The Great California Prison Experiment
…that this is a hard question. You can’t just look across states and compare incarceration rates and crime rates, because the places with the worst crime problem will also tend…
There are more than twice as many suicides as murders in the U.S., but suicide attracts far less scrutiny. Freakonomics Radio digs through the numbers and finds all kinds of…
What do you do when smart people keep making stupid mistakes? And: are we a nation of financial illiterates? This is a “mashupdate” of “Is America Ready for a “No-Lose…
The pandemic has hit America’s biggest city particularly hard. Amidst a deep fiscal hole, rising homicides, and a flight to the suburbs, some people think the city is heading back…
…that this is a hard question. You can’t just look across states and compare incarceration rates and crime rates, because the places with the worst crime problem will also tend…
…grow up at all, and that brought the crime rate down. Do I have it about right? STEVE LEVITT, CO-AUTHOR, “FREAKONOMICS”: Yes, absolutely. After the legalization of abortion, there were…
There are more than twice as many suicides as murders in the U.S., but suicide attracts far less scrutiny. Freakonomics Radio digs through the numbers and finds all kinds of…
There are more than twice as many suicides as murders in the U.S., but suicide attracts far less scrutiny. Freakonomics Radio digs through the numbers and finds all kinds of…
Clementine Jacoby went from performing in a circus to founding a nonprofit that works to shrink the prison population….
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz combs through mountains of information to find advice for everyday life….
Does Las Vegas increase your risk of suicide? A researcher embeds himself in the city where Americans are most likely to kill themselves.
Education is the surest solution to a lot of problems. Except when it’s not.
…law, colleges and universities must distribute them annually. Crime rates can be compared at http://www.ope.ed.gov/security/Search.asp. Just how “inconclusive” are the numbers? Take a look at these four schools first: Ohio…
Despite the recession, the Associated Press reports, U.S. crime rates continue to fall in 2009 compared to last year. Sociologists and crime experts are citing the economic stimulus, people staying…
Dubner and his Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt answer your questions about crime, traffic, real-estate agents, the Ph.D. glut, and how to not get eaten by a bear.
They can’t vote or hire lobbyists. The policies we create to help them aren’t always so helpful. Consider the car seat: parents hate it, the safety data are unconvincing, and…
It was like the 1990s all over again when the FBI released the latest crime statistics last week. Violent crime fell by five percent; property crime fell by three percent….
Why are humans so eager for magic-bullet solutions? Can you explain how a pen works? And how does Angela feel about being forever branded “the grit lady”?…
Six months ago I blogged about how the media reported the crime statistics released by the FBI at that time. All the headlines screamed that a new crime wave was…
The world is a more peaceful place today that at any time in history — by a long, long shot.
Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, has big ambitions but knows he must first master the small stuff. He’s also a polymath who relies heavily on data and new…
…Doing the instrumental variables estimation has a bigger impact on property crime than on violent crime. All four of the instrumental variables estimates of legalized abortion on property crime are…
…post that accompanied it.) In this installment, he discusses the collage of evidence that convinced him and John Donohue of the link between legalized abortion and a lower crime rate….
…Agan went block by block and found that crime rates in general, and sex crimes in particular, do not vary according to the number of sex offenders in the area….
…injury death rate, the violent crime rate, and the property crime rate. A conservative estimate is that the federal tax reduced injury deaths by 4.7%, or almost 7,000, in 1991….
Soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe could soon hold one of the most important jobs in science. She explains why the ground beneath our feet is one of our greatest resources…
Because the abortion/crime theory put forward by Steve Levitt and John Donohue in this 2001 paper was so jarring, on so many levels, it drew great interest and occasional controversy….
Crime trends have been mixed in the last few years, with some crimes increasing (mostly involving violence) and others declining (the majority of property crimes). In spite of the facts,…
…lead and crime. Rather than looking at a national time-series, she tries to exploit differences in the rates at which lead was removed from gasoline across states. I haven’t read…
We are constantly wowed by new technologies and policies meant to make childbirth better. But beware the unintended consequences.
Three former White House economists weigh in on the new tax bill. A sample: “The overwhelming evidence is that the trickle-down, magic-beanstalk beans argument — that’s just nonsense.”
