It may not be surprising to you that Trevon D. Logan, an economics professor at Ohio State University, is interested in college football. Ohio State is, after all, a football mecca (as we experienced first-hand some time ago). What may surprise you, however, is what Logan has concluded about college football polls. In a new working paper, Logan used 25 . . .
Video In an earlier video, Levitt talked about how hard it is for economists to make good predictions about the macroeconomy. He continues that theme in this new piece, explaining why he’d rather tackle a much smaller question and try to answer it well.
A couple of weeks ago, Wired editor and The Long Tail author Chris Anderson got so fed up with receiving pitches from clueless (or lazy) publicists that he screeched out in protest, permanently banning said publicists from his in-box and, to the delight of some onlookers, publishing their e-mail addresses on his blog in a spammer-friendly format. Reaction to Anderson’s . . .
After overcoming some technical difficulties, we seem to have perfected the process by which we send out free autographed Freakonomics bookplates. This allows you to turn a common, mass-produced object into an autographed common, mass-produced object (and, thereby, a cherished keepsake). While we are not making any promises, there is a good chance that if you order a bookplate in . . .
A few weeks ago, I gave a bookstore reading for my new kids’ book, The Boy With Two Belly Buttons. I was sitting on the floor, reading to a bunch of kids, when suddenly something seemed wrong with the story — it didn’t track, didn’t make sense to me at all. Befuddled, I stopped reading. I remember thinking, “Wow, has . . .
There’s an interesting article about organ transplantation in today’s Wall Street Journal, by Laura Meckler. It’s primarily about a transplant surgeon named Arthur Matas who has been advocating for the legalization of kidney sales in the U.S. Despite much opposition in the transplant community, Matas has been making headway: Appearing at a January meeting of the American Society of Transplant . . .
Michael Lewis wrote a really good piece (almost all of his pieces are good, IMHO) in last week’s Play magazine about N.F.L. kickers and whether the great “clutch” kickers like Adam Vinatieri are actually much better than the average kicker. Lewis’s verdict: not really. It’s just that a few random kicks turn out to be highly memorable (think Vinatieri in . . .
I heard an interesting story recently. A woman at a dinner party said that her mother (let’s call her Jane) was having lunch at a well-known and expensive New York restaurant when she went to the ladies’ room. While washing her hands, she made the cardinal sin of removing her diamond ring, and then forgot to retrieve it before she . . .
The answer isn’t that surprising in retrospect, but I’d never thought about it until I visited Seattle the other day and saw some statistics assembled by the Washington Policy Center. Here are some hints: 1. It has something to do with a post I wrote about Brazil not long ago. 2. It has something to do with water. 3. It . . .
Video It is important to never underestimate the power of free — of free anything, it seems. I have been to conferences where the typical attendee makes at least low six figures and yet is willing to stand in line to get his schwag bag. What’s in it? Some suntan lotion, a paperweight, boutique vinegar — it doesn’t really matter. . . .
In the last few years, magazine covers and newspaper front pages have often been dominated by disaster coverage: wildfires in California, hurricanes in the Gulf and elsewhere, and of course the Sept. 11 attacks and their myriad repercussions. (Whether the incidence of such events is higher or coverage is just noisier is a separate question, which is addressed below.) So . . .
Jessica Hagy has been sending us “Indexed” posts for a few months now, and has been posting them for much longer on her own blog. Am I the only one who thinks she is inching dangerously close to real economics? Behold her latest, “Movin’ on Up” and “Getting Stuck There”:
Last week, we ran a few excerpts from the new book The Secret History of the War on Cancer and and solicited your questions for its author, Devra Davis. I found her answers to be extraordinarily informative, and hope you do too. According to Davis, the economics of cancer prevention (not treatment) seem to be improving hard and fast, which . . .
Pretend you work at a mid-size advertising agency. Would you rather … 1. Be arrested for minor embezzlement and get fired? 2. Be arrested for prostitution (or, more likely, solicitation thereof) and get fired? Keep in mind that solicitation and embezzlement of under $1,000 are both class A misdemeanors in New York, with prison time of up to a year . . .
As much as I liked Penn & Teller, there was no levitation involved when I recently saw their show. This guy, however, more than makes up for it. His name is Wouter Bijdendijk and yes, that is the White House in the background. I guess he wasn’t able to get inside, unlike someone we know. Can anyone explain how he . . .
