Two little words — “social networking” — have become a giant buzzphrase over the past couple of years, what with the worldwide march of Facebook and headline-ready stories about Web-assisted suicides. So what’s the net effect of social networking? We gathered a group of wise people who spend their days thinking about this issue — Martin Baily, Danah Boyd, Steve . . .
The Freakonomics in-box regularly fills up with interesting tales (like this one and this one). The other day, a reader from Dallas named Erik Hille took reader e-mail to a whole new level. He was writing about the Feb. 1 entry in our fact-a-day calendar, which excerpts a fact from our book in the chapter on crime: “The average sixty-five-year-old . . .
The answer, according to the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, is … “not much.” Here’s what they describe in a new NBER working paper about the causes and consequences of the current subprime crisis: Our examination of the longer historical record finds stunning qualitative and quantitative parallels to 18 earlier post-war banking crises in industrialized countries. Specifically, the run-up . . .
I was already a big fan of Hal Varian‘s columns on everyday economics in the Times when I had the good fortune to meet him at Google headquarters, when Levitt and I were out there a couple of years ago. He was even more impressive in person. Now you have a chance to ask him whatever you’d like. As Google’s . . .
If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that some of the best posts are written by readers, not by us. For instance, we recently received the following e-mail from Steven Goldstein of New York City: I read your book when it came out. My 12-year-old son saw it lying around last spring and asked what it was . . .
The Wall Street Journal reports on a new World Health Organization study about cigarette smoking around the world. The Journal‘s piece includes data from Euromonitor International about the number of cigarettes sold worldwide by various manufacturers. Here are the numbers of cigarettes sold (in billions) in 2006 by Philip Morris: U.S./Canada: 184 Asia Pacific: 197 Eastern Europe: 229 Western Europe: . . .
We’ve written in the past about the very thin line that separates an acceptable expression of racial or ethnic bias from an unacceptable one — for instance, the tumult over Andy Rooney writing that “today’s baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me.” As we wrote in Freakonomics, evidence from the TV show Weakest Link suggested that bias against . . .
As of this writing, the CBS News program 60 Minutes is scheduled to run a segment on Sun., Feb. 10 (7 p.m. EST), on the fate of the penny: should it be abolished or not? I was interviewed on the subject, so if the piece isn’t preempted and if I don’t end up on the cutting room floor, you can . . .
These days, many Americans — including Mike Bloomberg and Chuck Schumer — fear the answer to that question will soon be “no,” if it isn’t already; London is poised to take over. An article [gated] in today’s Wall Street Journal about the credit crunch’s effect on the U.K. economy offers this sobering fact: The financial sector accounts for more than . . .
That is the promise being made by a company called QLess, which offers “virtual queue management” via cellphone* alerts. Its home page makes this alluring statement/threat: “On average, Americans spend almost 3 years of their lives waiting in line.” This is one area (perhaps of many) in which I am way below average. I hate lines, and waiting in general, . . .
The odds are pretty good that if you are a reader of this blog, you’ll have the opportunity to vote today in one of the Super (Duper) Tuesday primaries. Here are today’s Democratic primaries and here are the Republican primaries. Two Novembers ago, we wrote a column headlined “Why Vote?” that discussed the rationality of voting. One point we made . . .
Inspired by a recent trip to London, this recent Times article about England’s reluctant search for a national motto (suggestions range from “No Motto Please, We’re British” to “One Mighty Empire, Slightly Used”), as well as by this new book on six-word memoirs (which we teased not long ago here), I invite you all to attempt the following: Write a . . .
The parties who are suffering from the subprime crisis are vast and varied, as well as in the newspapers every day. One reason the crisis has gotten so much attention, in fact, is because these parties are so vast and varied. The typical financial crisis has one or two big villains (think Enron) and a vague coterie of victims (think . . .
Here’s our latest guest post from “Indexed” creator Jessica Hagy. You can find past posts here and Jessica’s own site here. She will soon be publishing a book of her work — and yes, I blurbed it. But once again, despite my general low disregard for book blurbs, this time I really meant it. Anyway, she calls this latest Freako-Indexed . . .
Patricia Cohen has an article in today’s Times about a recent American Enterprise Institute panel on the notion of repugnance and how it affects markets. In other words, why are some behaviors considered repugnant while others are acceptable, and how and why do such demarcations change over time? Three of the panel’s five participants — Arthur Brooks, Sally Satel, and . . .
