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.
Political scandals are a bit like the weather: there’s always something brewing. But of all the congressmen and senators whose careers have fallen apart in recent years, few have done so as spectacularly as Randall “Duke” Cunningham, the Republican congressman from California who in 2006 was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison after F.B.I. investigators discovered that . . .
N.A.R.’s 2007 forecast draws ire. (Earlier) Does lost anonymity affect a food critic’s reviews? (HT: Romenesko) German town removes traffic lights to reduce accidents. (Earlier) Higher gas prices may be helping Americans lose weight. (Earlier)
The rising price of corn due to ethanol demand will have a variety of unintended consequences. As noted earlier on this blog, it might even make Americans skinnier, since food manufacturers may start using a cheaper (and less fattening) substitute for corn syrup. Along these same lines, I heard a story not long ago at an event full of bankers . . .
We have blogged occasionally about different pieces of the global-warming puzzle (see here, here, and here), and we touched on the subject briefly in a New York Times Magazine column. It is an extraordinarily interesting issue, to say nothing of its importance and complexity, in part because there are so many foundational economic principles at play: not just supply and . . .
Shortly after Brian Jacob and I did our research on teachers who cheat, we thought about starting a company that would provide cheating detection services to schools systems. What I quickly discovered, however, was that there were few things in the world that school systems wanted less than to catch teachers who cheat — suffice it to say that school . . .
March 5, 2021: These bookplates are no longer available. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. Once in a while, someone writes to ask if we would autograph his or her copy of Freakonomics. And we say: sure, thanks for asking. But the logistics aren’t very smooth. A person would have to mail the book to one of us, and include a . . .
Match the drug to the warning label. (Hat tip: BoingBoing) Does Consumer Reports need a lesson in data analysis? (Earlier) Meet Harvard macroeconomist Robert Barro. Hotels grapple with going green.
In March, Dubner and Levitt tackled the realities of identity theft. Now, with phishing scams getting ever cleverer, state government databases leaving sensitive private information accessible to the world, and identity thieves expanding their schemes into Web giants like Facebook, it’s worth asking: how will the problem of identity theft be solved? Technology innovators have been plugging away, of course, . . .
A few months back I met a remarkable man named Gene Sit. He is a money manager in Minneapolis, with more than $6 billion under management, but that is not what makes him remarkable. He was born to a wealthy family in late 1930s China and, in the lawless years after World War II, was kidnapped and held for ransom . . .
I’m a notoriously late adopter of technologies. It is not a conscious decision, and I don’t take any pride in it. I just do not have enough imagination to figure out ahead of time how much I will like things once I actually have them. E-mail is a good example. I couldn’t see how e-mail would be of much use . . .
Video It’s always interesting to see where smart people get their ideas. Often, especially in the creative arts, it’s impossible to trace an idea down to its roots. But it’s easier in the social sciences. I, for one, believe that Steve Levitt has had an awful lot of good research ideas, and it’s good to hear how a particular idea . . .
Submit your entries for the new NASA slogan. Will humans evolve based on high carb diets? (Earlier) The latest in prediction markets: how good will a new product be? Vote for the future of Boston’s energy, design and healthcare.
I am flying to Brazil today for a very brief visit. The Wikipedia entry on Brazil is very good, if true, and now I feel a little bit bad about some of the Wikipedia posts I’ve written in the past. Here are a few interesting facts about Brazil that caught my eye: 1. “Major export products include aircraft, coffee, automobiles, . . .
The U.S. reportedly has the highest concentration of private gun ownership in the world. It is estimated that Americans buy more than half of all the guns that are manufactured worldwide each year. We wrote a good bit about guns in Freakonomics — primarily about the lack of efficacy of gun-control laws and gun buybacks on the crime rate — . . .
If you ask an economist how to price a new product that is just being introduced, the response you will get is that you should charge a very high price at first and then steadily reduce that price over time. There are two reasons for doing this. First, it generally gets cheaper to produce things over time, so it makes . . .
