Why else would the two stadiums in Williamsport, Pa., where the Little League Baseball World Series is played, be moving back their fences 20 feet? Well, it turns out that Little Leaguers at this level are hitting more home runs than doubles, which isn’t the way it works in the Bigs. It’s funny: MLB’s idea of a thrilling game is . . .
Levitt and I will be in London early next week to promote the U.K. paperback edition of Freakonomics. Just in time for our trip, the Harvard economists Ed Glaeser and David Cutler ask (and answer) the very question that I’ve long wondered about: Why Do Europeans Smoke More Than Americans? “Almost one-half of the smoking difference,” they write, “appears to . . .
Wouldn’t you know it? On the same day that I was poking fun at Amazon.com for one if its e-mail blitzes, they launch a podcast called Amazon Wire, featuring Steven Soderbergh, Blondie, The Flaming Lips, and … me. The essay I read was adapted from the first “Freakonomics” column we wrote for the N.Y. Times Magazine, about the Yale economist . . .
In Freakonomics, we wrote a good bit about first names — how popular names move their way down the socioeconomic ladder, how “high education” names differ from “low education” names, how black names differ from white names, etc. It’s only natural, therefore, that someone would take a look at data on names and try to profit from it. That’s the . . .
Or, failing that, it needs to wait a few hours before sending out its e-mail blitzes. Here’s what just showed up in my in-box: Dear Amazon.com Customer, Congratulations, [placeholder for winning team]! As someone who has purchased sports-related products, we thought you should be the first to see our selection of NCAA championship products. NCAA Championship Cap Check out our . . .
Nathan Englander is, or at least was, a startlingly good young writer who in 1999 published a collection of short stories called For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. The book sold a lot of copies, won some awards, and generally set everyone talking about how talented and insightful Englander was, especially for such a young writer. (He was the Jonathan . . .
Our upcoming “Freakonomics” column in The New York Times Magazine is about how people hate the I.R.S. for the wrong reasons. The article should be available online here by late Sat. night (4/1/06), and we’ll also post an accompanying page elsewhere on this site with research data, etc.
Some of you have undoubtedly already seen this, but if you haven’t, take a look at what happens when compelling data meets beautiful (and useful) design: WorldMapper, “a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.” While there are a lot of interesting categories — tourism, immigration, population — I’m hoping . . .
Yayi Boni, an economist who used to run the West African Development Bank, has been elected president of the African country of Benin. He is at least the second economist to have recently become president of an African nation, joining Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a U.S. president who was also . . .
A couple days ago, Levitt wrote on this blog that Tyler Cowen, half of the dynamic Marginal Revolution duo (along with Alex Tabarrok), will start writing a monthly economics column for the New York Times business section. I just wanted to add my congratulations — for George Mason University’s miraculous appearance in the Final Four, I mean. Plainly, just about . . .
We get a lot of different kind of e-mail response to our book: some friendly, some antagonistic, some curious, etc etc etc. This one, which came the other day, may be one of my all-time favorites: Hello. I am Rohan Patel, I am 10 years old. Your book was amazing! I loved it, but I found one mistake in it. . . .
The Aplia Econ Blog, subtitled “News for Econ Students,” has just been launched. It’s the blog arm of Stanford economist Paul Romer’s business venture, Aplia, which aims to streamline, automate, and otherwise perfect the instruction of college-level economics.
Because the abortion/crime theory put forward by Steve Levitt and John Donohue in this 2001 paper was so jarring, on so many levels, it drew great interest and occasional controversy. The noise really began in 1999, when a preliminary version of the paper was written about. So by 2003, when I first wrote about Levitt in the N.Y. Times Magazine, . . .
First came prosper.com, “the online marketplace for people-to-people lending” — think eBay meets Craig’s List meets (potentially) Shylock. Then comes word that WalMart wants to get into the banking business. In tomorrow’s papers, look for news that Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television and majority owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats, is buying Metro Bank in Orlando, renaming . . .
Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and, over the years, a collection of startlingly good New Yorker articles, has addressed on his blog the question of why he endorsed Freakonomics (by writing a blurb before it was published) even though its explanation of the 1990’s crime drop dismissed as a cause the “broken windows” theory of law enforcement . . .
Not the typical Freakonomics fare, but: a magazine editor I know, Amy Goldwasser, has sent out this A.P.B. for a book project she’s curating: Thrilled to finally say I’m putting together a book of essays written by teen girls. What will make this one special, elevate it from any teen genre-type collection, is that I’m absolutely committed to their words, . . .
I’m a bit late on this but last night I finally read Jon Gertner’s profile of economist Ed Glaeser in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. It’s a wonderful article, to my mind a great example of what happens when you’ve got a smart, interesting, candid subject and a smart, curious, agreeable writer. We learn a lot about economics from . . .
Because we wrote this article, a lot of people are visiting this Web site to get our e-mail address to write in various comments. I’d suggest anyone who does so should feel free to post comments here so that everyone can see them.
There’s a brand-new, four-part Freakonomics Study Guide, available for free for anyone who uses the book for teaching. (The four parts are: Teacher’s Guide, Student’s Guide, Test Answers and Test Questions.) The Guides were commissioned by HarperAcademic and seem to be very well done. Click here for all the information you need.
A couple weeks ago, I blogged about a gadget called Skybox, which would give people at sporting events access to all kinds of data, ranging from player stats to concession prices to instant replays. Tim Hayden of Vivid Sky, the company behind Skybox, has been kind enough to invite readers of this blog to play around with a demo. I . . .
The devotion exhibited by some Freakonomics fans is downright inspiring. And inspired. Click here to see what I’m talking about. (Make sure you scroll down one screen.)
Freakonomics, apparently. Just published in France, the book (as of this posting) was sitting in the Top 10 on Amazon.fr.
An Italian court has found that a man who sexually abused his 14-year-old stepdaughter should receive a lighter sentence because the girl was not a virgin — and, therefore, the damage to her was not as significant as it would have been otherwise. The price of virginity is a subject that has received much attention over the centuries (the Talmud, . . .
Our new “Freakonomics” column, appearing in today’s New York Times Magazine, takes a look at NASCAR’s recent record of crashing and fatalities. Not surprisingly, the Times’s sports section is full of NASCAR articles, since today is the running of the 2006 Daytona 500 (which marks 5 years since the death of Dale Earnhardt). One of these articles, by Viv Bernstein, . . .
A little-known fact: Steve Levitt is a pretty big NASCAR fan. As for my interest in auto racing — well, I spent five years in North Carolina, both up in the mountains (where, as lore held it, racecar drivers got their training by running moonshine down the mountain roads) and also in Winston-Salem (where the Friday-night roar of cars from . . .
So what do you do if you’re a Jewish cartoonist in Israel and the following happens: a. A Danish newspaper commissions artists to draw editorial cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, and said cartoons set off a furor in the Muslim world. b. Iran responds to said furor by putting out a call for anti-Semitic cartoons about the Holocaust. (Sure, that’s . . .
Just in time for Torino comes this highly engaging blog posting from Joe Clark in which he makes the seemingly sound argument that women are certainly big enough to play hockey with men. (Size, of course, does not necessarily connote power and aggression and skill, but I’ll leave that question to Joe Clark, and Michelle Wie, and others more qualified . . .
Last night I flew from from New York to Los Angeles. The guy sitting next to me had been in many industries over the years, including apparel, insurance, tech, etc. Pittsburgh Steelers fan that I am, I was reading the current issue of Sports Illustrated, which is so black and gold this week that it looks like a Steelers newsletter. . . .
Here’s a website that lets you do just that, built by the dogged John Walsh. (Hat tip to QualityG.)
Here is a fairly meaty Q&A with Milton Friedman, from New Perspectives Quarterly. The man, unsurprisingly, has some interesting things to say, and he isn’t shy about saying them. (Hat tip, once again, to Adam Scott.)
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