My good friend Dave Eldan sends me interesting tidbits on a regular basis. More often than not, they are pulled from obituaries. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess. I found his latest missive very interesting. It is from an obituary by Morton White for the great philosopher and mathematician Willard Van Orman Quine. (Unless I am dreaming, I actually had . . .
Well, at least the folks at the PopSci Predictions Exchange listen. Last week Dubner blogged about Jatropha, a weed that could spearhead a biofuel revolution. At the end of his post, he urged the PopSci Predictions Exchange to launch a contract on Jatropha. Voila. So far there are only sellers — people betting against Jatropha — and no buyers.
Back when I was a graduate student at MIT in desperate need of a haircut, I stumbled into a place called The Hair Connection. Little did I know it would change my life. A pleasant woman named Carmella cut my hair, and even offered me a generous student discount. I soon became a loyal customer, dropping in every three to . . .
First, Dubner graduates. Next, they beat Michigan in football. Then Miss Teen South Carolina Lauren Caitlin Upton plans to attend Appalachian State. Not sure if they offer this as a major, but perhaps Miss Upton has a future writing librettos.
Why do brands of whiskey, rum, and gin stay constant, while new vodkas spring up like weeds? Dubner offers one explanation.
A few days back I posed the question “Why are we eating so much shrimp?” Between 1980 and 2005, the amount of shrimp consumed per person in the U.S. has nearly tripled. I didn’t expect more than 1,000 responses! I asked the question because Shane Frederick, a marketing professor at MIT’s Sloan School, had contacted me with an intriguing hypothesis. . . .
You never know when you are going to get a tough question like this one.
The most surprising thing I learned today comes from the opening paragraph of a paper by Anne Case and Christina Paxson: In late 19th Century Europe, adult height was attained at age 26. This is just one reminder of how radically life has changed in the last 100 years. At least in the developed world, we have moved from a . . .
We need your help with a little social experiment. Between 1980 and 2005, the amount of shrimp consumed by Americans nearly tripled, from 1.4 pounds per person to 4.1 pounds per person. Shane Frederick, an M.I.T. management professor, has made a hobby of asking anyone he meets why Americans eat so much more shrimp today than they did 25 years . . .
I always love it when I see a paper that only an economist could write. An ingenious new study by Stefano DellaVigna and Eliana La Ferrara definitely fits that description. The issue they tackled is detection of illegal arms trades that defy United Nations embargoes. Their idea was to use the information embedded in stock markets to tease out indirect . . .
I am delighted to report that the economics paper on AC/DC I blogged about yesterday was meant as a joke. It takes a lot of work to run an experiment on real people, just for a gag paper. It turns out they meant to play the same AC/DC song in both treatments, but made a mistake and accidentally played two . . .
They grow up to write economics papers like this one, which looks at whether participants in lab experiments get closer to efficient outcomes when exposed to one lead singer of the rock band AC/DC versus another. I hope for this guy’s sake he has tenure. (Hat tip to Joshua Gans.)
Back in the day, when people noted that Diet Coke was 99% water, it was an insult. The point was that water was free, and Diet Coke was just free water plus a little bit of artificial this and that — so you would have to be a fool to pay so much for it. Of course, times have changed. . . .
Freakonomics and High School Musical have a lot in common. Both were surprise hits that had no reason to be commercial successes, but managed to do well by not taking themselves too seriously. My kids and my wife love the original High School Musical. I kind of like it myself. It is played an average of three times a day . . .
Does the President matter? Levitt continues the discussion
Levitt on terrorism: The third and final (maybe) chapter
Levitt’s take on the current crime stats for the five largest U.S. cities
Levitt discusses the economics of reinstating a draft.
Levitt discusses poverty and wage issues raised in writer-turned-New York cop Edward Conlon’s book, “Blue Blood.”
Levitt discusses Louis Michaud, whose attempts to create tornadoes and harness their power as electricity may point us in the right direction towards creating a global warming solution.
Levitt responds to the fiery criticism of his previous post, “If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack?”
Levitt commends U.S. News and World Reports writer James Pethokoukis for his analysis of the faulty economics used by the Democratic Presidential candidates during their televised debate.
In the wake of changes in airport security technology, Levitt lists his own ideas for a fear-maximizing terror plot, and solicits other ideas from readers as a means of bringing possible scenarios into discussion before they actually happen.
The 2005 Hurricane season was the most active and destructive in recorded history. The devastation from hurricanes like Katrina, Rita, and Wilma was powerful evidence that man-made global warming had triggered an onslaught of unforeseen consequences — at least, that was the way the media tended to portray it. Maybe I am wrong, but I think the current focus on . . .
I grew up just a few miles from the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. We were a family that was terrified of heights. At least once a month, my father would mention how he thought a bridge over the Mississippi was going to collapse. We would be calling him Nostradamus today, except that his doomsday prediction was about a different . . .
Yesterday I wrote a nondescript post on books that knock God. It got more than 100 comments in a day — about as many as we have ever gotten on any post where we weren’t giving something away. Now I know who buys these books: the same people who read this blog.
A little more than a year ago I blogged about how every third book had the word “bullshit” in its title. Happily, that trend faded. I could only find two books on Amazon released in the last year with “bullshit” in the title. Now, it seems that going after God is the hip thing to do. Daniel Dennett started the . . .
Most of our blog readers couldn’t care less about refereeing in academic publishing. And they should be thankful. For a tenure-track economist, getting published is a brutal process. You spend a year or two coming up with an idea, try to think over every aspect of the problem, collect and analyze data, and finally produce a 30-page paper summarizing all . . .
I once had the honor of sharing a meal with Steven Pinker. He was as fun and brilliant in person as he is in his writing. The Chicago Sun-Times recently published a piece by him (which we’ve mentioned before) that’s also the preface to a book entitled “What is Your Dangerous Idea? Today’s Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable.” The article . . .
I wrote last week about the “invitation” I received to give an interview that would only cost me $3,995. Today I get another amusing spam email. This one is from Worldwide Law Enforcement Consulting Group, Inc. They are putting on a conference. There was nothing notable about the email, except for this one line: DUE TO GREAT RESPONSE EARLY REGISTRATION . . .
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