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.
We’ve written repeatedly on the shortage of human organs for transplantation, and the different incentives that are being offered to produce more donated organs. Among the incentives: a commemorative medal and a shorter prison term. Now a reader named Ronald Wielink writes to tell us that in the Netherlands, a funeral insurance company is offering to cut funeral costs by . . .
More bad news on prostate health: The latest study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute found that lycopene, the antioxidant widely hailed as a prostate cancer inhibitor, may actually increase the cancer risk. In a study of more than 28,000 men, researchers found no significant correlation between incidents of prostate cancer and the concentration of lycopene in the subjects’ . . .
Back when I worked as an editor at the New York Times Magazine, it was a pretty regular occurrence to send an article up to the legal department for vetting. One of the lawyers that I dealt with there was named Adam Liptak. I liked him a great deal for two reasons: as with the other lawyers there, he always . . .
Over at MarginalRevolution, Tyler Cowen has posted a few suggestions, and is soliciting more. One of Cowen’s ideas: Allow all candidates to watch a short debate of experts — with a fraud or two thrown in — and ask them to evaluate what they just heard and why they reached the conclusion they did. He also suggests they should conduct . . .
Once again, James Altucher has turned some recent blog posts into Freakonomics stock portfolios. Here is his most recent column from TheStreet.com, picking up on Dubner’s post about corporate thinking about global warming and Levitt’s take on risks of global warming vs. a global pandemic.
A study by University of Toronto assistant professor of organizational behavior Jennifer Berdahl found that, contrary to the conventional belief that a woman’s acting “feminine” in the workplace leads to sexual harassment, just the opposite may be true. Berdahl’s paper concluded that women who “act like men” are more likely to experience harassment, possibly because of the conduct’s use as . . .
A few days ago, I blogged about Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s new book, The Black Swan, and solicited questions for a Q&A that NNT had agreed to answer. Here now is our inaugural user-generated Q&A. Many thanks to all of you for the good questions and observations, and thanks especially for NNT’s thoughtful replies. It seems fitting that we post this . . .
Not long ago, I wondered aloud on this blog why so many doctors write so well. The two doctors I mentioned in detail were Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, both of whom have new books out. For those of you interested in this subject, take note that Abigail Zuger, who is an M.D. herself, has written an article in the . . .
BusinessWeek recently reported on the creative product-placement deals that daytime TV shows employ. The highlight of the article is Martha Stewart — the self-described “most trusted guide to stylish living” — discussing with pure candor her capitalizing ways: “I like to inform people about good things.” Stewart’s syndicated NBC show, which airs daily at 4 PM, is currently lagging in . . .
Take all your winnings from the Kentucky Derby and play an exacta box on Hard Spun and Circular Quay. Of course, if you followed my picks for the Kentucky Derby, you won’t have any winnings.
Now that it’s looking a bit more likely that Michael Bloomberg could maybe, perhaps, possibly run for President on a third-party ticket, you’ve got to at least entertain this bizarre ballot possibility in 2008: For U.S. President: Hillary Clinton (D-NY) Rudolph Giuliani (R-NY) Michael Bloomberg (I-NY) How nice it would be, speaking as a NYC resident, to know that regardless . . .
A new study from decision scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and the RAND Corp. suggests that quality of life may be directly related to decision-making ability (a point further dissected in Dan Gilbert‘s Stumbling on Happiness, which Levitt has discussed before). From the San Francisco Chronicle: A study by credit- and fraud-reporting agency Fair Isaac Corp. reveals that Internet advertisers . . .
Given that the publishing industry has a tendency to flail when it comes to marketing research, here’s a heartening consumer trend: The Wall Street Journal has reported that book clubs targeting African-American readers have exploded in popularity, even while traditional book clubs are foundering. As of December, the Black Expressions book club had 460,000 members, a substantial rise over the . . .
This is the kind of story you don’t read every day. The plot points: 1. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City sued two gun shops in Virginia, as part of his effort to stop guns being illegally imported to New York. 2. A gun-rights group called the Virginia Citizens Defense League mounted a fundraiser for the two gun shops, planning . . .
If a genie came out of a bottle and gave me the choice between magically doing away with global warming or getting rid of the threat of global pandemics, I think I would choose the latter. I am probably in the minority on this one, but I think a pandemic might be the graver threat. A few years ago I . . .
