… just one of the choice quotes delivered by my father in this informative article about his life’s work.
Most people, given the opportunity, would like to have a say in what other people earn. If someone is nice to me, throw a little extra Christmas bonus their way. If they are rude and surly, how about a 3 percent pay cut? So I find it interesting that the Baseball Writers of America (BBWAA) recently approved a rule which . . .
According to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of housing prices, home prices have fallen by about 6 percent in the United States on average over the last twelve months. By my rough calculations, that means that home owners have lost about $720 billion in wealth as a consequence. That is about $2,400 for every person in America, and $18,000 for the average . . .
We use our eyes to see, so it seems logical to conjecture that if you didn’t have eyes, you couldn’t see. What I love about science is that these sorts of limiting beliefs routinely get blasted out of the water. A fascinating series of experiments points out that we see with our brains, not our eyes. Consequently, you can substitute . . .
I have blogged repeatedly about the propensity of the media to distort official crime reports to make it appear as if things are getting inexorably worse. (You can see past examples here, here, and here.) Crime has more or less been treading water in the United States over the last few years, although you would never know it from the . . .
A friend of mine went through Naval Officer Candidate School a while back, and I recently stumbled upon an old e-mail he’d sent me that included the following: It has been eight weeks, and my training class is about to become the “senior class on deck,” which means that we are responsible for running the junior classes. It also means . . .
For the last few years I’ve been trying to convince businesses to run experiments in order to learn how to do things better. Why is it that experimentation is the gold standard in science, but rarely exploited in corporations? My own hunch is that the main reason is what economists call “path dependence” — in other words, businesses don’t run . . .
Yesterday, I posted a quiz asking what my wife Jeannette’s grandma has in common with Mark Twain. The answer is that she, like Twain, had her obituary published while she was still alive. Jeannette’s grandma is named Anne Hathaway. At age 92, she is still going strong. Just a few years ago, she traveled from Orono, Maine to Slovenia for . . .
My last quiz on horse racing was hard: you needed to know some institutional details, and even if you did, it was still very tricky. This next quiz is quite easy. For a piece of Freakonomics schwag, just be the first one to correctly answer the following question: What do my wife Jeannette’s grandmother and Mark Twain have in common? . . .
We wrote in Freakonomics about our views on parenting. Mostly, we were skeptical of how much parents could do to improve their kids’ futures. One can clearly be a terrible parent through neglect or abuse. The tougher question is whether being an “obsessive” parent who drags children to a never-ending procession of soccer practices, museums, and acting classes is better . . .
Peter Landesman has written a fascinating article for L.A. Weekly on street gangs. The events he details are chilling. I can’t say I agree with some of the broader claims of the piece, however. Landesman argues that the gang problem is worse than it has ever been, and that gang violence hasn’t dropped the way other crimes have. A quick . . .
Until recently, I had known Katherine Ozment only as the easy-to-like wife of my good friend and former colleague Michael Greenstone. Then I discovered her Web site, which contains examples of her writing. She has an amazing gift. Check out “Winter of Discontent,” “The Last Hurrah,” and everything else in between. But make sure you have some time to spare . . .
Talk about a nickname that is hard to live up to! Franziska Michor, who is a friend, former Harvard Society Fellow, and honorary economist, is featured in this year’s Esquire “Genius” edition under the headline “The Isaac Newton of Biology.” And she is only 25, and can also drive an eighteen-wheeler. Here is a link to her research on cancer.
One of my daughters recently had a second-grade friend of hers over to the house for a play date. My wife, Jeannette, was down on the first floor, while the two girls were up in our attic playroom. Suddenly, Jeannette heard screams of terror from the visiting friend. She ran upstairs, fearing the worst. “What happened?” my wife asked. The . . .
I love the title of Ian Ayres‘ latest op-ed in The Economists’ Voice: “Give Freakonomics a Chance” In the piece, Ian pleads with the N.B.A. to hand over its referee data so that economists can look for evidence of cheating.
