Peter Leeson is the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at George Mason University. He is particularly interested in the economics of 18th-century pirates, as reflected in his forthcoming book “The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates.” His other interests include dominoes and U.F.O.’s. With such an odd and diverse portfolio, he is a natural fit with Freakonomics, . . .
I was reading a bedtime story to my daughter Sophie when I stumbled upon the following haiku by Jack Prelutsky, told from the perspective of a mouse: If not for the cat, And the scarcity of cheese, I could be content. Perhaps I am just a sucker for the word scarcity, but there was something in this haiku that really . . .
While traveling through Istanbul, I noticed numerous free-standing kiosks with several (as many as six) A.T.M.’s — each from a different bank. This struck me as being bizarre. A Turkish economist said that some of the banks even let you withdraw from your account using a competitor’s A.T.M. at no extra charge. Why would these joint locations exist? Why advertise . . .
William Tucker, author of the forthcoming book Terrestrial Energy, blogged here earlier this week about nuclear power. This is his last of three guest posts here on the subject. When I was in college I took a course on the great political philosophers. Soon I had them all lined up with their respective eras: Hobbes and the 18th-century monarchies, Locke . . .
Justin Wolfers’s excellent post on Usain Bolt‘s extraordinary 200-meter race mentions in passing that “it is only a fairly recent phenomenon that the 200-meter typically yields a faster average speed than the 100-meter sprint.” We’re living in a topsy-turvy world where the world-record pace is faster on a longer distance than a shorter distance. When Bolt set a new world . . .
Photo: Secretly Ironic Are there more guns in the U.S. or more opinions about guns? Hard to say. This blog has featured a variety of posts about guns in the past; today we present a quorum with a very narrow focus: what are some good ideas to cut gun deaths? Let’s put aside for a moment the standard discussions about . . .
Usain Bolt‘s wonderful run in the Olympic 200-meter sprint reminds us that the normal distribution — the familiar bell curve beloved by economists and statisticians — can be wildly inappropriate when analyzing extremely selected samples. This morning’s New York Times shows Usain Bolt’s new world record, relative to the 250 greatest 200-meter sprints ever. Not only does this not look . . .
William Tucker, author of the forthcoming book Terrestrial Energy, blogged here earlier this week about nuclear power. This is his second of three guest posts here on the subject. A year ago, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt wrote a New York Times Magazine column entitled “The Jane Fonda Effect,” in which they argued that Fonda’s efforts in the movie The . . .
I recently happened upon one of George Stigler‘s humorous asides in the 1977 Journal of Political Economy — “The Conference Handbook.” In order to make discussions of research papers more efficient, Stigler suggested that one should simply interrupt the speaker by shouting the numbered objection, rather than the usual, overly long interjection. And as a public service, he gave a . . .
Jason Felch and Maura Dolan of the Los Angeles Times recently wrote a fascinating piece about a controversy that has arisen regarding the use of DNA in identifying criminal suspects. The article starts like this: State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona’s DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles. The . . .
The more beer scientists drink, the less likely they are to have a paper published or cited, according to a new study by Thomas Grim, an ornithologist at Palacky University, Czech Republic. Grim surveyed the behavior of Czech scientists and found a correlation between amount of beer consumed and papers published. But the Czech Republic may just be an strange . . .
The L.A. Times reports on a group claiming that the recent reduction in gas prices was caused by prayer. “If the whole country keeps on praying, we can bring down prices even more — to even less than $2,” says Rocky Twyman, founder of Pray at the Pump. If prayer did cause the price to drop, did it do so . . .
Brock Lesnar Last Friday, we solicited your questions for U.F.C. fighter Brock Lesnar. The next day he won his fight against Heath Herring — and mocked him when he was down. According to Sports Illustrated‘s Ben Fowlkes, a “pro wrestling-style heel” like Lesnar “is exactly what the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s heavyweight division needs right now. … Thanks to Lesnar, watching . . .
Our resident quote bleggar Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, is back with another request. If you have a bleg of your own, send it along here. Thanks to all who posted recent advertising slogans for my last bleg. Let me belatedly acknowledge the comments of some by agreeing that, yes, television is probably the one among . . .
What’s it like to grow up with one parent who is black and another who is white? In a recent paper I co-authored with Roland Fryer, Lisa Kahn, and Jorg Spenkuch, we look at data to try to answer that question. Here is what we find: 1) Mixed-race kids grow up in households that are similar along many dimensions to . . .
