Steve Levitt is such a big deal in Chicago that he has been asked to donate an original haiku (!) for a fund-raiser on Wed., Sept. 14. So he went ahead and wrote himself some haiku. Then he felt a little funny being the only haikuist in the Freakonomics family, so he asked me to write one too. And I . . .
As we wrote in Freakonomics, Realtors are incented to use proprietary information to the disadvantage of their customers. (Don’t be so smug: you probably would too if you were a Realtor.) The National Association of Realtors once yelled at us for discussing this situation on TV. Now the N.A.R. has a new and far more powerful enemy: the U.S. Department . . .
Much has been made in the media recently of the untended corpses in New Orleans, left on the street for days on end. Aside from issues of dignity, it certainly makes you wonder about health concerns. Especially when you read this BBC report about a supposed link between human remains and mad cow disease. I have to admit that whenever . . .
Books on CD and cassette have quietly become a nice little profit center for book publishers. (So too have audio downloads, but that’s a subject for another day.) Even though audio versions sell, at best, perhaps 1 copy to every 10 copies of a hardcover book, their high price and low royalty rate enable publishers to make money. Most people . . .
My wife is a photographer who once lived and shot in Romania, Russia, Chechnya, Israel, and elsewhere. She often worked in harm’s way and almost always with the sort of reckless abandon a photographer needs in order to document tragedies and farces. So I’ve picked up a little bit about what it means to tell a story with a camera, . . .
We haven’t had all that much contact with our British publishers, Penguin U.K. But they seem startlingly proactive. First there was the billboard campaign in the London tube. Now there’s an online Freakonomics quiz. It’s true that the quiz plays pretty fast and loose with the material in our book but it would be churlish (for us at least) to . . .
I happen to be a member of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (My son, like nearly every 5-year-old boy I know, is a dinosaur freak.) I just received an e-mail asking for feedback on a script for the AMNH’s new space show. I guess this is what life is like for museums after the Enola Gay/Smithsonian . . .
Here’s what I wrote a few weeks ago, just as we embarked on a short California book tour: Earlier in this space we asked if book ads work; now we are led to the next obvious question: how about the author’s tour? Can it possibly be worth all the money and time it takes to fly two people across the . . .
The American Beverage Association has just announced its recommendation that elementary schools no longer sell soda pop in vending machines. “Childhood obesity is a real problem,” ABA president and CEO Susan Neely told the Associated Press. (Here is the A.P. article in USA Today.) “The individual companies [represented by the ABA] have been doing several things to be part of . . .
I know, I know, I know: Wikipedia is one of the wonders of the online world. I hear this regularly, especially from young journalist friends and also in e-mails concerning Freakonomics. A casual mention in our book concerning the derivation of the Chicago Black Sox’ nickname began a debate chronicled here, a debate in which participants regularly cited the Wikipedia . . .
In light of earlier discussions here about Amazon reviewers, here’s a lovely little story out of Hollywood about fake movie reviews.
The Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam has built a beautiful little site that charts the mood indicators chosen by LiveJournal users. See how people reacted to the London bombings; see if people actually drink more on weekends; etc. Thanks to Eric Allam for the link.
It’s nice to see that Astros third baseman Morgan Ensberg is planning to read Freakonomics — or at least he was until a last-minute call-up to the All-Star squad — but here’s the big question: can he help us tap into any data that might help solve the myriad mysteries of modern baseball?
In a very engaging discussion on WSJ.com, Alex Tabarrok and Bryan Caplan, a pair of economists at George Mason University, show that Freakonomics is hardly the only place to find creative applications of economic research.
To “St. Cheryl,” who posted below about real-estate agents: what on earth did you mean about the sketchy practices of veterinarians? Please tell more, either here or by e-mail (levittdubner@freakonomics.com). Thanks.
I have no idea if Priscilla Owen is a good judge or not, but a fellow named Chris Wildermuth decided to use freakonomics to see why the opinion of her had changed so radically in recent years. His entire riff can be found here, on a blog called Power Line; but here’s a taste:Reading “Freakonomics” helps you spot interesting trends . . .
Those of you who like economics detective stories — yes, it’s a pretty limited genre — might want to read this Slate article we wrote, about a sharp young Harvard economist named Emily Oster. Some of the debate in “The Fray” (Slate’s online feedback chatroom) gets into the question that’s been tossed about a lot lately: “What makes this economics?” . . .
On p. 39 of Freakonomics, we make a passing reference to the Chicago Black Sox, the name given to the Chicago White Sox after eight players were found to have colluded with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series. A reader recently wrote: “The 1919 white sox were not known as the black sox because they threw the world series. . . .
The good news is that Freakonomics is one of Amazon.com’s most popular products in hardcover, on audio CD, and even as a digital download. In hardcover, the other top-sellers include Harry Potter, You: The Owner’s Manual, and so on. On audio CD, it keeps company with a Spanish-language course and a James Patterson thriller. But (and here’s the weird news) . . .
In light of our anonymous poster’s Starbucks story (see “A $2 Cup of Coffee”), here’s my own tale of food and economics: An old friend came to town not long ago and we met for a late lunch on the Upper West Side. Trilby ordered a burger, no bread, with brie; I ordered half a roasted chicken with mashed potatoes. . . .
It would seem that one sensible purpose of this blog would be to respond to Freakonomics questions and comments that come up in reviews, blogs, reader e-mails, etc. Consider this post the first of several such responses. A lot of people have wondered about one minor but significant element of the book: the use of small excerpts of a New . . .
[for a Freakonomics status report, click here] Our publisher has been busily promoting and selling Freakonomics, which of course is its job, and which we, not surprisingly, applaud. When something good happens — a nice review in the Wall Street Journal, for instance, or an upcoming appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart — the publisher assiduously spreads the . . .
Over the years I have had the opportunity to write about a great many interesting people. My mother had an extraordinary (and long-buried) story to tell. I’ve interviewed Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; the rookie class of the N.F.L. ; a remarkable cat burglar who stole only sterling silver. But lately I have been writing about economists — and, most fruitfully, . . .
A few bloggers have pointed out that the cover of Freakonomics is, shall we say, quite similar to the cover of this book. To which we initially said: Yikes. Should we be embarrassed about this? We thought the cover of Freakonomics was brilliant the moment the publisher showed it to us. We had been suggesting something along similar lines — . . .
Freakonomics is almost officially for sale (Tues., April 12 is the date), and on Amazon.com and bn.com, where it can be pre-ordered, it has jumped onto the best-seller lists. (As of 9:00 p.m. EDT on April 9, it was #15 on Amazon.) Its authors are happily mystified. This spike seems attributable to a very nice interview of Steve Levitt by . . .
Every parent thinks he has the most beautiful baby in the world. Evolution, it seems, has molded our brains so that if you stare at your own baby’s face day after day after day, it starts to look beautiful. When other people’s children have food clotted on their faces, it looks disgusting; with your own kid, it’s somehow endearing. Well, . . .
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