What's Really Going on at the Arcade
A student described her summer job at an arcade. In the “crane” game you win prizes by manipulating a claw to grab stuffed animals or basketballs, but the arcade owner can and does manipulate the odds of winning.
A student described her summer job at an arcade. In the “crane” game you win prizes by manipulating a claw to grab stuffed animals or basketballs, but the arcade owner can and does manipulate the odds of winning.
Our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast is called “Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?” It features some research presented by the American Association of Wine Economists, whose members include Karl Storchmann, managing editor of the group’s Journal of Wine Economics.
Storchmann wrote to us the other day about an interesting working paper the AAWE has just posted: “Women or Wine? Monogamy and Alcohol,” by Mara Squicciarini and Jo Swinnen.
From the SuperFreakonomics chapter on altruism: “Americans in particular are famously generous, donating about $300 billion a year to charity, more than 2 percent of the nation’s GDP.” That said, the conventional wisdom seems to hold that Americans are outclassed by our neighbors to the north.
… today’s Wall Street Journal:
Once upon a time, Americans got dogs for their sheep. Now they get sheep for their dogs. “I never dreamed it would go this far,” says Ms. Foster, 56 years old.
Like great and inventive dishes, creative cocktails are often copied by others — sometimes as overt homage, but often simply because they are great. Can cocktails be protected from copying? Some bartenders are trying to use aspects of IP law to protect their liquid creations.
A teleportation machine might be essential if you want to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the dilithium mining colony on Betazak Nine or conclude a trade agreement for Romulan ale. But back here on earth, do we really need or desire teleporters for our considerably more mundane existences? If we could get places instantaneously, and rid ourselves of travel entirely, would we?
A student writes that she had a problem: An armadillo died in her family’s front yard, and its odor was attracting vultures.
A regular reader named John De Palma sends along an interesting bit from a new Sports Illustrated article about top NBA rebounder Kevin Love.
If you’re looking for ways to expose your kids to economics at an early age, Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, director of the Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children, has some suggestions. They are mostly picture books, geared toward children ages five to ten.
A new RAND study of captured documents from al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) reveals some interesting facts about the organization. It found that “AQI was a hierarchical organization with decentralized decisionmaking; AQI in Anbar was profitable enough to send substantial revenues out of the province in 2006; AQI relied on extortion, theft, and black market sales to fund its operations in Anbar; AQI needed large, regular revenue sources to fund its operations, but its administrative leaders did not hold much cash on hand.”
We recently solicited your questions for “baseball economist” J.C. Bradbury, author of the new book Hot Stove Economics. His responses show great range. The most fascinating answer, in response to a question about the agent Scott Boras’s dominating performance: “I have a theory that Boras sells his own insurance to players by promising players a minimum salary in return for waiting for free agency. This way, players get insurance against injury, more income if they reach free agency in good health, and Boras gets a bigger cut.”
Death by fire has declined significantly over the past 100 years, but there’s one surprising policy that may actually increase the prevalence of fires: smoking restrictions and bans.
Last year, Franco “Dok”* Harris, son of football legend Franco Harris (about whom I once wrote a book) ran for mayor of Pittsburgh. He ran under the Franco Dok Harris Party.
New technologies give rise to other new technologies and complementary goods. I love my iPhone and, living in a warm climate, I always have fingers warm enough to operate the heat-sensitive letters on its screen. But in a cold climate, I would have the same problem others have – I would have to choose between being able to operate the iPhone and having warm fingers.
It seems that Freakonomics readers aren’t the only people with lotteries on the brain. In the Harvard Business Review, Steve Martin and Paul Dolan have suggested a different kind of lottery for taxpayers.
As long as they have at least a tiny bit of self-awareness, that is.
The behavioral revolution in economics and psychology has successfully identified and named close to three dozen biases (my favorite behavioral folk song defines them in verse). I had thought that these biases transcended issues of culture. Indeed, both neoclassical and behavioral economists were united in a belief that cultural variables were of secondary importance when it came to the deep drivers of behavior. But a series of experiments now has me thinking that the underlying heuristics are less universal.
I ran into an old friend the other day whose actor husband is a regular on the TV show House. We caught up on friends and family, etc., including a few mutual acquaintances who have died since we last spoke. As we parted, I couldn’t help but laugh: at least these unfortunate deaths, I thought, were nowhere near as numerous as those on the kind of TV show her husband appears on.
Joe Clark, who has previously written about women’s hockey, took a look at the myths surrounding gay and lesbian income statistics. Interestingly, Clark found that “[g]ay males earn less than straight males, often much less. Meanwhile, lesbians earn more than straight females.”
The Miami Heat has been on fire lately, with a 10-game winning streak. This was how things were supposed to go when the team put together its holy WadeBoshJames trinity, but the season didn’t start out so well.
While corruption is traditionally difficult to measure, the BBC reports that corruption worldwide may be rising. The article examines results from Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, which surveyed 90,000 people in 86 countries, and a BBC poll of 13,000 people in 26 countries.
We recently published a post about the dramatic decline in U.S. fire deaths over the past century. A reader named Tricia Hurlbutt writes in with a related challenge.
Here’s another hilarious xtranormal send-up – this time lampooning the Becker/Murphy theory of rational addiction.
Annie Duke, the professional poker player and Rock Paper Scissors tournament winner, has a new internet show. A recent episode included appearances by Rafe Furst and Jason Calcanis, discussing privacy and responsible journalism in the face of the recent WikiLeaks scandals.
Levitt and I just recorded a Q&A session for the Freakonomics Radio podcast, using the questions that all of you recently submitted. You’ll hear the results soon, probably in January. Thanks for the good questions.
One question we didn’t get to, from Tg3:
I have heard Dubner casually mention that he is a backgammon player. Are there ever Levitt vs. Dubner battles? More importantly, why is such a great game not more popular in North America?
Tamara Audi and Arlene Chang of the Wall Street Journal dissect the global baby industry, which is growing thanks to increasingly restrictive international adoption laws.
It’s final exam time, and my office is packed with a few of the 520 students in my bigger class. Although I’m pleased by their interest, I ask why they’re spending so much time on my course. The answer is that it’s the only final exam they have.
Google’s recent reported $6 billion bid for Groupon — rebuffed, for now — took observers by surprise and worried the company’s investors. James Surowiecki analyzes the deal and Groupon’s business model.
… Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy, by Viviana A. Zelizer, an economic sociologist at Princeton: Suppose for a moment that this is the year 2096. Let’s take a look at American families: although by now money often takes postelectronic forms unfamiliar to the twentieth century, in the “traditional” home, “housewives” and “househusbands” receive monthly stipulated sums of money as salaries from their wage-earning spouses.
A number of Freakonomics readers have alerted us to yet another novel lottery idea. As Wired reports, Kevin Richardson won Volkswagen’s Fun Theory contest for his idea.