A Code of Conduct for Economists?
The Economist is running a forum on an interesting topic: Do economists need a code of conduct? The economists surveyed disagree on the merits of a code of conduct.
The Economist is running a forum on an interesting topic: Do economists need a code of conduct? The economists surveyed disagree on the merits of a code of conduct.
In the SuperFreakonomics chapter on cheap and simple solutions, we wrote: And seat belts, at about $25 a pop, are one of the most cost-effective lifesaving devices ever invented. In a given year, it costs roughly $500 million to put them in every U.S. vehicle, which yields a rough estimate of $30,000 for every life saved. How does this compare with a far more complex safety feature like air bags? At an annual U.S. price of more than $4 billion, air bags cost about $1.8 million per life saved.
Call me a skeptic about the “peak oil” story. Human ingenuity has always found ways to produce more of, find substitutes for, or discover ways to do without a scarce resource when price signals tell us to. But if peak oil is true, doesn’t one good peak deserve another? Why not meet peak oil head on with its dreaded natural enemy: peak travel?
The economist Stephen T. Ziliak is also a haikuist. As he writes in Poetry magazine, using haiku helps add “feelings to economics.”
As you may have read on this blog, the economist Roland Fryer has done quite a bit of research on bribing kids — i.e., offering financial rewards for good grades. A new working paper from Josh Angrist, Philip Oreopoulos and Tyler Williams examines the effect of financial rewards on performance among an older cohort: college students.
An article on the BBC and elsewhere notes that witches and astrologers are now recognized occupations in Romania and no longer part of the underground economy. Practitioners’ incomes are now taxable-and practitioners are now covered by the country’s pension and health insurance schemes. Some witches have cast spells to overturn the new regulations, while others like the new benefits more than they dislike paying the new taxes.
It is always fun when, in the midst of reporting, multiple sources lead you down the same interesting path.
I recently spent the better part of a day interviewing food scientists for an upcoming Freakonomics Radio podcast that we have dubbed “Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup.” (Yes, it’s a corny title and yes, it may change, but maybe it won’t.)
Coming into the day, I never would have guessed that Napoleon would figure so prominently in these interviews. Not one, not two, but three different interview subjects brought him up, twice in the same exact context.
A few years ago, a colleague of mine off-handedly mentioned that he “tried not to use” his spouse’s disability placard to park in handicapped spaces when she wasn’t in the car. Frankly, I was appalled. The implication was that he sometimes succumbed to the temptation to use the placard to park in a handicapped place.
Apparently, he isn’t alone.
I had hoped to live-blog the American Economics Association sessions I attended over the past few days in Denver — and thanks for your suggestions — but, alas, it was nearly impossible to get a good internet connection in the (mostly) underground meeting rooms.
The latest issue of The Economists’ Voice is a special issue on health care reform. David Cutler explains the economics of health reform, while Mark Duggan and Robert Kocher weigh in on health-insurance exchanges.
Last fall, I saw my recidivist coauthor, Barry Nalebuff, and was struck by how much weight he’d lost. He had a clearly different body shape. I told him he looked great. Barry turned to my spouse (and coauthor) Jennifer Brown and said, “I’m doing it on my own, so I don’t have to use that [expletive] stickK.com.”
I bet you cannot — although if you happen to know my rooting tendencies, you might have a clue.
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 can’t tell whether I’m writing this as a very proud significant-other, a jealous co-author, or a pleased colleague, but whatever it is, I can’t resist passing on some good news: Betsey Stevenson recently learned that the Labor and Employment Relations Association is awarding her the John Dunlop Scholar Award, typically awarded to a labor economist in the first decade of their careers. The award is “to recognize outstanding academic contributions to research by recent entrants to the field.” It’s a very flattering acknowledgment, and she’s following in the footsteps of Jon Guryan, Alex Mas, Nick Bloom, David Lee, Marianne Bertrand, Armin Falk and David Autor, among other labor luminaries.
If oversight is when a superior has the right to disapprove of an underling’s decision, what is “undersight”?
