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.
Economist Al Roth has an interesting blog post that describes how one altruistic kidney donor saved 10 lives. Here’s how it worked.
One of the things Roth has been working
on, given the repugnance many noneconomists feel about paying for organs, is creating chains of organ donations. Many people who need kidney transplants have a donor who is willing to donate one, but who is not a good match for the recipient.
Prices of used cars are rising, and the reason is substitution: in tough times, people substitute away from new cars and toward used cars. The two markets are closely related, so a decrease in demand in the new-car market causes an increase in demand in the used-car market. I’m sorely tempted to trade in my gorgeous 1999 Honda Civic SI, . . .
| Citing tough times, Haagen-Dazs claims it was forced to downsize its ice cream pints: they will now be 14 ounces instead of 16. But to rival Ben and Jerry’s, a recession (or even depression) is no excuse for less ice cream. The company responded to the news by reassuring its customers: “Now more than ever, you deserve your full . . .
That’s the judgment of the esteemed Richard Posner, whose forthcoming book, to be published in May, is called A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent Into Depression. Here are a few excerpts from the preface:
| The new Kindle is nice, but it’s still playing catchup to replicate the solid, solitary experience of a printed book. Seth Godin thinks that’s silly. He has some ideas to make the Kindle better by making it social. [%comments]
At about 8:30 a.m. yesterday, Yahoo!’s Tech Ticker posted an interview with Barry Ritholtz, noted finance guy and blogger. In recent times, he has also been very bearish on the market. But he thinks the bottom may be near. Here’s his money quote from the interview: “There’s a big bear market rally coming.” Seven and a half hours later, the . . .
| Do the characters of your favorite TV show end every episode by downing a tumbler of scotch? That on-screen booze cue is probably triggering you to end your day with one too, the BBC reports. (HT: Daniel Lippman) [%comments]
Susanne Freidberg is an associate professor of geography at Dartmouth and the author of a forthcoming book called Fresh: A Perishable History. It’s about food.
Susanne has agreed to write a few guest posts for us on the topic. We present her first one today but, before that, a brief Q&A with the author:
| In the 1930’s, Franklin Roosevelt started his day by reading half a dozen newspapers in bed. Today, you can read the printed front pages of more than a dozen major newspapers from around the world side by side right here on your browser, thanks to a feed from the Newseum, arranged by the design company Rayogram. [%comments]
Like Greg Mankiw, I think it’s a no-brainer that we should raise the gas tax. But it’s incredibly difficult to muster the political will to impose a traditional tax. (Witness California’s inability to increase the state gas tax by a measly 12 cents.) Last year, Robert Samuelson (and a host of others) proposed a contingent tax that only kicks in . . .
I’m reading a biography about Buckminster Fuller written by Lloyd Steven Sieden. Fuller had a 4-year-old daughter Alexandra who caught the 1918 flu, later got meningitis, and finally was afflicted by polio. Though frail, she managed to survive all these illnesses until the age of 4. It was the fall, and Fuller headed off from New York to Boston by . . .
Time to bring the quiz to a close. We’ve seen in past posts that, by the standards of U.S. cities, Los Angeles is not sprawling, has a fairly extensive transit system, and is decidedly light on freeways. The smog situation has vastly improved. The final two stereotypes await.
We wrote a column a while back about a variety of powerful unintended consequences.
One example was the Americans With Disabilities Act, and we told the story of a Los Angeles orthopedic surgeon named Andrew Brooks. When a deaf patient came to him for a consultation, he realized that the A.D.A. required him to hire a sign-language interpreter for each visit if that’s what the patient wanted.
Would you like your salt kosher or Christian? Either way, look out for the aptonym. Soviet breadlines were depressing and long — so it’s a bad idea to use them as models for managing traffic. (Earlier) It’s basically a cat brothel where patrons pay by the hour for feline companionship; you don’t pay them for love, you pay them for . . .
The subject of piracy — real pirates attacking ships on the high seas — has come up more than a few times on this blog, notably with the guest posts of economist/pirate scholar Peter Leeson. His book on the subject, The Invisible Hook, will be published next month. In the meantime, those of you looking for a pirate fix should . . .