British Airways faces class action for losing luggage. (HT: Consumerist) The $100 iPhone rebate analyzed. Housing slump spells bad news for real estate agents. (Earlier) Can graph theory match kidney donors? (HT: BoingBoing)
We hope to have something meaningful to say in our next book about the efficacy of advertising. This is a huge question that impacts everything from commerce to politics to journalism. But for now, let me give one example. My kids were recently watching a Yankees-Red Sox day game on TV, broadcast on the YES network. One of the commercials . . .
September 7 is the day in 1979 when ESPN debuted on cable TV. It only took 28 years for the network to start covering the USA Rock Paper Scissors League championship.
Study results show rock stars die younger. (Earlier) BMA urges “ultimate fighting” ban, UFC officials object. Wal-Mart musical opens in New York to poor reviews. Fantasy football not your thing? Try new fantasy investing.
Video The latest video on FREAK-TV is about a subject that sets many economists’ hearts a-flutter: externalities. It’s a multiple-choice quiz about car theft, asking what’s the best anti-theft measure to use if you want to protect not only your car but others around you. If you need a clue before making your guess, pause the video and take a . . .
A reader named LLP sent an e-mail early yesterday morning with an interesting question: I was reading this article regarding California farmers moving their operations to Mexico. The following quote struck me, and I’m trying to find an explanation for the difference in productivity: “Scaroni expects [to] recover his start-up costs because of the lower wages he pays farm workers . . .
Last week, I blogged about a magazine fact-checker named Paige Worthy and asked you to submit your best aptonyms. You responded mightily, with nearly 300 submissions. Judging from this sample, the dentists, proctologists, and eye doctors of America seem particularly prone to aptonymous behavior. Below you will find the best submissions. As promised, the readers who sent them will receive . . .
September 6 is the day in 1927 when the Harlem Globetrotters were founded, with the team choosing to include Harlem in their name (even though the original members were from Chicago) because of its central role in African-American culture. By the late 1940’s, the Globetrotters were a big draw and a top-rate team, beating the (white) Minneapolis Lakers twice — . . .
Send in your nominees for the Blogging Scholarship Award. Venezuelan government considers regulating baby names. Sure, Michigan lost, but in revenue terms, they still won. (Earlier) Do teacher credentials affect students’ achievements? (Earlier)
As a big fan of prostitution — er, I mean, as someone who’s very interested in the social, economic, legal, and psychological elements of prostitution — it’s always good to see interesting articles about what’s always called “the world’s oldest profession.” (If I recall correctly, this premise was once countered on an episode of Barney Miller. As I remember it, . . .
My good friend Dave Eldan sends me interesting tidbits on a regular basis. More often than not, they are pulled from obituaries. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess. I found his latest missive very interesting. It is from an obituary by Morton White for the great philosopher and mathematician Willard Van Orman Quine. (Unless I am dreaming, I actually had . . .
In honor of New York Fashion Week, which begins today, our new Q&A subject is John Caplan, the president of Ford Models. In the comments section below, feel free to ask him anything you like, except for personal phone numbers. (See here, here, and here for earlier reader-generated Q&A’s.) Ford is one of the largest modeling agencies in the world, . . .
Well, at least the folks at the PopSci Predictions Exchange listen. Last week Dubner blogged about Jatropha, a weed that could spearhead a biofuel revolution. At the end of his post, he urged the PopSci Predictions Exchange to launch a contract on Jatropha. Voila. So far there are only sellers — people betting against Jatropha — and no buyers.
September 5 is the day in 1997 when Mother Teresa died at age 87. No word on what she’d have thought of our quorum on street charity.
The U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum in Florence, Colorado, widely known as the “Supermax” prison, houses many of the nation’s most notorious and violent criminals. But you probably haven’t read any interviews with any of those prisoners — including Sammy Gravano, John Walker Lindh, and Ramzi Yousef — in the last several years. Why not? According to this article by Alan . . .
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