Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University whose work involves public policy and philanthropy, has written a new book called Who Really Cares: America’s Charity Divide: Who Gives, Who Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. His boldface conclusion? As summarized in this interesting article, Brooks found that “religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of . . .
Last month, Levitt blogged about how his mother would be disappointed to find that Freakonomics had fallen off the N.Y. Times best-seller list. It’s true, we fell off the list after something like 77 weeks. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Now we’ve climbed back on the list. How’d this happen? Pretty simple, really. There were at least . . .
Your responses to yesterday’s quiz were, as always, vigorous and interesting. And, as with earlier contests like this one and this one, the correct answer came fast. In this case, it came within 10 minutes of my original posting. And the person with the correct answer was so confident that he/she logged on to our comments section with the very . . .
If you believe that … 1. We are in the advice-giving business (which we’re not) and that … 2. The I.R.S. takes the advice of people like us (which it probably doesn’t) … then you maybe argue that the I.R.S. has been taking our advice. For what it’s worth, here’s what we had to say on the subject. Also FWIW, . . .
For readers of this blog, there were at least three articles of interest in this Sunday’s N.Y. Times: 1. A piece by Susan Saulny about the new cradle of American winemaking: Iowa. Not kidding. Saulny writes that farmers across the midwest are eschewing corn and soybeans for grapes. It’s an interesting piece, although it just scrapes the surface as far . . .
The other night, we took our kids to dinner at their favorite restaurant: the Benihana in midtown Manhattan. The food isn’t very good but it’s great spectacle: the chef cooks at your table, the Shirley Temples come with lots of cherries and paper umbrellas, and since the tables are communal, you’re always seated next to some strangers. The people at . . .
Readers of this blog may be aware of the creative research of Emily Oster. She is a young empirical economist at the Becker Center for Chicago Price Theory, which is also Levitt’s primary research home. A good while back, we wrote about Oster’s investigation of the 100 million “missing women” of Asia, in which she argued that Hepatitis B is . . .
How about … publishing the names and addresses of people who don’t vote? Nothing like a little shaming offensive to boost voter turnout, right? Well, in this case it’s complicated by the fact that it was a black newspaper, the Tennessee Tribune, that did the outing, and most of the non-voters they outed were black. You can imagine the uproar . . .
This guy is a fee-only insurance consultant. I love how he explains himself and his business; I so deeply wish that more people, and especially companies, could achieve this level of transparency and information. Check out his Q&A, toward the bottom of the page, for a sample of what I’m talking about. Here is my favorite item: How do I . . .
Barely a week ago, I wrote about a company in Brooklyn that fixes Chinese manufacturing mistakes, and asked for similar examples. Some of you posted your stories (I loved the one about the white polymer resin that got contaminated by small black cylinders that looked like “rat turds”). The Wall Street Journal was good enough to chip in as well. . . .
Here’s a very accessible and nicely written article by Simon Baron-Cohen, the eminent autism researcher at Cambridge University, explaining his “assortive mating” theory of the condition. It doesn’t go deep into the work for which Baron-Cohen is so well regarded, but it’s a good primer. Here, from Wired, is Baron-Cohen’s Autism-Spectrum Quotient test, a 50-question self-administered “AQ” test that is . . .
According to research conducted at Sheffield Hallam University, men flash their cell phones in order to: attract women, look important, and show off to male peers. They needed research to prove this? I have always thought that looking important and/or popular was the single biggest driver of cell phone use. It’s amazing to me how often someone will use a . . .
That was the headline of a sports briefing in my copy of yesterday’s N.Y. Times. The article was about how Tiger Woods finally lost a match. It further stated that Woods’s veal chop was slightly bruised, but his chicken piccata emerged unscathed. There’s only so much that spell-check can do.
I like to stop by the National Association of Realtors’ blog now and again to see what the N.A.R. is making of the many changes in real estate. A recent posting referred to a Harris Interactive poll from July in which people were asked to rate the prestige of various occupations. Firefighters were No. 1, while nurses, teachers, and military . . .
Not long ago, we posted here about the supposedly desperate future of newspapers. Now here’s a S.F. Chronicle column by Peter Scheer saying the same thing I tried to say, but Scheer says it better: i.e., if the future of newspapers is so bleak, why are so many smart people rushing to buy them? (The list includes Jack Welch, David . . .