Yale economist Dean Karlan recently received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers — the highest honor given by the federal government to young researchers. I believe the prize comes with half a million dollars of research support to use over the next five years. Dean has been doing important and innovative work, often using field experiments to . . .
I honestly couldn’t tell at first if this was a joke or not. Economists can have a strange sense of humor. The Web site Year 2 is reporting that Berkeley economist Dan McFadden has scored a rare double: first a Nobel Prize and then a vote for the Heisman Trophy. It turns out it is a joke. Reading this, though, . . .
Last Sunday, the New York Giants played the Chicago Bears in football. The point spread on the game favored the Giants by 1.5 points, meaning that if the Giants won by only one point, those who bet on them would lose. Having watched the game myself, I was not at all surprised to receive the following e-mail from a fan . . .
Among many ingenious ideas/scenarios/scams proposed by blog readers in response to my horse betting quiz, the answer I was looking for finally appeared. Jim Vanasek is the reader who nailed it. Here is what he wrote: The scenario: You are alive in going in to the final leg of the pick six. There is going to be a payout of . . .
Rarely do I get to the end of a book and wish that it had still more chapters. On the rare occasion when this does happen, the feeling usually passes quickly. When my longing for a book persists, I know I really liked the book. By this measure (as well as any other), I loved the book Sin in the . . .
A few weeks back we linked to a blog post describing the optimal strategy in the game Monopoly. This fascinating article by Brian McMahon describes how the game of Monopoly was used during World War II to aid in the escape of Allied POWs. (Is it just me, or does it seem from reading the story that this was an . . .
Just in time for the holidays, the economists Roy Wada and Erdal Tekin have a new NBER working paper they’ve tactfully named “Body Composition and Wages.” It contains bad news for those planning to overindulge. The abstract reads, in part: Our results indicate that increased body fat is unambiguously associated with decreased wages for both males and females. This result . . .
I had the pleasure of visiting Dubai for the first time last week. The city is a wonderful example of unintended consequences; because it had the misfortune of almost running out of oil, it was forced to create other ways of generating income. It has since made huge investments in both tourism and the financial sector. Although I didn’t get . . .
Amazon has just introduced a new e-reader called the “Kindle,” and it looks like a fantastic piece of technology. The company must have high hopes for the Kindle — today, when you type “www.amazon.com,” into your browser, you get a letter from Jeff Bezos touting the new product. I have to say that it looks quite enticing. Amazon also provides . . .
A few years back, the economist David Romer wrote an academic paper suggesting that teams in the N.F.L. should punt less frequently. While the league’s coaches mostly dismissed his findings, I suspect that teams are a bit more likely to go for it on fourth down in marginal situations today than they were before he wrote the article. N.F.L. coaches . . .
I love technological innovations. In my view, we are so lucky to live today rather than 200 years ago. One area that has seen enormous innovation recently, though much of it seems to be underappreciated, is needles. I base this only on my own limited experience as a pin cushion, but I think it is true more generally. For example, . . .
From today’s Times: Mayor Bloomberg has approved a major facet of Roland Fryer‘s program for making learning “cool” for inner-city kids.
Freakonomics schwag is up for offer at the end of this post. As such, it may actually be worth slogging through the brief economics lesson that follows. The Coase Theorem is a somewhat rare species of beast: an economic theory that is both completely counterintuitive and yet often right in practice. The idea is named after Ronald Coase, one of . . .
The boiler went out in my house last week. We have an archaic steam-driven radiator system, and we knew we were living on borrowed time. It is a good time of year to lose heat. It hasn’t been terribly cold in Chicago, so we’ve managed to keep the temperature in the house around 60 degrees through space heaters and sunlight . . .
Of all places, San Francisco must be one of the worst in which to try a “following the falafel” strategy for catching terrorists. Still, I like the creativity. (Hat tip: Alon Nir.)
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