Video Today is Election Day, albeit a quiet one. There isn’t much at stake in New York. There’s more action in New Jersey, though voter turnout is expected to be low, as it is in California. The irony is that the typical voter is more likely to have an impact in a smaller election than in a larger one, but . . .
An e-mail just turned up in my in-box. It was clearly selling something, and the text ended with the following thoughtful note: Please consider the environment — do you really need to print this e-mail? And what, you ask, was the e-mail selling? Private jet travel. Like the man said: please consider the environment.
In 1994, Anu Garg, a computer science graduate student in Ohio, decided to pick a daily word, study its origins, and share his findings with his fellow students. The result was Wordsmith.org, which today has more than 650,000 readers in 200 countries. Over the past 13 years, Garg has shared thousands of words with fellow linguaphiles, including illeist (someone who . . .
Video This is a subject we wrote about in Freakonomics, based on a really interesting paper called “What Makes You Click?” by Günter J. Hitsch, Ali Hortaçsu, and Dan Ariely. The story we told in the book was an aggregate one, based on thousands of online daters’ data. But we thought it would make sense to go out on the . . .
A couple of years ago, we wrote a column about crack cocaine, which ended with a discussion of the federal sentencing guidelines for crack vs. powder cocaine: This disparity has often been called racist since it disproportionately imprisons blacks. In fact, the law probably made sense at the time, when a gram of crack did have far more devastating social . . .
With the current installment of Indexed, Jessica Hagy wanders firmly into Freakonomics territory — the economics and politics of oil and of fear. She calls this pairing “Slippery and Magnetic.” (Here are her past posts.) Is breast cancer a fatal disease that should be vigorously prevented and treated? Of course. But it is a good example of a “cause” disease . . .
Devra Davis knows a few things about cancer. The director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and the former director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the National Academy of Sciences, she has spent her career researching, documenting, and advising about the disease. In the preface of her new book, . . .
(Photo: Scott Adams) Last week, we solicited your questions for Dilbert creator and author Scott Adams. Here are his answers. They are great, and so were your questions; thanks to Scott and thanks to you. Here’s what I found most interesting: 1. From his answers, Scott Adams would appear to be a poster boy (poster man?) for the Anders Ericsson . . .
I have a favorite thought exercise: look at an issue that’s important, complex, and interesting — something like healthcare, education, or electoral politics — and pretend that you could rebuild the system from scratch, without the convoluted histories and incentives that currently exist. What would the new system look like? How differently would you think about key issues if there . . .
Some Red Sox fans are doubly happy this week: not only did their team win a World Series, but they also get a rebate on the furniture they bought during a special Red Sox incentive deal last spring. Hopefully none of them got a brown couch whose color is described, on its tag, with the use of the n-word. That’s . . .
Video It is fairly well known by now that Levitt has more than a passing interest in poker, and he’s occasionally shown some promise. (His blackjack skills, meanwhile, are subject to debate.) It is also well-established that, as a parent, he’s less interested in reading a standard bedtime story than in teaching his kids to think creatively and strategically — . . .
That’s the question asked by the Wharton economists Fernando Ferreira and Joseph Gyourko. But they are not talking about national political parties. In that realm, party affiliation has indeed been shown to have a strong effect on legislation and policy. No, Ferreira and Gyourko are interested in whether party affiliation matters on the local level — and their answer, essentially, . . .
(Photo: Scott Adams) Although I’ve never been a regular reader of Dilbert — the silly newspapers I read most regularly, the Times and the Wall Street Journal, don’t have the good sense to run comics — I am a huge fan of Dilbert creator Scott Adams, thanks to his extraordinarily good blog. After studying economics at Hartwick College, Adams took . . .
In almost all countries, women are more likely to be obese than men. The economists Anne Case and Alicia Menendez set out to learn why, using data collected from a township outside of Cape Town, South Africa. Here’s what they determined: 1. “Women who were nutritionally deprived as children are significantly more likely to be obese as adults, while men . . .
For those of you who love prediction markets (a variety of which we’ve written about in the past), there’s a new site that looks to be as vast, inclusive, and user-friendly as anything I’ve seen: Predictify. You can wager on standing bets (who will be the Yankees’ next manager, e.g.) or “tap collective wisdom” (I hope they’re paying Jim Surowiecki . . .
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