I have long been interested in the effects — psychological, economic, and otherwise — of jealousy (and, relatedly, disgust and repugnance). Even using the word “jealousy” is probably loaded. (Maybe “resentment” is better? Doubtful.) In any case: somewhere between the 99% movement and the Mitt Romney-as-private-equity-bloodsucker meme lies a discussion that includes a lot of legitimate questions about fairness and a lot of less-legitimate emotional reaction that gets turned into political and intellectual fodder.
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast covers the upcoming Super Bowl between the New York Giants and New England Patriots. (Download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript.)
We figured that of the 100 million-plus people who “watch” the game each year, a lot of them aren’t what you’d call rabid football fans. Does that describe you? If so, this episode is a handy cheat sheet that’ll let you converse knowingly with your football-crazed friends, and maybe even one-up them.
A football cheat sheet to help you sound like the smartest person at the party.
Mark Cuban is known for a lot of things: the well-timed sale of Broadcast.com to Yahoo!, which made him rich; his high-profile ownership of the Dallas Mavericks (and co-ownership of the media company 2929 Entertainment); his cameos on Entourage, and much more. (FWIW, Forbes pegs Cuban’s net worth at $2.3 billion.)
Now Cuban has published an eBook, How to Win at the Sport of Business
1.How to embezzle. (HT: Van Brenner)
2. Tennis data freaks rejoice: 39 million data points, from all four Grand Slam tournaments, are being released. (HT: Anthony)
3. The economics of Communion wafers. (HT: mlimber)
4. A “rational expectations signaling model of lovemaking.”
Adriano Dutra Teixeira, a Brazilian economist, sent us this photo from a restaurant. As he translates:
“Social Responsibility: 50% discount on meal for clients over 70 or bariatric surgery (stomach reduction).”
He adds:
I thought it was hilarious! So I wrote a blog post with a microeconomic approach to the promotion, using price discrimination.
I had to chuckle, in part because we’re finishing up a podcast about commitment devices, in which Levitt offers some bizarre alternatives to bariatric surgery (which we wrote about here), since it is such a drastic commitment.
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “The Patent Gap.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)
It centers around a new working paper called “Why Don’t Women Patent?” and we talk to one of its authors, the Rutgers economist Jennifer Hunt. (We recently previewed this research on the blog, and some of Hunt’s earlier research too.)
1. Who is more in need of a witness-protection program today: Billy Cundiff or Kyle Williams? (I’d pick Cundiff even though Williams is guiltier.)
2. Looks like defense really doesn’t win championships. Here’s the regular-season defensive ranking (yards per game) of the four teams who played yesterday: Ravens (3rd); 49ers (4th); Giants (27th); Patriots (31st). Giants will play Patriots in the Super Bowl.
3. At least the Harbaugh parents won’t spend Feb. 5 in a Sophie’s Choice situation — but I’m guessing they would have preferred to.
There are a lot of things that need to go right for any given person to succeed in the NFL. We know all the stories about bad breaks, freak injuries, and mismatched coaches. On the flipside, we know how much hard work, discipline, and even luck go into a successful career.
In this installment of Football Freakonomics, we take a step back to ask the most basic question: are great players born or are they made? In other words, how much does raw talent matter?
In our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast, Steve Levitt visits with Marketplace‘s Kai Ryssdal to discuss his poker research and his personal poker history. The episode is called “Why Online Poker Should Be Legal.” You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.
In case you haven’t been following the long-running legal story, here’s the gist. Online poker was growing fast in the U.S. until Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which pretty much shut things down. The ruling was based in large part on the government’s reasoning that poker is predominantly a game of chance as opposed to a game of skill. But is this classification correct?
1. Guess which governor wants to spring non-violent drug users from prison? (HT: Ivan Kronenfeld)
2. Will the U.S. get its own InTrade to all betting on Presidential elections?
3. A fixie index shows a surprising capital of hipster bikes.
4. Can birdsong really kill crime? (I am skeptical; related.) (HT: Chad Troutwine)
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “Is Good Corporate Citizenship Also Good for the Bottom Line?” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)
The short answer: yes. That’s the finding of Robert G. Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim from their recent paper “The Impact of a Corporate Culture of Sustainability on Corporate Behavior and Performance” :
“We show that there is significant variation in future accounting and stock market performance across the two groups of firms. We track corporate performance for 18 years and find that sustainable firms outperform traditional firms in terms of both stock market and accounting performance.”
Education is the surest solution to a lot of problems. Except when it’s not.
Freakonomics Radio is a weekly podcast that also airs on public-radio stations across the country. Below is a sort-of-complete list of those stations (it changes periodically and we try to keep up); click on yours to find the day and time our show airs. And if your station isn’t on this list, call them immediately! Freakonomics Radio also airs on . . .
Given the risk of dislocating an elbow while patting oneself on the back, we don’t usually print fan mail. But this one, from James J. Krefft (also an author himself), needed to be shared: Recently I borrowed a copy of your book from a friend (so basically pure benefit for me) and I must say I am impressed. I am well-read, . . .
David Brooks, in his Times column today (emphasis added):
When I started covering presidential primaries, the best part was getting to know the candidates. We journalists would ride around in vans and buses with them and get an intimate look at what it’s like to endure this soul-destroying process. But the ubiquity of Web cams and tweets has ended that off-the-record culture. As the technology gets more open, the lines of political communications become more closed.
True enough, and I’m surprised that more people don’t consider this paradox.
1. No, Brian Williams is not Walter Cronkite
2. Cory Doctorow: “The Coming War on General Computation” (video; transcript; interesting!)
3. Whole Foods has been thriving in a down economy.
4. Open-sourcing the scientific process.
We have long argued (most recently in this Marketplace podcast) that campaign spending isn’t nearly as influential in elections as the conventional wisdom holds.
