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.
The globalization of the economics profession is remarkable. I was chatting with a new Ph.D. from the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany. He did his undergraduate work in Shanghai, China; he went to Denver, USA, to attend the American Economic Association job market; and he just had a job visit to Monash University in Australia. Thus, his educational background and job activities span 4 continents!
I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research.
Exiting a public restroom can be tricky. Touching a doorknob or push-plate means you take a chance of picking up a lot of terms. If you use a paper towel, you have to find someplace to throw it away.
Four years ago, 75% of Americans said that they had confidence in financial institutions or banks. Following the financial crisis, that number has fallen dramatically, to 45%. This well-earned public mistrust may be yet one more factor retarding the recovery of the financial sector, and possibly the broader economy. Survey data also show that trust in government is also currently . . .
Photo: Sands Beach Lanzarote Despite the fact that I am not very good at golf, my secret fantasy is to someday play on the Champions Tour, the professional golf tour for fifty-somethings. As I approach my 44th birthday, I realize that it is time to get serious in this endeavor.
Power econ couple Joseph Stiglitz and Anya Schiffrin weigh in on Spousonomics, the new book on the economic side of marriage by journalists?Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson. Here’s Schiffrin, who describes Stiglitz as “very romantic,” explaining one of his comparative advantages: “One of the concepts they devote a lot of time to is comparative advantage, which basically means ‘What are . . .
A few years back, we argued that Americans should want more IRS audits, not fewer. “Still, unless you are personally cheating by one-fifth or more, you should be mad at the I.R.S. — not because it’s too vigilant, but because it’s not nearly vigilant enough,” we wrote. “Why should you pay your fair share when the agency lets a few hundred billion dollars of other people’s money go uncollected every year?”
Thanks to Time.com for naming this blog one of the top “financial” blogs — and the nice writeup from the Wall Street Journal’s Robert Frank — but we didn’t know that we’re a financial blog!
The folks at The New York Times couldn’t have been nicer while we had our blog there, but one thing that always bothered me was that there were way too many rules and restrictions regarding what we were allowed to post.
There’s been a lot written on this blog about the amazing things monkeys can do. Here’s more evidence that monkeys can be rational actors just like us: a new study reports that monkeys can feel self-doubt and uncertainty, and then make a rational decision based on that information.
… a New York Times article by Randall Stross about how fast and cheap broadband access is in Hong Kong compared to the U.S.: “Hong Kong residents can enjoy astoundingly fast broadband at an astoundingly low price. It became available last year, when a scrappy company called Hong Kong Broadband Network introduced a new option for its fiber-to-the-home service: a speed of 1,000 megabits a second – known as a “gig” – for less than $26 a month.”
… the jacket of a new book from Princeton University Press called Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories, by Federico Varese.
Roland Fryer continues to work with incentives in education — for students, parents, and teachers. His newest working paper (gated) describes an experiment in New York City that was unsuccessful in moving the needle.
In this week’s Freakonomics Radio podcast, “The Power of Poop” (subscribe to iTunes here), we meet Alex Khoruts, an immunologist and gastroenterologist at the University of Minnesota whose research concerns the human gut. It turns out that human waste, which for centuries has been regarded with fear and wariness, is now being redefined as the largest organ in your body — and, more important, as a potential source for new ways to treat ailments ranging from constipation to obesity to Parkinson’s disease.
The best strategy I have found for reducing the aggravation of security screening is to pretend I am a terrorist and think about where the weaknesses are in security, and how I might slip through. I think I figured out a way to get a gun or explosives into the White House during the George W. Bush administration. I only got invited to the White House once, however, so I never got a chance to test my theory for real on a return visit.
Did you smile? Now your computer can answer that question: MIT’s Media Lab is developing technology whereby your computer, with the help of a webcam, can read facial movements to analyze whether you’re smiling.
A reader named Ed Woodcock writes to tell us of …: “[A] conversation I had with a WHO (World Health Org.) official I bumped into while touring the Taj Mahal for the first time about 5 or 6 years ago. We introduced ourselves and she told me that she was a “polio advocate,” which obviously led to the question, “What the heck does that mean?” She basically spent her time lobbying organizations for donations to help eradicate polio. Obviously a very worthy cause!”
Last week, I recounted the story of my golf pro Pat Goss, upon first meeting me, comparing my swing to another player. I invited blog readers to guess the answer.
A worthwhile Bloomberg profile of John List, the University of Chicago economist, frequent Levitt collaborator, and SuperFreakonomics hero who has championed the use of field experiments. List recently received $10 million from hedge funder Kenneth Griffin to track the performance of 600 students, including 150 at the Griffin Early Childhood Center.
This week, the United States Supreme Court delivered a decisive blow to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan for New York City taxicabs to go green, to switch to hybrid cars. This all started a few years ago when Bloomberg announced a plan to mandate that the famous New York City taxi fleet go all-hybrid. The classic Crown Victoria gets about 12 miles per gallon, whereas a hybrid taxi gets 30 miles per gallon. Quite a difference! So this is great for the environment.
China’s growing middle class is already being blamed for driving up wine prices. Now there may a bubble brewing in another Chinese market: stamps.
The Texas legislature seems likely to pass a law allowing people to carry concealed weapons on campus. Having observed enough shootings of professors by students in the U.S. over the past 45 years, I think this is a dreadful idea.
I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent research.
I recently began taking golf lessons for the first time since I was 13 years old. I got to the range early, and my new teacher, Pat Goss, was finishing up a lesson with another student over on the putting green. He eventually made his way over towards me and introduced himself.
Articles on the health-care industry are a fertile source of large numbers and, sometimes, large errors. It is estimated that nationally 300,000 women a year may be getting unnecessary surgery at a cost of “hundreds of millions of dollars.” I was happy to believe the figure of 300,000 women a year. However, the cost set off my number-sense alarm.
Given the sort of topics that elementary schools emphasize these days (e.g., a few weeks back, it was national anti-bullying day; my 10-year-old has painstakingly spelled out “Save the Earth” on her bedroom door), shouldn’t Helen Keller be front and center in the curriculum?
How important is school accountability to school performance? According to a new study, the answer is: very.
Today is the first day of the rest of our blogging lives. For 3.5 years, this blog has lived at NYTimes.com, very happily for the most part. But as time passed, we became eager to take the blog indie again, and unite it with the other stuff we’ve been working on.
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