We received an interesting e-mail not long ago from a gentleman asking if there had been much empirical work done on grief and mourning. His wife had died and he found that he recovered quite readily, but that many others in his situation were severely affected by their grief, to the point that they couldn’t really function in their jobs. . . .
The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry recently published a paper on the relationship between smoking and post-traumatic stress disorder. This newspaper report on the article starts out okay:“Post-trauma mental health disturbances such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are associated with increased smoking, either by starting to smoke or an increase of tobacco use,” write Dr Peter G Van der Velden, of . . .
Until today, I would have been hard-pressed to answer that one. In today’s New York Times “Inside the List” column they give the answer: Freakonomics and the Dalai Lama‘s book “The Art of Happiness” are among the books to stay for the longest period of time on the New York Times bestseller list without ever making it to number 1.
Late notice, but: tonight I’ll be appearing on a two-hour John Stossel 20/20 special called “Scared Stiff: Worry in America” (9-11 p.m. EST). I loved the theme of the show when first approached and, when I started to think through what Freakonomics material would be worth talking about, I realized that nearly everything we’ve written about, either in the book . . .
About twice a year I go on a health kick that lasts a few weeks. Typically this involves going for one-mile runs two or three times, doing as many push-ups as I can (about eight) every night, increasing the fiber in my diet, ramping up my carrot juice consumption, and taking whatever health pill is currently in vogue. I’m right . . .
This is new territory as far as I can tell: Planned Parenthood is selling a wireless phone plan so that supporters can contribute directly to the organization with every phone call. This may be even more effective than Pledge-a-Picket. Here’s the Planned Parenthood e-mail pitching the idea: Dear Planned Parenthood? Supporter:Is it just us, or does it . . .
At least in New Yorker cartoons. Because, as explained here, “the tacit assumption … is that the child is not of Polish origin.”
Anyone with even an ounce of Anglophile in them has to appreciate the news out of the U.K. this morning: 1. The U.K. bookmaking shop William Hill is so sure that countrywoman Helen Mirren will win the Oscar for best actress that it has closed its book on Mirren bets, paying out nearly $100,000 in winnings from the bets already . . .
What happens when officials decide to ban tobacco inside a prison? Exactly what happens when you ban drugs in the outside world. Here is Gary Becker’s take on the war on drugs, written for a general audience on the Becker-Posner blog. Roland Fryer, Paul Heaton, Kevin Murphy, and I have written an academic article on the impact of crack cocaine. . . .
Barry Bonds‘s baseball career, and his life in general, have been equal parts accomplishment and tumult. I won’t rehearse the details here, since anybody who cares at all is already familiar with them. The most interesting question to me is: Now what? It seems quite likely that if Bonds really wants to break Hank Aaron‘s all-time home run record of . . .
It is stunning to me how the threat of climate change has moved so swiftly from a big, simmering news story to a gigantic, omnipresent news story. One question I hear a lot, however, is this: Does big business care about climate change as much as everyone else? Judging from the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the answer is . . .
How many people read this blog? Who knows. Our hosting service says about 50,000 unique visitors come each day. That’s a lot of people — but when our traffic is analyzed by other companies, the number is considerably less. The other day, I noticed something strange. The little box in the right-hand margin of this page that lists the number . . .
This song was written by a procrastinating Econ 101 student: “Girl, Your Marginal Benefit Is Far Greater Than Your Marginal Cost” The tune is quite catchy. If you listen to the lyrics carefully, though, you will see that the singer/songwriter probably should have spent more time studying for the exam and less time writing this great song…the economics concepts described . . .
We have been accused of making economics cool. But compared to this Def Poetry Jam performance by Tommy Bottoms, we are bush league. The piece is called “Basic Economics,” and to my mind it is as well-written as it is well-performed. If I were a high-school economics teacher, I’d use it in my class (although truthfully it’s more of an . . .
My friend Laura Beth Nielsen at the American Bar Foundation has a theory that people who are good at one thing are good at everything. Since she shared it with me, I have thought often about whether it is true. I tend to believe it, with the important qualification that the right kind of practice is critical to being good . . .
