The Hydrogen Education Foundation’s 2007/08 contest challenge: fix airports. (Earlier) Does Dunbar’s “magic” 150 apply to social networking sites? South Korea creates camps to cure Internet addiction. (Earlier) The realities of vote buying. (Earlier)
Controversy over corporate media consolidation has been brewing for decades. In 1975, the Federal Communications Commission enacted a rule prohibiting a single media company from owning both a newspaper and radio or TV station in the same city. Twenty-eight years later, the issue drew national attention when former FCC Chairman Michael Powell introduced a plan to overturn the ban. His . . .
This time of year in New York City, it’s easy to find elderly Chinese women in Central Park stooped beneath trees, gathering up what look like small plums. The trees are ginkgo trees, which drop their fruit when ripe; the fruit has long been prized in China and Japan as both a food and a medicine. A helpful friend tells . . .
A few years back, the economist David Romer wrote an academic paper suggesting that teams in the N.F.L. should punt less frequently. While the league’s coaches mostly dismissed his findings, I suspect that teams are a bit more likely to go for it on fourth down in marginal situations today than they were before he wrote the article. N.F.L. coaches . . .
That is the subject of our most recent Times Magazine column, with some background research and other related material posted here. As in many of our columns, we pair a particular subject (in this case, weight-loss — a.k.a. bariatric — surgery) with an economics concept (in this case, a commitment device). Sometimes these pairings can be a bit of a . . .
The “Great American Smokeout” hits its 31st year. (Earlier) Can ignorance lead to greater wisdom? (HT: BPS Blog) Advice for getting off catalog lists. (Earlier) Australian Santas barred from saying “Ho Ho Ho”.
Singer/songwriter/Internet celebrity Jonathan Coulton may well represent the future of recorded music. A folk rocker perhaps best known for his hilariously deadpan acoustic cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s 1992 hit “Baby Got Back,” Coulton has demonstrated an uncanny ability to merge music with technology. A major Web presence with a pioneering attitude toward offering free content online, he holds the titles . . .
Read the Column » For their Nov. 18, 2007, “Freakonomics” column, Dubner and Levitt revisit a favorite topic: unconventional weight loss. In September 2005, they wrote about Seth Roberts, who shed 40 pounds with a diet he crafted through years of meticulous self-experimentation. This week’s column digs into the risks and benefits of using surgery to combat obesity. This blog . . .
Half of N.Y.U. students say they would sell their right to vote for $1 million, according to a poll published yesterday by the Washington Square News. Sixty-six percent said they would trade their voting rights for a free four-year ride at N.Y.U. (roughly $160,000, including room and board). Twenty percent would give up the vote for an iPod Touch (value: . . .
Kip Viscusi, who teaches economics and law at Vanderbilt Law School, has written widely and well on the risky choices that people make, especially smoking. A new working paper, co-authored with Joni Hersch, attempts to put a price on each pack of cigarettes smoked: This article estimates the mortality cost of smoking based on the first labor market estimates of . . .
“[H]ybrid record label and blog” launches with new plan for selling music. (Earlier) A lesson in “Marijuanomics 101”. (HT: Economics International) A classic aptonym. (Earlier) Japanese engineers develop “musical roads”. (HT: BoingBoing)
That is the finding of our informal “Would You Rather” poll, asking if you’d rather be arrested for embezzlement or prostitution. By a measure of nearly 4-to-1, you chose prostitution. It’s amazing what you learn about people when you have a blog. As promised, a piece of Freakonomics schwag goes to someone who wrote a particularly entertaining reply. That someone . . .
Here is the latest Indexed installment from Jessica Hagy (you can find her past posts here, or visit Hagy’s blog here. She titled this twosome “Move Out and Join Up,” though one might also be tempted to call it “Gentrify and Purify.”
I love technological innovations. In my view, we are so lucky to live today rather than 200 years ago. One area that has seen enormous innovation recently, though much of it seems to be underappreciated, is needles. I base this only on my own limited experience as a pin cushion, but I think it is true more generally. For example, . . .