Between 1990 and 2005, the wage gap between the 95th and 90th percentiles of the earnings distribution rose as rapidly as between the 90th and the 50th. The rise between the 98th and the 95th was also very large (and data limitations prevent going much beyond the 98th). Thus I applauded President Obama‘s campaign promise, and budget proposal, to raise . . .
We’ve said it before many times: the best feature of this blog is its readers. Case in point is a recent e-mail from one Chris Markl. It concerns philanthropy, a topic we’ve covered in various ways before on this blog: the economics of street charity; conservative vs. liberal giving; the efficiency of Smile Train; and most recently, Penn State’s THON . . .
I don’t know why, but academic economists just love to use cartoons in their presentations. I would guess that one out of three academic seminars includes a cartoon, and if it is a plenary talk, a cartoon is virtually guaranteed. I don’t have anything specifically against cartoons, but to the best of my recollection, I have never in my life . . .
From recession-culture trends we’ve written about on this blog lately, a recession icon of sorts emerges, wrapped in a Snuggie, puffing on a pipe — and now with a copy of Ayn Rand‘s Atlas Shrugged on his lap. The Economist reports that the book’s sales rank on Amazon is far above what it’s been in previous years (and briefly topped . . .
Icelanders love taking insane risks. In 1973, when a volcanic eruption threatened to wipe out a town on the island of Heimaey, they bet they could stop the lava flow by shooting it with millions of gallons of frigid Icelandic sea water. Unbelievably, they won. Nobody in human history had beaten a volcano before, and nobody’s done it since. That’s . . .
The average responsible, fiscally prudent, law-abiding American can be forgiven for feeling not just battered by the recession but also confused. In recent months, she has simultaneously been frightened into tightening her purse strings while also being scolded for not buying more things so that people can keep their jobs. She is also told that the recession isn’t her fault . . .
Eric Morris has been busting Los Angeles transportation myths with his L.A.: Fact or Fiction posts lately, which may have changed the way you view the City of Angels. Photographer Mathieu Young brings us yet another view of Los Angeles, via GOOD magazine. Young took a 20 mile walk around the city, snapping photos of everyone he came across.
Guy Judge is deputy head of the economics department at the University of Portsmouth (U.K.), and is a principal lecturer in quantitative economics and computing. He is also a football (soccer) fanatic, a 50-year fan of Watford Football Club and contributor to that team’s now-defunct fanzine, BsaD (Blind, Stupid and Desperate). Like our friend Dan Hamermesh, who put a summary . . .
I took the plunge and bought a Blu-ray player Monday, on sale at $300 instead of the $600 list. Since $300 was my reservation price, I derived no consumer surplus. But its absence was made up for when I logged onto Netflix to receive Blu-ray instead of DVD disks in the mail. For only $1 extra per month, I get . . .
Seven weeks ago, I invited readers to submit quotations for which they wanted me to try to trace the origins, using The Yale Book of Quotations and more recent research by me. Dozens responded via comments or e-mails. I am responding as best I can, a couple per week. Authors Uncovered Here are more quote authors Shapiro’s tracked down recently. . . .
Here’s an e-mail I received the other day: I own a manufacturing company and have been a successful investor and equity trader for 20 years. I have an in-depth understanding of the current O.T.C. derivative crisis that is infecting the global financial system. This led me to the acquisition of [REDACTED]-nomics.com as I saw the developing theme. I currently do . . .
I asked my 8-year-old daughter Amanda if she had any suggestions as to how I could be a better dad. “Finish SuperFreakonomics,” she answered. “I am tired of waiting to read it.”
Penn Jillette is a magician, comedian, actor, producer and, generally, a curator of interesting and intelligent things. But he is best known as the self-described “larger, louder” half of Penn & Teller, a stage show that Penn and his magician partner Teller Jillette have put on since 1975. It currently plays at the Rio in Vegas. I saw it there not long ago, and it was phenomenal.
Is the message of this Barclay’s ad: “The banking industry is going down the tubes anyway, bringing all aspects of society with it, so you might as well have fun on the way down”? (HT: Andrew Sullivan)
Saw this poster taped to a lamppost in my neighborhood last weekend. There is so much to admire about it. My first thought concerned the talent/practice angle as espoused by Anders Ericsson.
I played in a bunch of bands when I was a kid. Although we were generally dreadful, playing clumpy versions of bad cover songs at poorly attended basement gigs, it was hard to deny that all that very deliberate practice paid off.
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