Photo: Peter Katz On a forum at the Chicago outpost of City-Data.com, a certain JohnDoe2008 asked suburbanites: Why do you like suburbs over [the] city? Be honest please, I never understood it, still don’t. I might have serious problems, because I hate even looking at pictures of suburbs. Respondents cited backyards, quiet and cheap living, and congestion-free commutes — the . . .
From airbedandbreakfast.com Social networking websites have changed the way we view our reputations, the way we organize protests, and now the way we … couch surf? AirBed&Breakfast lets travelers meet locals in 20 countries and book a few nights in their guest rooms, as an alternative to sleeping in a hotel. They are hoping to fill the gap as hotels . . .
Brock Lesnar The Ultimate Fighting Championship (a mixed martial arts organization) began in the early 1990’s with the motto “There Are No Rules!” but a variety of fouls have since been established: 1. Butting with the head. 2. Eye gouging of any kind. 3. Biting. 4. Hair pulling. 5. Fish hooking. 6. Groin attacks of any kind. 7. Putting a . . .
Photo: Bogdan Suditu Princeton economist Alan Blinder recently proposed a new government program he christened “Cash for Clunkers” in an article in The Times‘s Business section. Under the program, the government would buy back old cars at above market prices and scrap them. According to Blinder, this would accomplish a policy trifecta: 1) help the environment by getting the most . . .
This past weekend I had the opportunity to bring two ends of the American income spectrum together. I introduced Michael, the blue-blood New Yorker who plans to start a family foundation (see earlier posts), to Curtis, a squatter in Chicago who moves from one abandoned apartment to another. Michael, a multi-millionaire with a team of professionals managing his assets, must . . .
Noah Goldstein Robert Cialdini The Rolling Stones made an excellent point: You can’t always get what you want. Even one of the top experts in getting things from people, Robert Cialdini (author of the landmark book Influence: Science and Practice), and his co-authors, Noah Goldstein and Steve Martin, agree. But in their new book, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to . . .
Bruce Silverglade at Gleason’s Gym, Brooklyn, NY Sports fan or not, chances are you’ve heard of Sugar Ray Robinson, George Foreman, and Rocky Marciano. But unless you follow boxing, you probably haven’t heard of Antonio Margarito, who recently beat Miguel Cotto to become a three-time welterweight champion. This disparity may explain why boxing isn’t as popular as other U.S. sports . . .
Many teachers believe that a “few bad apples” can spoil a whole classroom, reducing the learning of everyone in the room. While this is part of the folk wisdom of teaching, it has been surprisingly difficult to find these effects in the data. But a very convincing new paper, by Scott Carrell of U.C. Davis and Mark Hoekstra of U.Pitt, . . .
Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution has an interesting post on media coverage of the recent Science paper that argued against gender differences in math test scores. Tabarrok says that the media misreported the story and Larry Summers is still right.
Photo taken from Kathleen and May Levitt recently sang the praises of cheap wine. But how can wine stay cheap when oil prices keep pushing up the cost of transportation? Sailing ships might be the answer. Last Friday, a 108-year-old British sailing ship delivered 30,000 bottles of French wine to Dublin. It was the first time since the 1800’s that . . .
Blog reader Chris Harris raises an interesting question in an email to us: Why do mortgage brokers get paid everything up front when they originate a deal? This sort of contract gives brokers terrible incentives. They just want to get a deal done. It matters very little to them whether the borrower eventually defaults or not. (It is possible that . . .
I almost never read business books anymore. I got my fill of them years ago when I was a management consultant before I went back and got a Ph.D. Last week, however, I picked up Good to Great by Jim Collins. This book is an absolute phenomenon in the publishing world. Since it came out in 2001, it has sold . . .
David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, has done some interesting research on hypocrisy and morals, which has appeared recently in Newsweek and The Times. DeSteno has agreed to blog about his findings here. With the election season fast approaching, epithets of “hypocrite” are flying. You know the implications — hypocrites cannot be trusted, they’re morally compromised. Whether . . .
I blogged last week about blind wine tastings — my own casual experiments as well as some more serious academic ones. The bottom line is that in blind wine tastings, there is a zero or even slightly negative correlation between the ratings of regular people and the price of the wine they are drinking; for experts the relationship between rating . . .
The answer: in prisons, where CDs are routinely banned because they can be shattered and the shards refined into shivs. MP3 players are unavailable in most prisons, as are, one imagines, turntables. California-based entrepreneur Bob Paris got the idea five years ago to sell cassettes by mail to the 2.3 million people locked up in federal, state, or local prisons . . .