An article in yesterday’s USA Today reports on a recent survey of health care providers. The study asked them whether or not they would report to work in a flu pandemic. Nearly half said they would be no-shows. If there is one thing economists have learned, it is that what people say and what they do are often not the . . .
One of the highlights of the recent conference we had honoring Gary Becker was a speech given by his wife, Guity Becker. Guity was kind enough to let me reprint parts of it here. This is how Guity and Gary met, according to Guity: I saw an ad for a table with ten chairs, for only $200. I called immediately . . .
Don’t blink because it surely will not last long, but for the first time ever Freakonomics just reached #1 on Amazon.com after the 20/20 special. Indeed, by the time you read this it will probably be too late. For weeks last April and May we were #2 behind Harry Potter and could never make it to the top. A year . . .
The Center I direct at the University of Chicago got a new name last weekend. It is now the “Becker Center for Chicago Price Theory founded by Richard Ryan.” We had a great collection of speakers at the event, including top academics like Nobel Laureates Gary Becker and George Akerlof, Andrei Shleifer, Kevin Murphy, Ed Lazear, and Ed Glaeser, as . . .
Best-seller leads scholar to file lawsuit Defamation allegation targets U. of C. author By Michael Higgins Tribune staff reporter Published April 11, 2006 A scholar known for his work on guns and crime filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-seller “Freakonomics.” John Lott Jr. of Virginia, a former U. of C. . . .
I blogged about Thomas Dolby a few days back. The Freakonomics blog fact-checker must have been on vacation that day, as I guess I got the story a little bit confused, as Thomas Dolby makes clear in this very amusing blog entry about my blog entry.
The good news is that Freakonomics won the Golden Chazzie Award for best non-fiction book. The bad news is that I never heard of the Golden Chazzie Awards. Or any of the winners in any of the other categories, for that matter. The blog that sponsors it, NeedCoffee, is pretty amusing.
One of them is Dubner, if his long ago rock career counts. The other, without question, is Thomas Dolby. I sat next to him at lunch last summer at the TED conference in England. He was quite impressive. Dolby’s father was a classics professor, I think. Thomas Dolby is back with his first album in 15 years, and –what else– . . .
If voting were as much fun as playing the lottery, a lot more people would probably vote. Some folks in Arizona are trying to do something to make voting more like the lottery. There is an initiative on the ballot (you need to scroll down that page to see it) that reads as follows: “This law will establish a voter . . .
People never seem to get tired of debating about whether legalizing abortion reduced crime. The latest installment involved my co-author John Donohue and a host of critics in a Battle Royale cage match held at the American Enterprise Institute. All of our most vocal critics were there, even Steve Sailer. If you have four hours, you can watch it for . . .
In a sample of 13 African countries between 1999 and 2004, 52% of women surveyed say they think that wife beating is justified if she neglects the children; around 45% think it’s justified if she goes out without telling the husband or argues with him; 36% if she refuses sex, and 30% if she burns the food. And this is . . .
The answer is that they all blurb the new book Muzzled: From T-ball to Terrorism- True Stories that Should be Fiction written by my friend Michael Smerconish. The book is an edgy and amusing series of vignettes about how political correctness has gone too far. The topics range from streaking at Princeton to Mumia Abu-Jamal to airport security and just . . .
Tyler Cowen of the economics blog MarginalRevolution is going to be taking over a spot in the rotation in the “Economics Scene” column of the business section of the New York Times. I really look forward to reading this. Given the amount of blogging he does, he is unlikely to run out of column ideas anytime soon. As for Dubner . . .
I have two daughters adopted from China and it is an issue close to my heart. Here’s a link to a story in the New York Times on identity issues for these adopted girls face. My wife and I decided to adopt two girls from China in the hope that having a Chinese sister would help with these issues. I . . .
A recent undercover investigation by the BBC claims that real estate agents in the UK go to great lengths to exploit their informational advantage, including trumpeting fake offers, colluding with mortage brokers, and even tossing in a fake British passport with the property. It is an interesting article. A quote in the article states, “Perhaps, like in the United States, . . .
From our Norwegian publishers Gyldendal: I like it.
I don’t actually have the answer, but here’s a link to a very amusing website www.flapart.ca. They sell joke book jackets that you can put over the hardcover book you are reading on the bus, subway, or at work. They offer a wide range of titles. Some are likely to lead strangers to strike up conversations with you. Others will . . .
That’s a good question, given how competitive it seems to have gotten and how little math preparation I had. Just this year we saw a 20% increase in applications to the U of C program (my colleagues blamed me for all the extra work that made, saying it was a Freakonomics effect). The question of whether I could get into . . .
My wife and I spent the day in the Emergency Room yesterday with our daughter Sophie, who had become severely dehydrated due to gastroenteritis induced vomiting. The folks at the University of Chicago emergency room were very kind to us. I hope we never have to go there again, but if we do, it looks like the generosity of the . . .
In the United States, past research has consistently found that Black teenagers underperform White teenagers by an average of about one standard deviation on tests of IQ and academic achievement. Substantial racial test score gaps are found as early as age five. Roland Fryer and I have written two papers on racial differences in test scores in the past (see . . .
Here’s a link to a New York Times article discussing research by Justin Wolfers alleging point shaving in college basketball. Justin Wolfers is also the co-author of an article that is highly critical of research purporting to show a big deterrent effect of the death penalty. I blogged about that issue a few days back.
My wife does volunteer work holding informational meetings for families thinking about adopting from China. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune was writing about international adoption and sat in on Jeannette’s seminar. Consequently, our family got some non-Freakonomics airtime. The whole article is here, but you have to register to read it. I’ve excerpted the high points below. Worth the . . .
An amusing picture and discussion.
In Freakonomics, we wrote about my research with Chad Syverson which looked at how real estate agents did when they sold their own houses versus those of their clients. You can read the original academic paper here. Now we’ve got a new paper idea on real estate, but we need some help from real-estate agents/brokers — especially ones that either . . .
From the BBC, this news report: Sudan man forced to ‘marry’ goat A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal. The goat’s owner, Mr Alifi, said he surprised the man with his goat and took him to a council of elders. They ordered the man, Mr . . .
One of the projects I’ve been engaged in lately is trying to catch players who are cheating in online poker. (This is unrelated to the Pokernomics analysis I have also been doing — although at a glacial pace. For those of you who sent me hand histories we will be getting you ring game analyses within the next couple weeks.) . . .
Back in high school, Dave Kansas was a teammate of mine on our state-champion quiz bowl team. We also shared starting duties at point guard on our high school basketball team, which explains why we were not state champions in basketball. Anyway, Dave Kansas has done pretty well for himself. He was a journalist at the Wall Street Journal before . . .
I don’t know the answer to this question, I just throw it out for blog readers to ponder. The competition for the Nobel prize in economics is a lot less fierce than most people think. Most of the winners graduate from a prestigious Ph.D. program (and this will be increasingly true in the future, I would guess). Each year, perhaps . . .
In response to my post regarding false predictions not being properly punished, some blog readers took exception to my argument that the hysteria that surrounded Y2K was a false prophesy. Their argument is that all of the preparation leading up to Y2K averted what would have been a disaster. That just doesn’t ring true to me. Was there not anyone, . . .
Dubner and I wrote a column in the NY Times that told people to bet on Seattle in the Super Bowl. The bet lost. Not more than three people mentioned this to me afterwards. Not a single angry e-mail from a stranger who lost their college tuition fund because of our column. I’m glad people didn’t write me, but still, . . .
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