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.
A reader named Linda Cass asks an interesting question that pokes into the self-interest/fairness/altruism area we’ve been writing about lately: Why do 99% of people dim their headlights for oncoming vehicles?
Weary investors, take heart. Jeffrey A. Hirsch, editor of the Stock Trader’s Almanac is predicting good times ahead. Bloomberg reports that Hirsch is predicting “[t]he Dow Jones Industrial Average will surge to 38,820 in an eight-year ‘super boom’ beginning in 2017.”
As security guru Bruce Schneier writes, “the arms race continues.” I do wonder if, when, or how there will be a computer users’ revolt against tracking tools like this one.
The Freakonomics blog will have to do without Betsey Stevenson for the next year as she’ll be serving as the Chief Economist of the Department of Labor (DOL). Betsey has agreed to answer your questions about her new position.
Here are two interesting items.
In Washington, D.C., this morning, the New America Foundation (in partnership with Arizona State University and Slate) is holding a “Future Tense Event” called “Geoengineering: The Horrifying Idea Whose Time Has Come?”
When I asked my students for examples of diminishing marginal utility, one wiseguy freshman stated, “Time with my girlfriends after a relationship of five months-I drop them after that.” (I should have told him that it’s hard to distinguish quits from layoffs, but I wasn’t fast enough on my feet!)
The revolving door between Capitol Hill and Washington’s lobbying community has long been a concern, even prompting a crackdown by Barack Obama. A new paper from Jordi Blanes i Vidal, Mirko Draca and Christian Fons-Rosen attempts to measure the extent of the problem by quantifying the value of the personal connections many lobbyists “acquire[d] during their public service.”
Closing the black-white – and the rich-poor – achievement gap is a frequent topic of conversation on this blog. Economist Christopher Avery takes a look (ungated version here) at one intervention aimed at closing the gap: providing college counselors for high-achieving, low-income students.
Two years ago, I asked for suggestions for the most memorable song lyrics of recent years, to help with the next edition of The Yale Book of Quotations. Let me repeat my “bleg” from that time, and ask again for suggestions.
Steve Levitt likes to preach that experimentation should not be limited to scientists and other researchers; firms and other institutions stand to benefit from it a great deal, and yet often don’t engage. But here, from the Canadian magazine Macleans, is one institution that’s giving it a shot: the National Hockey League.
Altruism is a regular topic on this blog, and had its own chapter in SuperFreakonomics. New research (earlier, ungated version here) looks at one factor that may affect altruism in the real world: communication.
We feature all kinds of people on this blog – drug dealers, prostitutes, even academic economists – but readers are always complaining that we don’t have any movie stars. Today that changes. Below we are soliciting your questions for Adrian Grenier, the actor who plays Vincent Chase on HBO’s Entourage and has appeared in The Devil Wears Prada and other films. Grenier also makes documentary films – Shot in the Dark (2002), which chronicled his search for his estranged father, and Teenage Paparazzo, which premieres on HBO on Sept. 27.
My eleventh book, Carrots and Sticks: Unlock the Power of Incentives to Get Things Done, has just been published. It is centrally about how to craft incentives and commitments to help you and others accomplish your goals.
That might depend on your race. New research (ungated version here) from Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer, and Randi Hjalmarsson uses data from criminal trials and finds “strong evidence that all-white juries acquit whites more often and are less favorable to black versus white defendants when compared to juries with at least one black member.”
From the Wall Street Journal: “When British bank Barclays PLC agreed to shell out ?25 million ($39 million) to sponsor London’s new public bike-rental program, it envisioned the marketing benefits of seeing its sky-blue logo draped on thousands of cycles around the city.”
A few weeks back, I sat down with the Richmond Fed’s Aaron Steelman for a most enjoyable hour or two talking about my recent research projects and perspectives on economics generally. If you’re interested in learning more, click here for the full interview. Regular readers of this blog may even recognize a few themes that I’ve been hammering away at here on these pages. At the risk of quoting myself, here are a few favorite parts.
The College of Liberal Arts at UT is offering its first ever “buyout.” If a faculty member retires at the end of this semester, s/he receives two years of pay as a lump sum. To be eligible, the sum of age plus years at UT must be at least 93. Of the 88 eligibles, I’m told that over 40 are taking the buyout.
Another pleasurable summer read for me was Dan Ariely’s The Upside of Irrationality. Put simply, the book is an impressive achievement. It interweaves Ariely’s compelling personal narrative with what seems like dozens of his own super-interesting academic experiments. Ariely explains how his own struggle with being severely burned as a youth put him on the path to being one of the world’s premier behavioral economists.
I just flew down to LA from Seattle, and aside from a vicious battle of wills with my neighbor over possession of the armrest (ultimately won by me: a foolhardy reach for his drink was his Waterloo), I was pretty satisfied with my trip. However, for most of us, air travel represents anything but a positive experience. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the airlines rank second-to-last in customer service out of 47 industry sectors.
Steven Rattner, the financier, onetime journalist and recent “car czar,” has just published a book called Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry. This weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt, and if this snippet is a good indication, there is a lot of sensible, factual material to be read.
A new study from the psychiatry department in New York’s Bellevue Hospital examines the use of offensive language by medical staff, patients, and families.
Once in a while, something happens in the real world that brings a flurry of e-mail to the Freakonomics office. If, for instance, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, or at least a version thereof, makes an appearance on a network TV show.
The theory behind copyright is simple – if we allow anyone to copy a good new idea, then no one will come up with the next one. The theory makes perfect sense – in theory. In previous posts, however, we have described how fashion designers, chefs, comedians and pornographers all continue to create, even though others are free to copy their fashion designs, recipes, jokes, and . . . images. In this post, we’ll take a look at something different: football.
I asked my Turkish teaching assistant, a first-year Ph.D. student, what he’s doing about compulsory military service. To simplify, he is only liable for six months of service as a university graduate, instead of the usual one year; and if he stays here for three years or more, he can further delay service.
Two years ago, I asked for suggestions for the most memorable advertising slogans of recent years, to help with the next edition of The Yale Book of Quotations. Let me repeat my “bleg” from that time, and ask again for suggestions.
Paul Krugman and Robin Wells caricature my recent book Fault Lines in an article in The New York Review of Books. The article, and their criticism, however, do have a lot to say about Krugman’s policy views (for simplicity, I will say “Krugman” and “he” instead of “Krugman and Wells” and “they”), which I have disagreed with in the past. Rather than focus on the innuendo about my motives and beliefs in the review, let me focus on differences of substance. I will return to why I believe Krugman writes the way he does only at the end.
Probably not, but Malcolm Gladwell might.
My source for this conclusion: the always-interesting OKTrends blog, which provides data analysis for the OKCupid online dating site. Its latest analysis looks at how profile essays differ by race.
Anya Kamenetz of Fast Company writes about the TED phenomenon: “By combining the principles of ‘radical openness’ and of ‘leveraging the power of ideas to change the world,’ TED is in the process of creating something brand new. I would go so far as to argue that it’s creating a new Harvard — the first new top-prestige education brand in more than 100 years.”
There’s a lot of talk about race these days. But high-frequency chatter can obscure some of the more important longer-term trends shaping the lives of African-Americans. Which is why Betsey Stevenson and I turn to the data, in a new paper, “Subjective and Objective Indicators of Racial Happiness.”
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