This week, with the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls in South Carolina spending lots of money (and time and effort) and everyone’s talking about “super PAC” spending, we thought it was a good occasion to air this question out further. We’ve convened a Freakonomics Quorum on the topic, soliciting replies from a few folks with expertise in the realm. Thanks to all of them for participating.
Are you bummed out that you might have to postpone retirement for financial reasons?
Well, there may be a silver lining: it looks like retirement may be bad for your health. That’s the topic of our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast, “Retirement Kills.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)
The Great Recession has put a lot of retirement plans on hold, often at the behest of governments who can’t afford to pay pensions. Germany, the U.K., and France have all upped their retirement ages. And the U.S. is seeing a lot more older workers as well. Lisa Boily of the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that people 55 and older are expected to represent 25 percent of the labor force by 2020.
Part of this is simple demographics — the graying of the baby boom — but Americans are also working longer.
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “A Cheap Employee Is … a Cheap Employee.”
(You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)
It’s about the question of whether low-paid employees are indeed a good deal for a retailer’s bottom line as the conventional wisdom states.
The piece begins with a couple of stories from blog readers, Eric M. Jones and Jamie Crouthamel, which were solicited earlier here. (One of the true pleasures of operating this blog is having a channel by which to turn readers into radio guests — thanks!)
Well, it’s January. And even though my team stumbled into inglorious, injury-plagued defeat, the most exciting football is yet to be played — some of it in very cold weather.
So we thought it was time to take a look at the various effects, and hidden side, of cold weather. That’s the focus of our latest installment of Football Freakonomics.
It is no secret that weather, cold or hot, has a significant effect on athletic performance. I don’t want to start an argument here about what constitutes a sport and what doesn’t, but I will say that the most frustrating six hours of my life was spent on a lake in upstate New York trying to coax some walleye through a hole in the ice. Brrr!
In a recent Football Freakonomics video about Tim Tebow, I made a connection between his faith and performance: Tebow is hardly the first NFL quarterback to be demonstrative about his religious faith. But he’s very demonstrative – and it’s worth considering how that faith may affect his play. By definition, faith often translates into a kind of fearlessness. Tim Tebow . . .
Encouraging news via the Associated Press: For the first time in almost half a century, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation’s top 15 causes of death. In Mexico, meanwhile, the murder trend continues to move in the opposite direction: During the first nine months of 2011, some 12,903 people were killed in drug-related violence—11% more than the . . .
1. Are world finances being run by an MIT fraternity?
2. A Bronx high-school teacher talks about teacher cheating.
3. Is the Mafia the biggest bank in Italy? (HT: Eric Jones)
4. Tyler Cowen‘s new Twitter feed on food, a must-follow; our related podcast is here.
5. Is more stress good for cops’ decision-making?
Mitt Romney won big in New Hampshire, but his opponents are vowing to push on in South Carolina. Which means stepping up their pleas for cash. In an e-mail to supporters, Rick Santorum wrote:
We must show real progress tonight and redouble our efforts … That’s why my campaign launched the “Game On” Moneybomb, and why we need your help right now. As you already know, we are facing serious and well-funded opposition for the nomination.
That’s the kind of language that confirms one of the biggest truisms in politics: money buys elections.
But how true is that truism?
We all know the answer is yes. But the data — and Rudy Giuliani — say no.
In response to our recent podcast called “Why Is ‘I Don’t Know’ So Hard to Say?,” a reader named Timothy McCollough writes in with a most interesting story. He teaches at a private international school in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His courses include two sections of AP microeconomics, sociology, and “regular economics.” Because it’s a private school, he adds, “we have freer reign to set up classroom incentives and engage students as we see fit.” For instance:
In my classroom, students lose 1/4 point for wrong answers on quizzes. But for writing “I don’t know,” they get 1/4 point. (A correct answer is 1 point). The rationale is that if someone is in a medical emergency, and someone asks me what should be done, the answer “I don’t know” is much preferable to a guess. “I don’t know” leads the questioner to ask someone who hopefully is knowledgeable.
We’re working on a new podcast episode about morale in the workplace, and need your help. The episode was inspired a recent blog post in which a reader posited an interesting theory: morale is higher at companies where a lot of employees park nose-in (indicating they’re eager to get to work) rather than nose-out (indicating they can’t wait to get home).
My request here is two-fold:
1. We’ve started poking into the academic literature on company morale but haven’t gotten very far, so please let us know any good leads.
2. We’re also interested in hearing stories about morale at your workplace, be it high or low, and especially any clever/strange indicators of morale and unusual methods that have been used to measure morale.
Thanks in advance!
1. A lovely obituary for a lovely singer, Cesaria Evora.
2. Nathan Myhrvold makes an appearance on Top Chef
3. Halting your newspaper delivery to thwart burglary can backfire (when the delivery guy is the burglar). (HT: MediaWire)
4. Remember our “Who Owns Trader Joe’s?” post? If you want more info, read this.
5. I am writing an essay for Jewish Jocks book, joining authors Larry Summers, David Remnick, and Buzz Bissinger.
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “What’s Wrong With Cash for Grades?”
(You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)
In it, Steve Levitt talks to Kai Ryssdal about whether it’s effective to pay kids to do well in school. Levitt, along with John List, Susanne Neckermann, and Sally Sadoff, recently wrote up a working paper (PDF here) based on their field experiments in Chicago schools. Levitt blogged about the paper earlier; here’s the Atlantic‘s take.
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