It’s my term for when an underling has the right to disapprove of a superior’s decision. It’s not surprising to see principal-agent contracts with oversight provisions, but in two recent statutes the lame duck Congress has arguably imposed undersight provisions on the President acting as our commander-in-chief.
My son visited the Walt Disney World complex in Florida and pointed out the methods used to spread demand temporally. Coupons for 30 percent discounts on restaurant food purchased before noon or between 3PM and 4:30PM are available. Merchandise coupons for 20 percent discounts are given for use between 9AM and noon. Both coupons are offered to shift demand rightward at non-peak times.
A few days before Christmas, a Houston woman placed her 3-month old girl in a baby swing and momentarily left the room. In her absence, one of the family’s nine dogs – a 150-lb Rottweiler – broke through the back door of the house and attacked the infant. Out of precaution, the mother had barricaded the back door with a “washing machine and slab of marble.” It was of no use. EMS reported that the girl’s chest was covered with deep lacerations. She died an hour later.
I will be attending the Annual Meeting of the American Economics Association in Denver this weekend and, if all goes according to plan, live-blogging it here (as well as fishing for ideas for future writing, radio, etc).
Our latest Freakonomics Radio segment on Marketplace concerns a topic we’ve been writing about for a long time: violent crime — and especially why it rises and falls. In this segment, Levitt and I discuss the fact that overall crime and violence are likely at a historic low these days, and not by a little bit either. The conversation builds off the fascinating new book by Steven Pinker called The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.
Pinker has just completed a very good Q&A on our blog, and you’ll hear him in the Marketplace segment as well. Even though many people are convinced that the world today is more violent than ever (can you say “media effect”?), Pinker lays out the facts of the decline and fall of violence in a way that is hard to dispute:
A reader named Clark Case, who lives in Aurora, Ohio, and works as a product manager, writes in with a child-rearing observation.
Freakonomics reader Jerrod Savage sends in a couple images that seem to show a rather unwholesome advertising strategy. (Don Draper certainly wouldn’t ever pull something like this.) What happens when you reduce the size of a container of Nesquik chocolate syrup by 33 percent? You also reduce the sugar content by 33 percent, magically creating a healthy, low-sugar alternative!
How do you create the best master’s men’s swim team when the rules say that team members’ ages must sum to at least 200 years?
Ever wondered why so many prescription drug names are loaded with x’s and z’s? Scrabble gives a hint.
Next week, dutiful voters will head to the polls for elections. Among the jobs up for grabs are the Kentucky and Mississippi governorships, the mayorship of San Francisco, and a smattering of municipal and state positions across the country. In many of these races, incumbents are fighting to keep their seats.
In our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast (you can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen live via the media player above, or read the transcript), we examine the side effects that elections sometimes produce. Steve Levitt wrote about one such effect several years ago (here is the original study, and here’s an update): in mayoral and gubernatorial election years, police forces tend to grow and crime tends to fall.
As Stephen Dubner explains to Kai Ryssdal, incumbents’ incentives change when they run for re-election. They might try to perform better, hiring more police or lowering taxes. But they also might cater more to special interests, giving out election-time favors and even enabling illegal activities.
We went out in search of various election-year anomalies and found some pretty interesting stuff.
My colleagues Jacob Hacker and Daniel Markovits have created a cool website called www.GiveItBackForJobs.org that not only includes a useful tool to let you calculate the size of your tax cut, but suggests that “Americans who have the means should collectively give back our Bush tax cuts, by making donations to organizations that promote fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class.” Here’s a post from the creators themselves that gives more details.
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.
Jewish visitors to China often receive a snap greeting when they reveal their religion: “Very smart, very clever, and very good at business,” the Chinese person says.
Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson, authors of the new book Spousonomics, are seeking marital advice from economists on their blog.
We just did a Marketplace radio piece on “The Year in Repugnant Ideas,” and tomorrow we’ll release a podcast on a similar theme. We plan to revisit this theme in future radio shows and on the blog — as long as we don’t run out of repugnant ideas to talk about.
It pays to be the dictator, but not as much when you have to explain yourself.