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.
There’s some debate about whether the economy has begun to recover. The consensus among professional forecasters is that the trough occurred sometime in the second half of 2009. But it doesn’t feel that way — which is why the latest Gallup survey is so interesting. Gallup researchers asked regular people how long until they expect the recovery to begin, and nearly half think we are three years or longer away.
Bill Gates has started blogging. The homepage is here, and in the “What I’m Learning” section, he proves to be a a fantastic book critic: “I really liked Freakonomics and I think SuperFreakonomics is even better. … I recommend this book to anyone who reads nonfiction. It is very well written and full of great insights.”
Self-control mechanisms restrict one’s choices, which one think might think reduces utility; but they raise lifetime utility by helping to overcome addiction.
A reader who works for a start-up NGO in Mali solicits your ideas for creating new public health incentives there.
Earlier this week, Dubner linked to a terrific New Yorker piece by John Cassidy, which explores the state of the “Chicago School.” Following up, Cassidy has posted some very revealing interview transcripts. All the interviews are with truly great economists. The very best come across as trying to build insight that is both rigorous, and empirically relevant.
We have blogged a few times about financial and economic illiteracy in the U.S., particularly among young people.
So it’s nice to see a counterexample.
A blog reader named Christopher Galen has sent us his daughter Grace’s third-grade economics quiz. Yes, that’s right: a third-grade economics quiz. She goes to a public school in Fairfax County, Virginia.
In the New Yorker, James Surowiecki explains why it’s not just cable providers who like the current cable-TV system that bundles channels: “The appeal of bundling is partly that it reduces transaction costs: instead of having to figure out how much each part of a package is worth to you, you can make a blanket judgment.”
In the last couple of hours, the InTrade prediction markets have moved sharply in favor of the Republican candidate Scott Brown to defeat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts Senate race.
Whatever the case, a downturn in bike ridership may strike some people as a grievous strike against the American character. On the other hand, it’s great news for the likes of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft.
Robert Jervis writes in the Boston Globe that to improve intelligence, CIA investigators should stop thinking so intuitively, pay more attention to what they see in front of them, make assumptions that can be disproven, and realize that terrorists don’t see the world like they do.
In a recent post, we linked to a blog’s photo essay on Biosphere2, the “failed” and “abandoned” enviro-architectural project in the Arizona desert. But that information wasn’t accurate.
“My attitude is this,” he said. “If you are getting attacked by Krugman, you must be doing something right.”
Is there any other academic field in which standard decorum is valued so low?
The price offered to coffee growers who turn in their “cherries”-ripe coffee beans-at Greenwell Farms in Kona, Hawaii, is $.90 per pound if they are paid weekly and $1.05 if paid monthly.
Quite a bit more than on Saturday, to be sure — which is when the Wall Street Journal published this article about the psychic value of the Vikings to its fans. The tally: $530.65 per year.
The common wisdom on testosterone is that it contributes to risky and aggressive behavior, but new research reveals a different pattern. In a study, 121 women were dosed with testosterone or a placebo and then played the ultimatum bargaining game (see Chapter 3 of SuperFreakonomics for more than you ever wanted to know about Ultimatum).
On the list of illegally downloaded e-books, that is.
Here’s the Washington Post with the story, and here’s the N.Y. Times.
The underlying study claims that more than 9 millions copies of books were illegally downloaded last year.
Food is fiction, after all, and there are many advantages to keep telling beautiful stories that brighten our day by enriching our palette. Plus, the moment we might start thinking about the culinary implications of a riot, things can become pretty tasteless.
Blog reader Abe Mirrashidi sent us this photo of a vending machine at his workplace which has a most unusual pricing scheme. The Cheetos and Doritos in “A0” and “A2” sell for $.65, and are identical to the Cheetos and Doritos in “B0” and “B2,” both of which go for $.75. You can guess which slots get sold out first.
During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) broadcast anti-Tutsi propaganda and called for violence against Tutsis, which many experts believe significantly contributed to the violence. An interesting new job-market paper by David Yanagizawa seeks to determine the precise role that RTLM played in the genocide.
Each week, I’ve been inviting readers to submit quotations for which they want me to try to trace the origin, using The Yale Book of Quotations and my more recent research. Here is the latest round.
One problem faced by a society that is always working toward solutions to various problems is that certain solutions, however effective, may go unused because they cannot be commodified.
The BPS Research Digest blog reports that those dire health warnings on cigarette packs may actually drive some people to smoke. Psychologists interviewed 39 student smokers about the importance of smoking to their self-esteem. The students were then divided into two groups and shown two different sets of cigarette packs – one set with death-related health warnings and one with death-neutral warnings.
I’ve heard of product differentiation by location, and of differentiation arising from slight differences in physical product, but never one obviously based on a combination of these two. Honolua Surf Company is a clothing line, selling in its own and other stores. It originated in Maui, as the name implies, and is really popular on the island.
No. Let me follow up on yesterday’s post, with more data testing Nicholas Kristof‘s assertion that Costa Rica is the happiest nation in the world.
The Biosphere 2 project in the Arizona desert, begun in the early 1990’s, was supposed to have been the largest functioning sealed environment ever created. But it failed almost immediately and was sold to developers who have yet to rebuild it.
Perhaps. But perhaps not. Nicholas Kristof’s recent Times Op-Ed set out to explain why Costa Rica is “the happiest nation on earth.” This led my happiness coauthor Betsey Stevenson and I to explore further (which is why we are writing this post together).
If Captain Steve hasn’t answered all your airline questions yet, tune in to The Crew Lounge, a weekly podcast hosted by flight attendant bloggers Sara Keagle and Bobby Laurie. It promises to give listeners “a peek behind the galley curtain,” and will answer questions from listeners.
We write at some length in SuperFreakonomics about a physician and technologist named Craig Feied, who is responsible for not only for a lot of medical innovation but who looks at problem-solving in a resolutely unorthodox manner.
My wife and I did two hours of volunteer work on Maui, trying to remove sea grape, an invasive species. Twelve people in total had to divide the tasks of using large shears, raking brush, and hauling away all the cuttings.
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