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.
With a field of twenty horses, it is no simple task to pick a winner. Much like last year, there is not a single horse in the field who looks like a positive-expected-value bet according to my (sadly inexact) computer program. Still, the computer says that three horses look like reasonable horses to play in exactas: the likely favorite Big . . .
Class today is about bequests — wealth left over to one’s heirs. There are many interesting economic questions about bequests, including whether they are planned (partly yes, but partly no, because wealth is left over when people die that they had planned to spend in their very old age) and what bequests do to economic inequality (they raise it). Another . . .
Robert Reich We recently solicited your questions for former labor secretary Robert Reich. He met your questions with earnest, interesting answers and some good advice — like how to avoid being outsourced. He also opined that there are too many M.B.A.’s running around, and that “they are killing the economy!” You might also like this line: “Democrats aren’t disciplined at . . .
Arthur Brooks — who has appeared on this blog a few times — has just published a new book, Gross National Happiness. He has agreed to blog here periodically on this subject and we are very pleased to have him. Last week I posted on the happiness difference between conservatives and liberals. Non-partisan survey data clearly show a large, persistent . . .
Here’s the latest bleg request from Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. You can find his past blegs here and you can send blegs of your own here. The past few weeks I have been blegging for information about famous computer quotations to help with future editions of the recently published Yale Book of Quotations. Can anyone . . .
This week many of you will receive tax rebate checks from the I.R.S. Yes, that $600 you are receiving is meant to help kick start the economy. The government tried the same thing in 2001, sending out $300 checks. But this time, there’s a difference — not all of us are getting a check. In fact, those earning six figures . . .
Last month I blogged about Chris Goodall‘s claim that walking could exacerbate global warming more than driving if the person doing the walking gets his or her calories from foods like beef or milk. A group called the Pacific Institute has done some further analysis of the data. Their analysis suggests that for most reasonable assumptions about the diet of . . .
Photo: Pamela Klaffke Yeah, zoos are fun. So are cartoons. And I certainly see the appeal of a teddy bear. But why are kids so over-the-top crazy about animals? I am especially struck by the fact that some of the most popular cartoon and children’s-book animals are among the least appealing animals in real life. Mice, for instance. And pigs . . .
Last week, we asked to see your photos and you responded with vigor — and from around the globe (Burma, Buenos Aires, Canada). Keep sending them here. Here’s a photo from Omair Khan, who took this in 2005 in New York City: On his blog, Barry Popik cites a 1982 Times article in which Mayor Koch announced the creation of . . .
A modern variant of David versus Goliath is unfolding in academic economics. Ashwini Agrawal is David. He is a graduate student getting a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. is Goliath. Here is the background, as I understand it: The A.F.L.-C.I.O. manages huge pension funds for its members. These pension funds are invested in . . .
Election season is probably the best time for bad economic policies to garner support — and one of the roles of academic economists is to call the candidates out on terrible policy. From yesterday’s New York Times, we learn that: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan . . .
Earlier this week, Dubner wondered what kinds of changes might make Major League Baseball more interesting to the modern T.V. viewer. A number of you suggested instituting salary caps. This chart comparing team performance with total player salaries over the 2008 season, by data visualization guru Ben Fry, does seem to suggest a link between higher pay and sluggish performance. . . .
Here is an oversimplification of a complex problem: 1. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, a sick or dying human being can receive a transplanted organ from another human being. 2. Some of those organs must inevitably come from cadavers: i.e., you can’t give your heart to someone else and still live. But some transplanted organs can come from . . .
In 2004, a bunch of newspapers (including the New York Times) instituted a new policy requiring that articles, when possible, should explain the reasons why the paper granted a source anonymity. The new policy has created a great empirical opportunity — because in practice the required reason is given after the phrase: “[source] was granted anonymity because … “. The . . .
Don’t fret about age — they’ll drink anyway. Are boys’ clubs and families the real glass ceiling?(Earlier) The amazing 11-foot computing engine.(Earlier) Pregnant women, watch your soft drinks.
