I was talking to an economics Ph.D. student the other day. Presumably hoping to generate some goodwill, he told me how much he enjoys the Freakonomics podcasts.
I asked him what he liked best about them. He gave an answer that I never would have guessed, and that would likely only come from a Ph.D. type.
I remember as a kid growing up watching TV, every once in a while someone at the station would make a mistake and start the wrong commercial. It would run for a second or two, and then the person in charge would realize the mistake and immediately cut to some other commercial or to the actual show.
More than two years ago, I blogged on this site about a puzzling pattern that I had observed in gas prices.
Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of school buses that are yellow everywhere except for the roof. I was perplexed as to why. According to this nearly 20-year-old New York Times article, the reason is that white tops are more reflective, lowering the temperature inside the bus by an average of 10 degrees during the summer. The source of that statistic is a very non-scientific sounding North Carolina pilot study.
The first academic paper I ever published was an empirical analysis of the “midterm gap” in American politics. (I couldn’t find an ungated version, but it’s not really worth reading anyway!)
An emergency meeting of the Delaware Witches Association.
I did not think that Paul Krugman was still writing academic papers. Nor have I seen any evidence in the last decade that he still has any sense of humor.
Consequently, I was surprised to see an article written by him entitled “The Theory of Interstellar Trade,” published recently in the journal Economic Inquiry.
Even Nobel Laureate economists suffer from lack of name recognition.
The first time I met Peter Diamond, nearly 20 years ago, I was a prospective student visiting MIT. He was wearing sandals without socks as he taught a graduate class. I remember thinking that was odd. As I sit here in my office, I am wearing sandals without socks. Perhaps Peter Diamond influenced me in ways I never imagined.
I was delighted to see that Peter Diamond shared the Nobel Prize today with two other economists (Mortensen and Pissarides, who I don’t know personally but are very highly respected).
Many economists view the health-care bill passed in the U.S. earlier this year as falling somewhere between “a complete waste of time” and “actually making the situation worse.” Will the Conservative Party do better with health-care reform in the U.K.?
Probably not, but Malcolm Gladwell might.
My source for this conclusion: the always-interesting OKTrends blog, which provides data analysis for the OKCupid online dating site. Its latest analysis looks at how profile essays differ by race.
A new meta-analysis looks at past research into whether a person’s performance on basic physical functions like walking speed or ease in getting out of a chair predicts death.
I happened to be driving by an A&W restaurant the other day. I also happened to be thirsty. So I stopped in to order a frosty mug of root beer.
“We’re out of root beer,” the worker told me.
As widely reported in the press recently, analysis done by the online dating site OKCupid finds that iPhone users are more sexually active than those who have Blackberrys or Androids.
As I’ve blogged about in the past, my father has earned great notoriety for his study of all things fecal.
Our minivan is ten years old, so we went out to buy a new one this weekend. In Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, we write a lot about how the Internet has changed markets in which there are information asymmetries. Buying a new car gave me the chance to see first-hand these forces at work in the new car market.
Peter Leeson’s new research.
Regulating soccer and financial markets.
The contest winner.
Patients die.
Advertisements from days gone by.
What would you say if you met a celebrity?
A humorous paper by Avinash Dixit.
Timothy Knowles calls for an end to tenure in primary and secondary schools.
Why does Levitt find Landis’s allegations so compelling? He describes in great specificity and detail scenarios involving refrigerators hidden in closets, and the precise temperature at which the blood stored in those refrigerators had to be kept; and faked bus breakdowns during which Lance received blood transfusions while lying on the floor of the bus, etc. To make up stories of this kind, with that sort of detail, strikes Levitt as a difficult task.
A European bias in team rankings?
Levitt’s Q&A in Money Magazine.
Jimmy Golen weighs in.
A Freakonomics contest winner.
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