All economists love markets. Most economists hate gambling. So I don’t know whether or not to be surprised by the fact that my friends at tradesports are offering a line on which economist will be the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. (At Tradesports, go to the trading screen and search under “Current Events – Federal Reserve.” Consistent with the . . .
I guess the National Association of Realtors was not so pleased with our latest visit to the Today show. The letter below is posted on the front page of their web site. I’ve taken the liberty of interspersing a few comments in italics. NAR Responds to Erroneous Statements Made on Today Show(June 17, 2005) — On June 16, guests on . . .
My colleague Chad Syverson passed along the following news clipping, although as a native North Dakotan, he swears this sort of thing would never happen in North Dakota (only in Moorhead, Minnesota which is right across the state line): Former Realtor ordered to pay fine for attempted theft By Amy Dalrymple The Forum – 06/10/2005 A former real estate agent . . .
My Preakness picks were not as terrible as usual – I correctly had Afleet Alex to win, but missed my exactas. I guess they were good enough that some readers wanted my Belmont picks. Well, actually only one reader, but I’ll take that as a mandate. Anyway, I like Afleet Alex. I think he will be an odds-on favorite, like . . .
I’ve been thinking a little about terrorism lately and how to fight it. Some clues might be in this how-to manual seized in England and used as evidence in the trials for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, according to thesmokinggun.com. It includes chapter titles such as “Assassinations using poisons and cold steel,” and “Explosives.” The bomb-making instructions . . .
Despite the fact that the designer of this software doesn’t like our treatment of names in Freakonomics (see here and here, it is so much fun to play with that we have no choice but to link to it: http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html It let’s you type in the first letters of a name and see in a flash the rise and fall . . .
In a comment to our last post, Keg277 wrote: Now, I’ve got a question…whether it classifies as one that can be Freakonomically answered, I don’t know. I was watching a movie yesterday on Stu Unger, who was a professional poker player. In one scene, he mentioned to an opponent (played by Pat Morita) that when he had a good hand, . . .
Believe it or not, my father is the leading medical researcher on intestinal gas (which has earned him the moniker the “King of Farts” — see here, and here). Two of his fart-sniffing employees recently earned the honor of “worst job in science” in Popular Science magazine for their efforts on his behalf. Which I suppose makes him a rogue . . .
It’s probably poor sportsmanship to do another Oakland A’s post at a time when the A’s have now sunk to a record of 17-31 and are ahead of only one team in the American League. But I feel like I am still misunderstood when it comes to what I have been trying to say about Billy Beane. So I keep . . .
There has been a lot written about Freakonomics, but in terms of thoughtfulness, nothing matches the collection of essays assembled at the blog Crooked Timber. There you will find five discussions of Freakonomics done by academics from a range of disciplines, along with my response to these essays. I’ve also cut and pasted my response below, which basically makes sense . . .
We loved an article, written by the columnist Debra Pickett of the Chicago Sun Times, discussing how she is using the ideas of Freakonomics to navigate her daily life just a little bit differently. Here is the text of the article: Outsmugging the smug: Don’t try this at home May 13, 2005 BY DEBRA PICKETT SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST I’ve been reading . . .
I’ve gotten a reputation — totally undeserved — for being able to successfully pick winners at the race track. When I protest and tell people who approach me about it that I have absolutely no talent or secret, they never believe me. (Perhaps rightly so — if I really did have a secret, pretending I didn’t would be the right . . .
Two very vocal critics, Steve Sailer and John Lott, have been exerting a lot of energy lately trying to convince the world that the abortion reduces crime hypothesis is not correct. A number of readers have asked me to respond to these criticisms. First, let’s start by reviewing the basic facts that support the Donohue-Levitt hypothesis that legalized abortion in . . .
What do the 100+ angry baseball fans who have posted livid responses to my earlier postings about Billy Beane have to say about the new data that has been assembled since I made my first claims? The A’s record is now 14-20. The chances of a team that wins 60 percent of their games going 14-20 in the first 34 . . .
We got the following e-mail from a reader. It is a great example of using Freakonomic thinking to make sense of an otherwise jumbled world: The reader (who asked to remain anonymous)writes: Thought I would send an interesting anecdote about incentives: I go to the Starbucks in my office building twice a day for coffee. I bring a Starbucks insulated . . .
In golf, there is a tradition of the last winner of the Masters helping the latest victor slip into a green jacket. In economics, we don’t have the same tradition, but if we did, it would have been an honor for me to bestow a green pocket protector on Daron Acemoglu last week when he won the John Bates Clark . . .
Whenever I post on baseball, people get very agitated. So I figured it was time to ruffle a few more feathers. My contention is that the secret to Oakland’s success has little to do with the things described in Moneyball, such as the emphasis on finding the skills in baseball that are good at producing runs, but not properly valued . . .
Of the top 50 selling books at Amazon when I checked the other day, 47 were sole-authored. In contrast, I would guess that more than 80 percent of articles published in academic journals are co-authored. This strikes me as a real puzzle. Why should this be? Usually, we tend to think that as projects become larger and more complex, the . . .
I do not deny that the Oakland As record in the past is amazing. People seem to be missing this point. What I am arguing is that they were not successful for the reasons that were most prominently trotted out in Moneyball, namely the ability to find good offensive players cheap. I think it is important to keep our eye . . .
My comments on Billy Beane have a lot of people upset, as usual. So you tell me. If the Oakland A’s win 80 games a year for the next five years, would those who think Billy Beane should be the next pope still hold that opinion? (BTW, I see Beane is a real long shot to succeed John Paul II . . .
My friend and colleague Gary Becker is arguably the most influential economist of the last fifty years. I published a study in the American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings a few years back that attempted to identify which economic theories and economic theorists were having an influence on cutting edge, data driven economic research today. The most amazing finding was . . .
It seems like just about everyone thinks Billy Beane is a genius, thanks to the Michael Lewis book Moneyball, which details the way in which his Oakland A’s use statistics in innovative ways to choose talent and win games. I’ve never been part of the Billy Beane cult. For instance, in a January 2004 Financial Times interview about my research . . .
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