How much would you pay to avoid regrets? A new study (gated) by psychologists Niels van de Ven and Marcel Zeelenberg finds that people are willing to forgo direct benefits in order to avoid regrets.
Last week, we solicited your questions for Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson, co-authors of the new book Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes.
Here are their answers, covering everything from sex to divorce to … gulp … apology. Thanks to all who participated, especially Paula and Jenny.
Martin Ravallion of the World Bank traces poverty awareness over the last three centuries and finds we may be at a historical peak.
The Pittsburgh Steelers played in this year’s Super Bowl, but did not win it. Which means that, sitting in a warehouse somewhere, are lots of preprinted “Pittsburgh Steelers 2011 Super Bowl Champion” t-shirts. Ever wonder what happens to them? Dean Karlan, a development economist at Yale, is here to explain in a guest post.
How do great entrepreneurs think? That’s the question that Saras Sarasvathy set out to answer in a recent study.
Economic trouble continues. In the U.S., where the Federal government has moved gradually at best to cut spending, the pain — especially at state and local levels — is still rolling in. (The U.K., meanwhile, went directly to austerity mode.) But there are green shoots to be seen, especially at the high end. Plastic surgery, for instance, is on the rise. (Depending on your worldview, you might consider this the end of the world rather than the start of a recovery, but still …)
The Caffé Nero outlet in London I visited recently has different prices for take-out and in-store cups of coffee — £1.65 for take-out, £1.75 for in-store. Given the costs of space for tables to sit at, and the need to own and wash cups and saucers, the price difference must be way too small to make this cost-based price discrimination.
Ed Glaeser is an economist’s economist — as smart as they come, driven by empiricism, with something interesting to say about nearly anything. He has just published a new book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier. Glaeser argues that cities often get a bad rap even though they are “actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live. New Yorkers, for instance, live longer than other Americans; heart disease and cancer rates are lower in Gotham than in the nation as a whole. More than half of America’s income is earned in twenty-two metropolitan areas. And city dwellers use, on average, 40 percent less energy than suburbanites.”
We’re pleased to offer the following guest post from Glaeser on the glory of cities. I hope you find it as enthralling as I did.
The Roman Catholic Church, which hasn’t always seen face-to-face with modernity, has embraced at least one product of the digital age. The BBC reports that senior officials in the Church in the U.S. and the U.K. have approved a Confession iPhone app.
“Emotions have historically received a bum rap from decision researchers” write economists John Ifcher and Homa Zarghamee. In a forthcoming paper called Happiness and Time Preference: The Effect of Positive Affect in a Random-Assignment Experiment, they address the tricky and oft-ignored role of emotion in decision-making.
Last week, we solicited your questions for George Atallah, the assistant executive director of external affairs for the N.F.L. Players Association. You responded with typical vigor, and Atallah took the bait, answering the vast majority of your questions. Thanks to him and all of you.
In Romania, life has gotten even harder for practicing witches, as spelled out in a recent A.P. article: “A month after Romanian authorities began taxing them for their trade, the country’s soothsayers and fortune tellers are cursing a new bill that threatens fines or even prison if their predictions don’t come true.”
A lot of people who join gyms or health clubs find it very easy to stop going. Gym-Pact, a new program in Boston, aims to change that. “Gym-Pact offers what [co-founder Yifan] Zhang calls motivational fees: customers agree to pay more if they miss their scheduled workouts, literally buying into a financial penalty if they don’t stick to their fitness plans,” explains Susan Johnston of The Boston Globe.
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’m lecturing at the University of Essex and going from office to office chatting with people about their research. This is hard physical labor — I repeatedly go down one or two flights of stairs in this rabbit warren, walk down a hall, up the stairs in the adjoining building, then back down another hall. What a waste — why?
A wealth manager I know sends out a quarterly letter to clients that summarizes his view of the economy and his resultant investing plans. Here’s a nice paragraph from his most recent letter…
Sometime in the late spring, our second book, SuperFreakonomics, will be published in paperback. As with Freakonomics, we’re going to add some bonus matter to the back of this edition. And, as with Freakonomics, one thing we’ll include is a Q&A in which we answer questions from readers. And where do these questions come from? You! So ask away in the comments section; here’s your chance to be a published (albeit unpaid) author. Posted below is the Table of Contents from SuperFreak, but feel free to ask questions unrelated to the content as well. Thanks in advance.
Nifty article in today’s Journal about a nifty study by Bret Myers of Villanova: “The pace and flow of soccer generally make it difficult for managers to affect the outcome of a match once it begins. Since soccer has almost no stoppages for coaches to draw on clipboards or strategize with their players, a manager’s most critical in-game decision may be choosing when to utilize their three substitutions.”
Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson, a pair of journalists, are co-authors of the new book Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes. It sorts out optimal strategies for household chores (it’s all about comparative advantage), paying the bills on time (find the right incentive!), and the “too-big-to-fail marriage.”
What’s behind Germany’s economic success? It’s not a wirtschaftswunder; The Economist explains.
Two good questions from a reader named Harold Laski, who is the medical director of Southside Medical Center in Jacksonville, Fla.: “As a physician treating injured sportsmen, I understand (or at least I think that I do), the reasons that people get into sports. But two things have bothered me…”
In Wired, Jonah Lehrer profiles Mohan Srivastava, a Toronto statistician who seemingly cracked the scratch-lottery ticket code. “The tic-tac-toe lottery was seriously flawed,” writes Lehrer. “It took a few hours of studying his tickets and some statistical sleuthing, but he discovered a defect in the game: The visible numbers turned out to reveal essential information about the digits hidden under the latex coating. Nothing needed to be scratched off-the ticket could be cracked if you knew the secret code.”
Ruh-Roh. John Tierney in today’s Times: “… Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology … polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center [during the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology], starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.”
One iron law governed 20th century transportation: driving always increases. But surprisingly, the 2000s appeared to see a halt to that trend. A few theories.
An Economist at the Museum: how do curators trade? The transactions of exhibiting paintings.
How far will a degree from an elite college get you? Only in the door, says a new study of Israeli grads.
Busy fathers, pay attention: a new study finds that if your kids think you’re not spending enough time with them, they’re more likely to exhibit bullying behavior at school.
The Brooking Institution’s Hamilton Project has announced a competition to “identify new and innovative thinking about policies to create jobs in the United States and enhance productivity.” The contest winner will receive a $15,000 prize, while the runners-up will share $10,000.
George Atallah is the assistant executive director of external affairs for the N.F.L. Players Association, which means that he and his boss, DeMaurice Smith, are the top representatives for perhaps the most prominent labor union in history: NFL players.