If you go into the cafeteria at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, you will come upon a rather extraordinary display in the soda case: It reminded me of a Mondrian painting, maybe “Broadway Boogie Woogie.” As it turned out, the man responsible for the display was standing nearby, and we fell to chatting. His name is Derek . . .
Now, this is disappointing: three mathematicians go to the trouble to model bus waiting strategy — is it better to wait or to walk to the next forward stop? — and conclude that waiting is the best option. Why am I disappointed? Because they didn’t even consider an alternative bus waiting strategy discussed earlier on this blog: walking backward one . . .
Levitt blogged the other day about Yale Law student Aaron Zelinsky‘s proposal for ending steroid use in Major League Baseball. Now here’s an anti-doping counter-proposal from Joe Lindsey, a sports writer and blogger/contributor at Bicycling magazine. You may remember Joe from another guest post, in which he also countered an earlier Freakonomics doping post. So this is getting to be . . .
The Atlantic Coast Conference is a pretty mighty college sports division. Duke and Carolina win more than their share of N.C.A.A. basketball championships, and the N.B.A. is lousy with former A.C.C. players. (I suspect that Carolina players make better pros than Duke players, but that’s a topic for another day.) In 2006, Carolina’s women’s soccer team won its 18th national . . .
Coming into this very long, harried, and intensely reordered presidential primary season, there was a lot of talk about how poorly the nominating process serves the electorate. The common argument seemed to be that the acceleration and clustering of states’ primaries would create a chaos from which no electoral good would come. I’d like to suggest an opposing view: this . . .
We recently published a column describing a few instances of the law of unintended consequences — specifically, what happens when well-meaning legislation winds up hurting the parties it is designed to help. I thought it was a pretty good column. But I see now where it could have been better. Alex Tabarrok, writing on Marginal Revolution, addresses the law of . . .
This blog has regularly featured items on the pharmaceutical industry, including posts here, here, and here. It was this post in particular, highlighting an interview with the CEO of Genentech, that made me want to post a quorum on the subject. So we’ve gathered up some willing and able candidates — Dr. Stuart Apfel, Zola P. Horovitz, Dr. Harlan Krumholz, . . .
Apparently, all information on the Web does not want to be free: the Wall Street Journal will not, as has been widely speculated, tear down its paywall entirely. Here’s what new WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch told his paper at Davos: “We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of the Wall Street Journal online, but there will . . .
With all eyes suddenly on the economy, thanks in large part I am convinced to the extra hyperbole produced by a presidential campaign, there is much talk now of what sort of government “stimulus” package may be offered. Without debating the value of Fed vs. legislative interventions, and without debating the potential long-term ills caused by such short-term interventions, let . . .
Just as blog comments are often more interesting than blog posts, I have long thought that some of the best stories in newspapers and magazines are published in the letters-to-the-editor section. The Dec. 3, 2007, edition of BusinessWeek contains one of the most fascinating letters I’ve ever seen. (Click here and then scroll down to “Big MAC and the Chicago . . .
When a quarterback throws a costly interception or when a pitcher gives up a big home run, the play-by-play announcer inevitably says the player wishes “he could have that one back.” If there were a play-by-play announcer for newspaper writing (besides The Wire, I mean), he might say the same thing about this piece by Laura Berman in the Chicago . . .
We recently solicited your questions for Broadway producer Rocco Landesman, and threw in a few of our own as well. Reading his answers below, you can see why he is considered not only one of Broadway’s best producers, but also one of the most astute. Thanks to Rocco, and to all of you for the questions. Q: What will Broadway . . .
In earlier posts here and here, I wrote that I was going on TV to talk about an issue that’s been missing from the presidential campaign. And that issue is … Crime. A lot of you guessed correctly; a lot of you named other issues that have also been very quiet. I think the fact that the candidates aren’t spending . . .
We’ve posted earlier about book blurbs and how much they matter if at all. Rob Walker, the “Consumed” columnist for the Times Magazine as well as a blogger and author, recently wrote in to share some worthwhile blurb thoughts. I am interested to know how/if this changes your view of blurbs as a consumer. As a longtime blurb skeptic, I . . .
Yesterday, I wrote here that I was scheduled to appear on Good Morning America today to talk about an issue that’s virtually absent from the presidential campaign. You responded in force with guesses about what the issue is, and several of you guessed right. But there is a reason I used that phrase, “scheduled to appear” — because with TV, . . .
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