Daniel Solove is amazed by what people will divulge about themselves (and others) online — usually unaware of consequences which can range from stardom to job loss. But in his recent book The Future of Reputation, Solove, an associate professor of law at George Washington University, explains why even someone with virtually no online footprint can suffer a similar fate . . .
The New York Sun reports that gas may hit $10 a gallon before too long, putting it in line with European prices. The ground is already shifting. Employers find that getting employees out of their cars and onto company-owned, Wi-Fi-enabled buses boosts productivity and morale. Fewer and fewer teenagers are getting driver’s licenses, and public transportation ridership is at its . . .
Here is the latest offering of Indexed drawings from our regular guest poster Jessica Hagy. Her past posts are here, her own blog here, and her new book here. If the past is any indication of the future, then at least one commenter will write something to the effect of: “Huh? What are these drawings doing on the Freakonomics blog? . . .
A few weeks back, just as I finished up my stint as a journal editor, I asked a former University of Chicago economics professor to serve as an anonymous referee on a paper. Usually I wouldn’t ask someone in his eighties to be a referee, but the last time I used this fellow (when he was just a young turk . . .
When I was a kid, I loved baseball more than anything, and I’m afraid I mean that literally — more than my family, my friends, even more than my dog. If given the opportunity, I would have played baseball 24 hours a day. And when I couldn’t play it, I would watch it on T.V. Now I can barely sit . . .
With more than $110 billion in tax rebates set to flow into taxpayer pockets starting today, everyone from big-box retailers to restaurants to debt-collection agencies is vying for a piece of the action. But what’s the smartest way to spend your rebate — for yourself and for the larger economy? Now that we’ve considered that, how are you really going . . .
As Dubner has shown in the past, a quick snapshot — of a congestion-pricing poster in this case — can spark a lot of discussion. So send us your photo or snapshot (here) — and be sure to tell us where it was taken, who took it, and what makes it Freak-worthy. We’ll publish our favorites on the blog. They . . .
There’s one theme that we’ve touched on repeatedly in our Times columns and on this blog, and which we’ll devote considerable space to in SuperFreakonomics: how technological innovation and robust markets tend to fix a lot of problems that seem unsolvable. In the business community, “innovation” is a buzzword of the highest order (so high, in fact, that some people . . .
Times columnist Nick Kristof recently highlighted economic research showing that climate change may be driving up the rate of executions of suspected witches in East Africa. Tough times in the Congo may have been behind the recent witchcraft panic there, where police arrested 13 people accused of using black magic to shrink men’s penises. University of Chicago economist Emily Oster . . .
What good is G.D.P., anyway? While my postings this week have shown that it is correlated with happiness, I have not spent much time asking just precisely what it is about our subjective experiences that is correlated with higher G.D.P. In fact, the analysis in my previous posts, focused almost exclusively on simple responses to surveys asking people how happy . . .
Back when I worked as an editor at the Times Magazine, we held weekly or twice-weekly editorial meetings at which you’d go around the table and suggest story ideas. There were many varieties of ideas, including: Dutiful but Dull; Dutiful and Worthwhile; Sexy but Substance-Free; Just Not Interesting; and everyone’s favorite: Interesting — if True. Into this final category falls . . .
Michael and I looked over the 500 plus comments and suggestions that were generously offered regarding his upcoming dilemma: How should I give away $70 million? We were joined by his sister, Cathy, who also has a “small sum of money” (her words) that she needs to donate in the coming decade. Apparently, she will have to give away “only” . . .
Three days: … The amount of time auto-rickshaws are striking. … How long it took to crack the iPhone root password. … The length of the papal visit to New York. … How long a man played online games before dying. … How long a cow-human cross embryo lived.
Here’s the latest bleg request from Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. You can find his past blegs here and you can send blegs of your own here. The past few weeks I have been blegging for information about famous computer quotations to help with future editions of the recently published Yale Book of Quotations. Another questionable . . .
The actor Ed Begley Jr. has a widely-circulated OpEd piece touting his eco-friendly activities, featuring a proud announcement that his exercise on his stationary bicycle generates the electricity he uses to toast two pieces of bread. Now those two pieces give him 200 calories, but he burns at least 100 calories on the bike. So half of his eco-friendly exercise . . .
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