Not long ago Dubner blogged about the various knock-offs of the apple-orange concept. Here is one that is a little different — is there perhaps a bit of onion thrown into the mix for good luck? The website must be gettting a lot of traffic because a whole bunch of Freakonomics blog readers have already been in touch to alert . . .
Here’s what showed up in the in-box today: You believe “economics is how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing,” What else are you going to pull out of high school economic text books? What is even more disturbing is the large amount of readers that believe this sort of . . .
About a year ago, we wrote this article about how real-estate agents would seem to be an endangered species. The article included an interesting piece of research (by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti) which showed that even during a real-estate boom, the typical agent doesn’t make a whole lot of money. Why not? Because the barriers to entry are so . . .
How dangerous is the flu? Probably more than most people think. Influenza/Pneumonia is regularly among the ten leading causes of death in the U.S. But there is more to it than that. This paper by Doug Almond makes a broad and interesting argument about the flu. By using the shock of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Almond measured the effect of . . .
With city elections fast approaching in Chicago, I went looking to find out more about the time that the Gangster Disciples, the biggest gang in Chicago, ran a candidate for alderman. I had always heard about it, but never knew any details. Legend has it that the Chicago police had decided to tolerate the Gangster Disciples, but because they got . . .
We recently wrote about how some $8 billion in gift card value goes unredeemed in a given year, representing 10% of all gift card purchases. In the retail industry, this $8 billion gift is called “breakage.” State lotteries, it turns out, also rake in a bit of breakage. Here’s a N.Y. Times article about winning lottery tickets that go unclaimed, . . .
A number of Portuguese reporters have contacted me asking my opinion about the nationwide vote to consider whether women in that country should be allowed to have abortions. After some thought, I decided not to reply to any of these press inquiries. The reason is that my research in abortion and crime, as discussed in Freakonomics, is virtually irrelevant to . . .
Ed Glaeser is one of the smartest economists around. He is a professor at Harvard with an astonishing list of academic papers on topics all over the map. He was profiled a year or two back in the NY Times Sunday magazine. Ed has started writing op-ed pieces for the Boston Globe. His most recent op-ed has recommendations for reforming . . .
If you worry about your home being burglarized, you might want to take a look at this interview with a burglar who gives some advice about where to hide your valuables. His obvious answer: “at the bank.” But he’s got a few other pointers too, including: 1. If you do keep cash in the house, leave a little of it . . .
David Mills, a TV writer who used to write for newspapers, is regularly surprised — and irked — when newspapers and magazines misidentify black people in articles and photo captions. “I mean famous black people,” Mills writes on his Undercover Black Man blog. So he has begun a Misidentified Black Person of the Week feature, with the aim of creating . . .
Lenny “Nails” Dykstra now writes an investing column on TheStreet.com. And the rest, as they say, is commentary.
Daniel Gross, who writes good popular economics pieces for Slate, the New York Times, and sometimes New York, published a Times piece on Sunday that will cheer fans of congestion pricing, the practice of charging higher tolls when roads are busier: “[T]he $2.9 trillion fiscal 2008 budget released by President Bush on Monday contained some excellent news: $130 million in . . .
The 2007 Economics Report of the President is to be released this afternoon, and posted online here. Then at 4:30 p.m. EST, Ed Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, will discuss the report in a conference call with … bloggers. I don’t know whether the decision to do this was made before or after it was revealed that . . .
NASCAR recently made several changes for its 2007 Nextel Cup season. Perhaps the most significant was increasing the incentive to actually win the races. Since the Nextel Cup is a points tournament, a driver can do very well by just hanging around and finishing near the top. But now, by awarding more points to the winner of each race, NASCAR . . .
Over a decade ago, Swarthmore economist Fred Pryor wrote this fascinating article about reading through the records of the East German secret police who arrested him while he was doing dissertation research in East Germany in the early 1960s. It pales in comparison, but when Sudhir Venkatesh and I were doing research on gangs there was always a lingering concern . . .