Quotes Uncovered: Sizzling Steaks
Each week, I’ve been inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent researches. Here is the latest round.
When Freakonomics.com was launched in 2005, it was essentially a blog (c’mon, blogs were a thing then!). The first Freakonomics book had just been published, and Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt wanted to continue their conversation with readers. Over time, the blog grew to have millions of readers, a variety of regular and guest writers, and it was hosted by The New York Times, where Dubner and Levitt also published a monthly “Freakonomics” column. The authors later collected some of the best blog writing in a book called When to Rob a Bank … and 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants. (The publisher rejected their original title: We Were Only Trying to Help. The publisher had also rejected the title Freakonomics at first, so they weren’t surprised.) While the blog has not had any new writing in quite some time, the entire archive is still here for you to read.
Each week, I’ve been inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent researches. Here is the latest round.
We have finally reached the end of Chapter 1, which brings us to Allie, the high-end escort whom we profile at some length. She has appeared earlier on this blog, answering some of our questions about the Eliot Spitzer affair. Now is your chance to ask Allie some questions of your own about her life and work as an escort.
Despite all the concern over increased plagiarism in the Internet age, concrete figures on the trend are hard to come by. In a new working paper, Brian Jacob (an occasional Levitt co-author) and Thomas Dee conducted a natural field experiment at a “selective post-secondary institution” to shed light on the determinants of student plagiarism.
Charitable giving, as we’ve noted here, here, and elsewhere, is a tricky animal. Much of the giving that is considered pure altruism is in fact incentivized by a variety of factors. As we note in SuperFreakonomics, “U.S. citizens are easily the world’s leaders in per-capita charitable contributions, but the U.S. tax code is among the most generous in allowing deductions for those contributions.”
Transportation planners are a noble and advanced species; all I have met have opposable thumbs, walk upright, and have a reasonable command of fire and language. But the results of a fascinating new experiment reported in the journal Science give us cause to question whether their work would be better performed by primordial slime.
The SuperFreakonomics chapter on geoengineering solutions to global warming has generated plenty of heat, but scientific and political interest in the concept is on the rise.
Let’s start with the 2000 Decennial Census. Your responses to the Census were used for two purposes. First, the Census Bureau tallied up every response to produce its official population counts. And second, it produced a 1-in-20 sub-sample of these responses, which it made available for analysis by researchers. Just about every economist I know has used this Census sub-sample, as do a fair number of demographers, sociologists, political scientists, and private-sector market researchers.
Labor economists use the term “superstar” very specifically, based on a wonderful paper by the late Sherwin Rosen: A superstar is one of the very top people in an occupation offering huge pay because performances are widely reproducible (through recordings, TV, movies, books, etc.). (By this definition it is hard to imagine an economist superstar!)
After a tragedy like the earthquake in Haiti, many people are moved to make financial contributions. For some people, as my friend and colleague John List’s work has made clear, it is simply the “warm glow” that one feels from giving, or a sense of duty borne out of social pressure, that drives giving. For others, actually making a difference in the lives of Haitians is paramount – the impact of the contribution matters.
Potential customers of eHarmony’s imminent gay/straight dating service might want to read this before selecting their profile picture.
Now that the Supreme Court has freed corporations to expressly advocate for the election or defeat of federal candidates, many pundits feel that is simply beyond the power of Congress to constitutionally curtail the corrosive potential of corporate speech.
It’s nearly upon us: the centenary of America’s first coast-to-coast road, the Lincoln Highway, conceived by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher in 1912. That means we’re also about ready to start celebrating another major anniversary: 100 years of dreading driving on the highway.
An interesting finding from a recent Gallup poll, reporting on, well, reporting. There appears to be substantial excess demand for insightful reporting on economic issues.
Each week, I’ve been inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research. Here is the latest round.
In the SuperFreakonomics Virtual Book Club, we invite readers to ask questions of some of the researchers and other characters in our new book. Last week we opened up the questioning for Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, labor economists and experts on the male-female wage gap.
An Associated Press article reports the settlement of a class-action suit objecting to eHarmony’s separation of its straight and gay dating services. The company has agreed to link its two services and allow participants to use both websites for one registration fee.
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who recently published a controversial op-ed on health care, announced that the company will soon offer higher store discounts for healthier employees.
My latest Marketplace commentary returns to a topic I touched on earlier this week: the fact that when economists talk about a “recovery” being underway they are talking about something completely different than when Joe Public says he’s waiting for the “recovery” to begin.
On the PBS website for the muckraking documentary King Corn-a film that roundly attacks industrial agriculture-the following declaration is made: “Before WW II, most Americans had never eaten corn-fed beef.” This claim, which has become a mantra in sustainable agriculture, is more often than not dispatched to rally support for grass-fed beef-a supposedly healthier and more environmentally sound way to feed cattle-which is to say, in accordance with the rhythms of nature rather than the time clock of industry.
I was excited to see that an automobile manufacturer had weighed in on car seats and child safety. One facet of the argument we make against the efficacy of child car seats is that government standards for car seats cut the automakers out of the safety loop to some degree, creating some misaligned incentives between regulators, automakers, and car-seat manufacturers.
A reader offers an alternate explanation for the male-female pay gap among MBA’s.
I had a wild morning in Boston a few days ago – participating in a satellite media tour for the launch of the Staples “stickK to it!” Business Challenge. (I sat in a studio and was serially plugged into about 20 local radio and TV shows … grueling, but efficient). The “Challenge” is a way to help small businesses and entrepreneurs reach their professional goals.
Remember the story about the cheating schoolteachers in Chicago? The theory was that high-stakes testing, by putting more pressure on students to pass, creates a stronger incentive for teachers to not leave those students behind – and that a fraction of those teachers, generally the worse ones, went so far as to cheat on behalf of their students.
Looks like it may have been happening in Springfield, Mass., too.
A reader solicits your ideas for improving utilization of Michigan’s state parks.
Is it better to pay extended warranties on goods or services?
Many of us who try to live an examined life find something lacking, though usually nothing so serious that it requires professional help. This has given rise to an entire genre of books aimed at indulging our urge to open up our own psyches and tinker with the wiring. But the genre’s lack of scientific rigor drives University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman to distraction.
In the previous installment of our virtual book club, Sudhir Venkatesh answered your questions about his research on street prostitution.
Now, moving on to another section of Chapter One, here’s your chance to ask a pair of researchers about a central and pressing fact of U.S. economic life: the enduring wage gap between men and women.
Each week, I’ve been inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent researches. Here is the latest round.
The economic downturn has obviously hurt newspapers a great deal, but it’s hard to say which areas of coverage have been depleted the most. I have talked to people in many realms – international reporting, business, sports, entertainment – who claim their domain has been particularly hard hit. (Here’s a map from Paper Cuts that shows 2009 newspaper layoffs.)
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