In research with Roland Fryer, later written up in Freakonomics, we asked the question “Does the name you give your child matter for her life outcome?” (I say “her” because we could only look at girls because the way we tried to answer the problem was by linking a baby girl’s birth certificate to the birth certificate of her child . . .
I gave a lecture at Wayne State University yesterday. They were a really fantastic set of people. I got to spend some time with the president of the University, Irvin Reid. He is very impressive. I suspect we will be hearing a lot more from him in the future. The most memorable part of my day though, was when two . . .
I blogged a few weeks back about a piece in The New Republic last month that claimed I was ruining economics. At that time, there wasn’t a full version of the article online to link to, so there did not seem to be much point in saying much about the piece. Now, you can read the full article here. If . . .
I just returned from a fascinating and enjoyable trip to Warsaw. The only negative to the trip (besides the fact it is a 9 hour flight to get there) was how incredibly rude the Poles were about lines. I have never seen such obvious disrespect for other people when it came to cutting in lines, even when it meant that . . .
My good friend Roland Fryer has taken as his life’s mission to understand every aspect of the economic life of Blacks in America. His latest research, co-authored with another good friend, Michael Greenstone, tackles the issues of (a) who attends historically Black colleges, and (b) does it help them or hurt them if they do. Here are their key conclusions: . . .
The John Bates Clark Medal is given every two years to the American economist under the age of 40 who is deemed most influential. Congratulations to Susan Athey, a Harvard professor, who won the award today! She is the first woman to win the award. I got to know Susan and her husband Guido Imbens very well four years ago . . .
Like everything else Michael Lewis does, his recent article which discusses the move towards tradable securities in pro athletes is beautifully written and very interesting. My friends (and relatives actually) at ProTrade.com are right at the heart of this new trend. (hat tip to Chris Thayer)
I am not hip enough to be part of Facebook.com, but my research assistants who are tell me that there is a Freakonomics Group there. Unfortunately, that link only works if you are hipper than me.
In my research with Chad Syverson on real estate agents, which is also discussed in Freakonomics, we argue that the current system doesn’t do a great job of aligning the interests of the agent and the homeowner. Consequently, you may not want to believe what your real estate agent tells you. So how else are you going to figure out . . .
University of Chicago economists have a reputation for being outspoken, libertarian, and conservative. My good friend and Chicago colleague Austan Goolsbee, who has been advising Barack Obama on economic policy since his Senate campaign, is only the first of these. There is an article about economists advising presidential candidates that features Goolsbee in today’s New York Times. My guess is . . .
The last quiz and the answer are below. My two further thoughts: 1) Many people outside of academia think that peer review is some sort of magical elixir that guarantees that papers that get published are right. This is simply not true. It is hard to do good research, and it is hard to read other people’s work and accurately . . .
The winner of the quiz goes by the tag KZ. If I can find out more about KZ, I will post that info. KZ recognized that there do not seem to be any controls for a time trend in the paper. While the authors control for all sorts of other factors like unemployment and seasonality, I think they have left . . .
Usually our quizzes are more on the whimsical side, but here is a serious one that requires a real investment of time. Some academics (at most one out of the three is an economist) in the United Kingdom recently published a paper in a journal called Applied Economics claiming that a 1 percent increase in the price of beer in . . .
This piece in the Washington Post is one of the most interesting articles I have read in a newspaper in a long, long time. The Post arranged for Joshua Bell, a world famous violinist, to bring his $3.5 million violin to a subway stop, open up his case for donations, and see how people respond. The story even shows you . . .
Dubner worries a lot about whether people comment on our posts, which is definitely evidence that he doesn’t have enough important things to worry about. Every time I have made a post about baseball, it has unleashed a torrent of comments. So as an Easter gift to Dubner, here is my annual baseball post. I’ve been working for the last . . .
Two days ago I taught my two older daughters how to play seven card stud. That night we played a few hands before they went to bed. Last night we played a few more hands. Tonight I got home from work and one of my daughters, Amanda, was particularly eager to play poker. So eager that she had already dealt . . .
The winner of the quiz is Willy, who had the 64th guess, correctly noting that LeBron James and my wife are both studying mandarin. My wife and four kids are all studying Mandarin, in part because we have two daughters adopted from China. (I tried learning a while back, but I had no talent for it and gave up.) LeBron . . .
Nobody has even been close to giving the right answer to the quiz, so I added a clue to the original post which is directly below. If it is true that LeBron had a paper route and likes poker, then he does share that with my wife, but that is not what I had in mind.
For a Freakonomics t-shirt and a signed copy of the book: What is the most notable thing that my wife Jeannette and LeBron James have in common? The first person to guess what I have in mind wins. None of the wimpy stuff Dubner does, giving away a second prize to people who answer the question correctly, but later, giving . . .
It is a strange coincidence that Ohio State and Florida played for the national championship in both college football and basketball this year. What are the odds of something like this happening in the two premier sports? Let’s assume (1) there are 50 universities that have a shot at winning each of these national titles, (2) all 50 of these . . .
In this week’s issue of Newsweek, Jonathan Alter writes a chillingly matter-of-fact article about his battle with cancer. I had the pleasure of having brunch with Alter a year or two ago. He is as intelligent and likable in real life as he is in his writing.
Emily Oster told me just yesterday that she didn’t start thinking about missing women until she was in graduate school. Now it is revealed in the Everit St. Weekly (see page 3) that she actually began the research at age 9. Knowing she spent more than 15 years working on the project, it is easier for me to understand how . . .
A Texas State Senator has been ridiculed for his proposal to pay women $500 if they show up at an abortion clinic, elect not to have an abortion, and then give the baby up for adoption. Honestly, though, is it really such a bad idea? What if he left out the part about visiting an abortion clinic? Does it make . . .
I previously blogged about a woman who had the odd hobby of clipping newspaper articles for crimes where the perpetrator had the middle name “Wayne.” The blog News of the Weird also has reported on this phenomenon. The latest gruesome crime out of Texas doesn’t break the mold: What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on . . .
Yes, Freakonomics is ruining the dismal science, according to this article in the New Republic [reg. req’d]. For what it is worth, I disagree.
When Freakonomics gets published in a new language, they always send me a couple copies. I just got the Serbian version: The first thing I noticed is that it is a pretty sad looking apple/orange on the cover. The second thing I noticed is that it was written by Stiven D. Levit and Stiven Dz. Dabner. Isn’t it strange to . . .
Seeing this article about drones today reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a man I met at a conference. I would identify him by name, but I left his business card in my jacket pocket which is at home, so I won’t be able to give him direct credit until I get back home later. This gentleman . . .
I’ve blogged before about my suspicions that the ban on electronic devices on airplanes is the product of a regulator with an overactive imagination, which is an opinion that upsets a lot of blog readers, so let’s take it another direction. Everyone knows you shouldn’t use cell phones in hospitals for fear of disrupting life-save hospital equipment. Right? According to . . .
I have been on a mission to convince firms to do simple experiments that will give them feedback regarding the decisions that they make. Just as with people (as Anders Ericsson studies), firms cannot learn without feedback. It turns out, however, that it is not easy for people in companies to see the wisdom in experiments. Which is why I . . .
I went to high school with a guy named Dave Kansas. We were good friends even after I beat him out for the honor of being the worst starting point guard ever on any varsity high school basketball team. He went on to become a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. One night more than a decade ago we were . . .
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