topics are too trivial for dissection, Dubner and Levitt turn their attention to the essential New York City issue of dog poop. Click here to read the column. This blog post supplies additional research material.
On Friday, Sept. 30, ABC’s “World News Tonight” (6:30 p.m. Eastern) will feature a segment on Freakonomics, the first of what may be several such segments. The ABC website goes so far as to declare today “Freakonomics Friday.” Linda Jines, who is Steve Levitt’s sister and who came up with the title Freakonomics, should feel especially proud of herself today.
In Freakonomics, we talk a lot about catching cheaters using data. Based on a newspaper clipping that Stephen Stigler (a well-known professor of statistics at the University of Chicago, author of a wonderful book on the history of statistics, and son of the great Chicago economist George Stigler), there is a long history of using data to catch bad behavior . . .
I’ve had the chance to meet a lot of smart people in my life. Without question, Kevin Murphy is the smartest of them all. Not only is he smart, but he is also one of the kindest, most loyal, and most generous people I’ve known. So I could not be happier that the MacArthur Foundation today named him as one . . .
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