Morgan Reynolds was chief economist for the Department of Labor in the first term of the George W. Bush administration. He was in the economics department at Texas A&M (now retired), and he has published in the top economics journals like JPE, AER, and QJE. Now he’s traveling a slightly different road: From a United Press International report in the . . .
Should we be surprised? This article comes from a website called InsideHigherEd.com. (I only posted part of the article here, follow the link to see the whole thing. Thanks to Patrick McCusker for providing the link to me.) Cheating Scandal at Virginia An ‘alarmingly large fraction” of the first-year class of economics graduate students at the University of Virginia were . . .
A little quiz: Which celebrity interviewer closed his interview with me by saying: “Steven Levitt, thank you for the work you are doing. I hope you write more like this. This is a tremendous read. If you want to have some fun this summer, read Freakonomics.” a) Jon Stewart b) Charlie Rose c) Matt Lauer d) Aaron Brown e) Pat . . .
In the Freakonomics chapter about real estate agents’ informational advantage, we discussed the different terms that agents use in want ads, and those terms’ correlation with higher or lower sales prices. Alas, there was one kind of information — whether or not a murder was committed in the house, for instance — that didn’t make the dataset. Here, however, from . . .
In my last post, I talked about how Chicago police have begun posting pictures on the internet of johns caught soliciting prostitutes. Based on the numbers given in a Chicago Tribune article, it seemed the chance of arrest for a john, per solicitation, was 1 in 10,000. So I’m perusing the list of pictures on that web page and as . . .
A friend passed along this amusing post from the “Missed Connections” section of Craig’s List in New York. It’s cute but I don’t buy it for a minute. If the guy really wanted to meet the girl so badly, would he have really run off to buy “Freakonomics” as a conversation starter for the next time he saw her?
A friend writes: What you should know about me: I’m a neurotic Manhattan mom. I swore I wouldn’t become one of those, but lo and behold, the kid comes out and you have absolutely no choice. How does this play out? As an example, when my eldest child was applying to pre-school, I had my mother’s cousin, a prominent child . . .
Here is a little creative application of freakonomics to address the music-downloading mess.
I had my 20 year high school reunion last weekend. There were three highlights for me: 1) I got to see all three of my prom dates — roughly the only three dates I had in high school. 2) My old high school quiz bowl team reunited and showed we still had the right stuff, handily beating the school’s highly . . .
Levitt and Dubner revisited The Today Show on Thursday, June 16. Here’s a transcript: Copyright 2005 National Broadcasting Co. Inc. HEADLINE: Today’s Real Estate; Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt ANCHORS: MATT LAUER MATT LAUER, co-host: This morning on TODAY’s REAL ESTATE, is your agent looking out for you when he or she sells your home? You might think your real . . .
Book publishing is rife with conventional wisdoms that are vigorously doubted but seldom overturned. That’s partly because book data is treated like some kind of family secret. This is changing a little bit with the recent advent of Bookscan, a subscriber service that provides industry-wide sales figures; in the past, publishers and bookstores and distributors did not feel compelled to . . .
A few days ago, in an online Q&A with the Washington Post, someone asked this question: Annapolis, Md.: Have you explored why some people vote against their own economic interest? And I gave the following answer: No. But it’s not that surprising, since one vote is really worth very very little. It probably comes down to the fact that most . . .
Steve Levitt will be appearing on CNBC’s “Kudlow & Co.” today (Friday, June 10) at about 5:45 p.m. EDT. Stephen Dubner will be appearing on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” on Monday (June 13), sometime between 7 and 9 a.m. EDT.
The Q&A has long been a journalism staple. During my years as a magazine editor, I assigned more than a few of them myself. But it’s different now, for at least two reasons: the dominance of e-mail as a form of communication and the spike in online journalism. Not only is the Q&A more prevalent than ever, but it’s also . . .
Dubner and Levitt are writing a new monthly column in the New York Times Magazine. The column, like their book, is called “Freakonomics.” The first installment, “Monkey Business,” concerns a young Yale economist who is teaching capuchin monkeys to use money. Read this post for bonus matter.
