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.
Craig Glenday with Lucky Diamond Rich, the most tattooed person. (c) Guinness World Records. As a kid, not only did I love The Guinness Book of World Records but I was dead set on getting into the book myself. The record: world’s longest gum-wrapper chain. I don’t remember how it got started, but somehow Judy Munson (the older sister of . . .
An old adage is that a university is a happy place if the administration provides football for the alumni, parking for the faculty, and sex for the students. I assume that the free market is working well at my university for the students; and the university administration always works hard on football for the alumni: we’re now building a 15,000 . . .
A recent Lancet article argued that obesity is contributing to global warming because the obese consume more calories. Since making food releases carbon, that means an obese person, on average, is worse for global warming than a skinny person. (Not to mention the extra methane the obese might release, but that is my father’s area of expertise, not my own.) . . .
We can learn a lot about the evolution of democracy by studying pirates in history, says George Mason University economist Peter T. Leeson. As early as the 1670’s, pirates were experimenting with elected leadership, worker’s compensation and checks on executive power, the Boston Globe reports in this preview of Leeson’s forthcoming book The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. . . .
I’ve been reading through some economics literature on fairness, altruism, and the like — much of it centered on game-playing that is meant to represent how we make decisions in the real world. One common early game was an adaptation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Here, courtesy of Wikipedia (excerpted from this book, I think), is a description of the Prisoner’s . . .
Dubner’s post on perfectionism reminds me of a parallel phenomenon: People who say that they’re going to be brief often aren’t.
Minnesota Representatives Michele Bachmann and John Kline are pushing to make English the official language of the United States (and reduce multilingualism). But would this put the U.S. behind other countries in global awareness and education? One of our readers, Andy Little, noticed his own language ignorance by his initial interpretation of this sign: When I saw this sign in . . .
Inequality is growing in the United States. The data say so. Knowledgeable experts like Ben Bernanke say so. Ask just about any economist and they will agree. (They may or may not think growing inequality is a problem, but they will acknowledge that there has been a sharp increase in inequality.) Photo: Jim, Wal-Mart Supercenter in Suwanee, Georgia. According to . . .
The breakdown of Eight Belles in this year’s Kentucky Derby, just a few years after Barbaro‘s broken leg in the Preakness, has a lot of people worried about the safety and welfare of thoroughbreds. Statistics on the frequency of horses breaking down are elusive. The closest thing to official statistics I could find comes from an Andrew Beyer column, in . . .
In case you didn’t get your fill from our previous post, the e-mail guide Send — by The Times‘s OpEd editor, David Shipley, and former Hyperion Books editor-in-chief, Will Schwalbe — has a lot to say about e-mail mistakes. If you just made your own e-flub, visit their Web site, Thinkbeforeyousend.com — a collection of the worst e-mail mistakes. You’ll . . .
As prices go, “free” is an interesting one. Dan Ariely plays with the idea in his book Predictably Irrational, as does Seth Godin — and Chris Andersen has gone so far as to suggest that “$0.00 is the Future of Business.” There are, of course, a lot of different kinds of “free.” Giving away a free razor or a free . . .
In a short piece in the latest Science journal, about the Promise of Prediction Markets, we provide a short review of the literature on prediction markets — how and why they work, and the accumulated empirical evidence. But our key point is public policy: Unfortunately, however, current federal and state laws limiting gambling create significant barriers to the establishment of . . .
Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio. Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio sat down to a meal with 30 families in 24 countries, photographing their one-week food intake and talking to them about food, dieting, and shopping habits for their 2005 book Hungry Planet. One U.S. family, after seeing a photograph of a week’s worth of their groceries, decided to make some . . .
Jessica‘s earlier posts can be found here, her own blog here, and her recent book here.
Standard economic theory implies that we maximize our happiness if we have more choices. Yet we limit our choices — impose self-control mechanisms — voluntarily in order to improve our well-being. For example, I just signed a book contract with a small advance payment. I don’t need the extra money right now, but having taken the advance payment I know . . .