We blogged earlier about how online buzz for Snakes on a Plane failed to translate into box-office success — in part because the buzz was perhaps manufactured. That film was released by New Line. Now comes word that Fox, the studio that released Borat, was scared off by what happened to Snakes. And so, while Borat also had gigantic pre-release . . .
I love Aaron Sorkin’s new show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. But it’s not doing so great ratings-wise. That’s what led to reports like this one, calling its cancellation “imminent.” Happily for me and about 7.7 million other people, however, NBC has ordered up nine more episodes, which means that the show (which is very expensive to produce) will . . .
Here’s an interesting article from Reuters about how Israel is trying to overcome a perceived religious objection to organ donation. (We’ve blogged previously about organ transplants in Israel here, and written on the subject in general here and here and here). One quibble with the Reuters article, an example of journalistic innumeracy (or, worse, journalistic obfuscation), which reads like this: . . .
Is it just me, or does it seem that the failure of the abortion-ban referendum in South Dakota hasn’t gotten much attention? It’s certainly understandable why, what with the Democratic blowout, the Rumsfeld throwout, and a million other pieces of election interest. But still, take a look at this N.Y. Times election post-mortem: you have to get to the fifth . . .
I’m happy to announce that my first book, a family memoir called Turbulent Souls, has just been republished by HarperCollins. It’s got a new cover, a new essay in the back, and even a new title, Choosing My Religion. The success of Freakonomics has made me grateful on many levels. But one of the best results is that my earlier . . .
Have you ever been to a funeral or memorial service where someone stands up and trashes the deceased? It’s often a subtle or left-handed insult, but it sticks out like a black rose in a field of white ones. My reaction to such comments is probably typical: part of me applauds their honesty; and another part of me is saddened . . .
A lot of people today are voting, and a lot of people are not voting, and a lot of other people are wondering if their vote matters in the least. Here is what we wrote on the subject last year. If it is indeed irrational to vote, as many economists believe, then instead of mourning low voter turnout, perhaps we . . .
Maira Kalman is one of my favorite living artists, and also a friend (though she was a favorite artist before we became friends). Her children’s books are extraordinary (Next Stop, Grand Central is a great piece of kids’ non-fiction), as is her product design (her multi-lingual building blocks, not pictured, are great), though she is probably most famous for her . . .
I try to keep up with the current economics literature, which means reading quite a few papers and a whole lot of abstracts. Most of the literature isn’t very interesting or meaningful to me (this is simply a matter of preference); and some of it might be interesting or meaningful but I am unable to tell. Why? Because the language . . .
There was an article in the N.Y. Times a few weeks back (“A Pro-Business City Policy Backfires on a Few,” Terry Pristin, Oct. 11, 2006) about a big real-estate deal in an industrial section of Brooklyn that will seriously raise the rents on a couple dozen businesses there. As a real-estate article, it was pretty standard fare. But one detail . . .
Our latest column in the N.Y. Times Magazine is about the weather. Exciting, huh? Specifically, it’s about how some economists are studying the weather itself (particularly the potential impact of global warming) and how others use weather as an instrumental variable to measure various human behaviors, including crime, war, rioting, etc. This column is more of a review of the . . .
An interesting article by Steven Lee Meyers in the N.Y. Times says that there are more than 60 casinos in Moscow. According to the World Casino Directory, this is more than any other city in the world except for Las Vegas and Miami (where most of the casinos are on cruise ships). But Vladimir Putin, who is “the only political . . .
An economics student in Portugal, who grew up in Angola, recently wrote to say he was disappointed that we’ve never written anything about Africa. He is right. But, I told him, in our upcoming N.Y. Times Magazine column (due out Nov. 5), there is a short but intriguing bit about the causes of civil war in African countries. He wrote . . .
This new United Nations report makes it clear that in many countries around the world, being a woman is dangerous to your health, to say nothing of your future prospects or pursuit of happiness. From the executive summary: “The roots of violence against women lie in historically unequal power relations between men and women and pervasive discrimination against women in . . .
In response to yesterday’s post about declining newspaper circulation, there was a reader comment that surprised me: I think The N.Y. Times and Washington Post websites are great (although I don’t pay for “Times Select” but I do think that their site has the best presentation, appearance-wise). I always try and remember to click on the ad banners once in . . .
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