Here is the beginning of our first “Freakonomics” column in the New York Times Magazine: Adam Smith, the founder of classical economics, was certain that humankind’s knack for monetary exchange belonged to humankind alone. “Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog,” he wrote. “Nobody ever saw one animal . . .
The salutary effects of Freakonomics have by now been proven considerable. A reader from upstate New York sent this picture as proof that the right book can actually speed childbirth, and do away with the need for an epidural. (No word if she was merely shopping for a high-end baby name.) In other news: Levitt and I are writing a . . .
There have been several requests on this blog for a transcript of the authors’ recent appearance on The O’Reilly Factor. Here it is: Copyright 2005 Fox News Network, LLC. Fox News Network SHOW: THE O’REILLY FACTOR 8:37 PM EST May 9, 2005 Monday HEADLINE: Unresolved Problem: Book Explores Relations Between Economy, Social Issues BYLINE: Bill O’Reilly GUESTS: Steven Levitt, Stephen . . .
Levitt and Dubner were on The Today Show this morning (Wednesday), discussing Freakonomics. Click here for a video link. Here’s a transcript: HEADLINE: Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner discuss their book, “Freakonomics.” MATT LAUER, co-host:We’re back at 8:30 on a Wednesday morning. Coming up in this half-hour, what the heck is “Freakonomics”? It’s a book about economics, don’t worry, this . . .
Levitt and Dubner will chat with NBC’s Matt Lauer on Wed., May 18, at about 8:30 a.m. E.D.T.
Malcolm Gladwell sent me the following e-mail the other day: thought you would enjoy this. a man in the security line at toronto airport today recognized me, pulled out a copy of freakonomics, and made me sign it. we are totally co-branded! cheers, m. For what it is worth, neither Dubner or Levitt has ever been recognized by a stranger . . .
I spend much of my time trying to find cheating where other people don’t suspect it. So when I heard about a strange happening in Powerball — 110 people picking five out of six correctly when statistically you would expect only 4-5 such winners — I began to fantasize about a big cheating scandal. It had the appearance of the . . .
In light of Freakonomics’ commercial success, you might think that I would hold the title of best-selling author in, say, my census tract, or at least my city block. It turns out I’m not even the best-selling author among the people who have owned my own house. A fellow named Michael Roizen used to live in my house. The very . . .
The prices at McDonald’s didn’t go down yesterday, but eating fatty foods nonetheless just got a lot cheaper. A new study released by the CDC is described in news reports as follows: The death toll from obesity is less than a third of the government’s previous estimate, researchers are reporting today, contradicting warnings that poor diet and physical inactivity are . . .
Not that Malcolm Gladwell needs us to blog about him. He only happens to have the #1 ranked book on both the New York Times hardcover and paperback lists (Blink and The Tipping Point respectively). Those are the two most interesting and entertaining books I have read in the last five years. And his New Yorker stuff is incredible. In . . .
Well, Freakonomics is finally on sale. It should be in most bookstores today, and is ready to ship from Amazon.com, bn.com, etc. The good news is that the book is already in a fourth printing. The bad news is … well, there is no bad news, not yet at least. Early reviews are excellent. On Slate, the 2nd portion of . . .
Not many people dream the dreams of economists. But for someone like me, I was able to live out a little fantasy today. As part of the Center I run, we had a conference call with our board of advisors. In the room or on the phone were many of the greatest living economists: Gary Becker, Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, . . .
If you happen to listen to NPR’s “Weekend Edition” with Scott Simon, you will hear Steve Levitt discussing Freakonomics this Sat., April 9. (Click here to find the time and station in your area.) Simon himself has a new book out soon, Pretty Birds; we haven’t read it yet but if it is half as good as his 2000 memoir . . .
Chapter Two of Freakonomics is titled “How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?” It deals with the power of information, and more particularly the abuse of information. The K.K.K. part of the story concerns a man named Stetson Kennedy who, in the 1940’s, went undercover and joined the K.K.K. in order to try to dismantle . . .
Roland G. Fryer Jr. is a young black economist at Harvard whose work and background are equally fascinating. (At least I think so.) He and Steve Levitt have written a number of papers together, and Fryer is scattered throughout the last couple chapters of Freakonomics. Quite separately, I’ve written a profile of Fryer that appears in today’s New York Times . . .
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