It may not be surprising to you that Trevon D. Logan, an economics professor at Ohio State University, is interested in college football. Ohio State is, after all, a football mecca (as we experienced first-hand some time ago). What may surprise you, however, is what Logan has concluded about college football polls. In a new working paper, Logan used 25 . . .
Music video depicts drug dealer counting cash in euros. (Hat Tip: Foreign Policy) Study finds gender discrimination in coffee shops. Devra Davis to speak at NYU. (Earlier) An alternative theory to the conventional wisdom on dinosaur extinction.
Video In an earlier video, Levitt talked about how hard it is for economists to make good predictions about the macroeconomy. He continues that theme in this new piece, explaining why he’d rather tackle a much smaller question and try to answer it well.
South Africa has had, for the last dozen years, what may be the world’s most difficult driver’s license exam. It’s an exercise in extremely defensive driving. Test examiners take off points for, among other things, failure to check all mirrors every seven seconds. An applicant can fail instantly if he lets his car roll backwards even an inch when stopping . . .
A couple of weeks ago, Wired editor and The Long Tail author Chris Anderson got so fed up with receiving pitches from clueless (or lazy) publicists that he screeched out in protest, permanently banning said publicists from his in-box and, to the delight of some onlookers, publishing their e-mail addresses on his blog in a spammer-friendly format. Reaction to Anderson’s . . .
After overcoming some technical difficulties, we seem to have perfected the process by which we send out free autographed Freakonomics bookplates. This allows you to turn a common, mass-produced object into an autographed common, mass-produced object (and, thereby, a cherished keepsake). While we are not making any promises, there is a good chance that if you order a bookplate in . . .
Are performance-based pay structures partly to blame for the mortgage crisis? Do our tastes in entertainment correspond to our political views? Do behavioral problems in kindergarten affect future school performance? Are there hazards to washing your hands? (Earlier)
From today’s Times: Mayor Bloomberg has approved a major facet of Roland Fryer‘s program for making learning “cool” for inner-city kids.
A few weeks ago, I gave a bookstore reading for my new kids’ book, The Boy With Two Belly Buttons. I was sitting on the floor, reading to a bunch of kids, when suddenly something seemed wrong with the story — it didn’t track, didn’t make sense to me at all. Befuddled, I stopped reading. I remember thinking, “Wow, has . . .
Freakonomics schwag is up for offer at the end of this post. As such, it may actually be worth slogging through the brief economics lesson that follows. The Coase Theorem is a somewhat rare species of beast: an economic theory that is both completely counterintuitive and yet often right in practice. The idea is named after Ronald Coase, one of . . .
There’s an interesting article about organ transplantation in today’s Wall Street Journal, by Laura Meckler. It’s primarily about a transplant surgeon named Arthur Matas who has been advocating for the legalization of kidney sales in the U.S. Despite much opposition in the transplant community, Matas has been making headway: Appearing at a January meeting of the American Society of Transplant . . .
Is the U.S. income gap as big as we think? Becker and Posner comment. Is virginity genetically influenced? Japanese company sells “exploding piggy bank” to incentivize saving. Woman named “Unique” arrested. (Earlier)
Michael Lewis wrote a really good piece (almost all of his pieces are good, IMHO) in last week’s Play magazine about N.F.L. kickers and whether the great “clutch” kickers like Adam Vinatieri are actually much better than the average kicker. Lewis’s verdict: not really. It’s just that a few random kicks turn out to be highly memorable (think Vinatieri in . . .
I heard an interesting story recently. A woman at a dinner party said that her mother (let’s call her Jane) was having lunch at a well-known and expensive New York restaurant when she went to the ladies’ room. While washing her hands, she made the cardinal sin of removing her diamond ring, and then forgot to retrieve it before she . . .
Ian Ayres is an economist and lawyer at Yale and the author of Super Crunchers, which we excerpted here. He has agreed to write occasional guest posts on our blog, which delights us, since he has a lot of compelling interests and insights. Ian is not the only notable guest blogger who will turn up on this site in the . . .
The answer isn’t that surprising in retrospect, but I’d never thought about it until I visited Seattle the other day and saw some statistics assembled by the Washington Policy Center. Here are some hints: 1. It has something to do with a post I wrote about Brazil not long ago. 2. It has something to do with water. 3. It . . .