Screen shot from Arthur Shapiro’s blog. For fans of the Spinning Dancer illusion, let us recommend Arthur Shapiro’s Illusion Sciences blog, which features a new optical illusion every week. Shapiro, an associate professor at the Bucknell University Department of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience, is a contestant in the Neural Correlate Society’s “Best Visual Illusion of the Year” contest, which . . .
I’ve been enjoying Arthur Brooks‘s musings on the relationship between personal politics and personal happiness. And so I was interested to read an interesting piece in The Times (of London), assessing how my own recent research with Betsey Stevenson on income and happiness fits into the broader political debate. And I’m a sucker for an article that can relate economic . . .
Here’s the most recent guest bleg from Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. His past blegs can be found here. Last week about 100 people responded to my blegging for examples of famous computer proverbs. In general, proverb dictionaries are filled with traditional sayings like “A stitch in time saves nine,” ignoring modern proverbs. Yet modern proverbs . . .
The average item bought by the average buyer has an income elasticity of nearly one: most people roughly double their spending when their income doubles. But everything we buy consists of both a quantity dimension and a quality dimension. What’s clear is that the income elasticity of demand for quantity is less than one: when our income doubles, we don’t . . .
A couple of months ago, Dubner and Levitt wrote about how poorly constructed laws can lead to some unintended consequences. Let me add one more example to their list, albeit one that I’m enjoying. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board was set up in the wake of the 21st Amendment, and the end of Prohibition. A direct (and presumably intended) result . . .
My last three posts have shown that conservatives are generally a lot happier than liberals; that religion is a major factor in this; and that worldview matters a lot as well. But I have employed some minor sleight-of-hand in all this, lumping together “liberals” into a big group and “conservatives” into another. This is not the only way to separate . . .
In Moscow, you might be more likely to find a LoJack system on a dump truck than a Porsche. Russia’s domestic supply of construction equipment can’t meet the demand created by Moscow’s construction boom, Reuters reports — so thieves are lifting asphalt-pavers, cranes, and other heavy machinery from construction sites. Maybe someone can propose a construction charity at the next . . .
We’ve had a lot of conversations on this blog about charitable contributions. For instance: where people like to give, and why; how a young philanthropist should disburse $70 million; whether to give to a street beggar, a hot dog vendor, or neither. So let’s start one more conversation on the subject. There have been a pair of huge natural disasters . . .
The Society of Labor Economists, a professional organization, gives awards to worthy scholars. One is for lifetime achievement, the other to a scholar who finished his/her education within the past 12 years. The American Economic Association does the same thing. Because most scholars — in economics and most sciences — do their best work while young, all these awards are . . .
I blogged last July about the creative ideas Preston McAfee was bringing to the journal he edits called Economic Inquiry. One of his innovations was a “no revisions” option whereby an author could submit a paper to the journal under the provision that the journal publishes “as is” or not at all. If you are not an academic, it is . . .
Several years ago I watched a particularly memorable “Law Revue” skit night at Yale. One of the skits had a group of students sitting at desks, facing the audience, listening to a professor drone on. All of the students were looking at laptops except for one, who had a deck of cards and was playing solitaire. The professor was outraged . . .
Can texting make people more health-conscious? (Earlier) Are men really that visual? For those who are serious about their weather.(HT: Eric Floehr)(Earlier) The changing face of the “business expert.”
… that people who go around saying “I’m a perfectionist” never are, while people who actually are perfectionists never go around saying it? I have.
When it comes to creativity and storytelling, my sister Linda Jines got all the talent. She, for instance, is the genius who thought up the title “Freakonomics.” In what we hope will be the first in a long line of guest blog posts, today she toasts my father on his 73rd birthday. Levitt’s father in his balaclava. Edina, Minnesota January . . .
I love Chrysler’s new incentive program that guarantees consumers who buy one of their new cars or trucks won’t pay more than $2.99 a gallon at the pump for the first three years they own the vehicle. When you sign up, you get a special credit card that can only be used to buy gas. When you swipe it, $2.99 . . .
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