The British Psychological Society Research Digest addresses the question of how bilinguals switch between languages without mixing up words. It examines a report by the Rudolph Magnus Institute stating that, as an accidental result of brain surgery to cure epilepsy, two bilingual patients appear to have had their “language switches” accidentally flipped. The potential costs of HPV just got a . . .
The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki recently devoted a column to the notorious “Seven Percent Rule.” For those unfamiliar with the phrase, it refers to the assumption that after a company announces major layoffs, its stock price will rise roughly 7% in an apparent correlation between employee downsizing and Wall Street enthusiasm. Surowiecki notes, however, that the rule’s validity took a . . .
From a recent N.Y. Times article by Michael Barbaro, headlined “Less Risk Seen in Purchasing Clothes Online”: For the first time since online retailing was born a decade ago, the sales of clothing have overtaken those of computer hardware and software, suggesting that consumers have reached a new level of comfort buying merchandise on the Web. One of the merchants . . .
With global warming having become Topic No. 1 of so many discussions, to me the big question is the degree to which behavioral changes are produced on three separate levels: 1. The individual level — where change seems well underway, but probably won’t amount to all that much without major institutional/structural changes. 2. The governmental level — where change will . . .
I was in Canada much of last week, and happened to run into an off-duty Air Canada pilot. I had flown Air Canada a few times in the previous days, and told him that the experience was significantly better than on any U.S. airline. He grimaced. “Oh, it’s terrible for us, too,” he said. Then he talked about all the . . .
Our own Gary Langer analyzes polls on recently departed conservative icon Jerry Falwell taken over his lifetime. The results can be summarized as follows: “Popularity with most Americans was not among the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s achievements.” In a development on the link between motherhood and happiness, Science Daily profiles a study done by the U. Michigan Institute for Social Research . . .
At this moment, a boycott of the Beijing Olympics would seem pretty unlikely. It took a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan for the U.S. and other countries to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics. (The Soviets repaid the favor in 1984, staying home from the Los Angeles games.) On the other hand, a lot of people around the world harbor feelings of . . .
A recent study by the ad agency BBDO Worldwide links habitual behavior to product brands. While the findings — that people adopt daily rituals like tooth brushing or midday snacking and typically stick to the same brands while performing them — aren’t very surprising, the methodology is impressive: nine months of ethnographic research in 26 countries, 2,500 hours of documented . . .
The job of I.R.S. commissioner has been filled — Mark Everson, who left to take over the American Red Cross, has been replaced by deputy Kevin Brown — but there’s still room for more at the I.R.S. Now you can nominate yourself (or a loved one) for a three-year volunteer membership on the agency’s Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee, which . . .
The economics of book publishing are usually not sensible, predictable, or even explicable. This New York Times article by Shira Boss is a good beginner’s guide to the subject. Not all real-estate agents are fond of the National Association of Realtors. This one calls the organization “routinely, habitually, congenitally anti-free market” as well as “a protection racket — vicious, awful, . . .
Taking off on Levitt’s recent blog post about pesticides in the water in Indiana, James Altucher at Stockpickr has assembled a Freakonomics portfolio of clean water stocks. He has also blogged about it in more detail at TheStreet.com.
A while ago Levitt posed the question of whether the name of a street (such as “Pleasant Avenue” or “Massacre Lane”) could have an effect on the price of its real estate. Now, it turns out, there’s more data on the subject: The Edmonton Journal reports that a study by a Canadian real-estate analyst found a “a small but noteworthy . . .
“Ferreting out antilogics is an exhilarating activity.” Do you agree with the above sentence? If so, you will probably enjoy the writing of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a polymathic gentleman whose new book is called The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Here’s how its dust jacket succinctly describes the thesis: “A black swan is a highly improbable event . . .
Last week I blogged about the decision to abort when faced with a diagnosis of Down Syndrome. A similar issue arises, perhaps in an even more intense way (if such a thing is possible), with foreign adoption. When you adopt from, say, China, they send you information about the baby that’s been assigned to you, including health information that is . . .
Pasadena Now, a news Web site devoted to local coverage of the Pasadena region, has taken the term “outsourcing” to new heights, hiring two reporters in India (one of whom graduated from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism) to cover the goings-on of the Pasadena City Council from 9,000 miles away. The goal, according to editor and publisher James . . .
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