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…Business Transaction. If another company acquires our company, business, or our assets, that company may then possess the personal information collected and stored by us, however, such company will assume…
Are modern parents too protective? Why do we worry so much about things that almost never happen? And how did Mike learn about bus stops?…
…Business Transaction. If another company acquires our company, business, or our assets, that company may then possess the personal information collected and stored by us, however, such company will assume…
From baseball card conventions to Walmart, John List has always used field experiments to say revolutionary things about economics. He explains the value of an apology, why scaling shouldn’t be…
When she’s not rescuing chickens from coyotes, Susan Athey uses economics to address real-world challenges — from online ad auctions to carbon capture technology….
Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, EatWith, and other companies in the “sharing economy” are practically daring government regulators to shut them down. The regulators are happy to comply.
…neurological damage, and sex research, as well as with ideas from our own field of computational neuroscience, to reveal a new portrait of human desire. Q. Having learnt that you…
Is grade inflation on the rise? How much does your G.P.A. matter in the long run? And when did M.I.T., of all places, become “the cool university”?…
What surprises lurk in our sewage? How did racist city planners end up saving Black lives? Why does Arizona grow hay for cows in Saudi Arabia? Three strange stories about…
…of the “perfect competition” that one sees with commodity products, highly differentiated products such as movies and music exhibit “monopolistic competition.” Each movie appeals to a different audience, and, in…
A while back, we passed along the news when Google launched its Book Search site. Now, in the interest of equal time, here is Microsoft’s beta version of its own…
…people who’ve visited the challenge” next to advertised claims on Bing’s superiority over Google in “blind comparison tests,” when the “challenge” and the “blind comparison tests” are in fact different…
…albums that are more heavily downloaded should experience lower sales than comparable albums that are less downloaded. But, after controlling for the role of popularity, we found that downloads had…
Columbia astrophysicist David Helfand is an academic who does things his own way — from turning down job security to helping found a radically unconventional university….
What’s the best way to carry out random acts of kindness? What’s wrong with making an “Irish exit”? And why is Mike secretly buying lottery tickets?…
Caroline Paul is a thrill-seeker and writer who is on a quest to encourage women to get outside and embrace adventure as they age. She and Steve talk about fighting…
Can you ever really know how another person feels? What’s the best way to support a grieving person? And why doesn’t Hallmark sell empathy cards?
Pretty regularly, we hear from readers who tell us they’ve come across a free (i.e, pirated) downloadable version of Freakonomics, either in PDF or audio form. This guy wrote to…
As the cost of college skyrocketed, it created a debt burden that’s putting a drag on the economy. One possible solution: shifting the risk of debt away from students and…
…of American students test results (particularly mathematics) compared to other countries, even developing countries? Does this mean the other countries are just teaching to the test better, or is the…
…medicine – which involves things like comparative effectiveness research, so newer (read: expensive) drugs are compared to older (read: cheaper) drugs more pay-for-performance targets for physicians, so our doctors have…
Computer scientist Fei-Fei Li had a wild idea: download one billion images from the internet and teach a computer to recognize them. She ended up advancing the state of artificial…
…hand and asks listeners to donate to the public-radio station that produces the show. Why on earth should anyone pay good money for something that can be had for free?…
In a special episode of No Stupid Questions, Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan talk about unfinished tasks, recurring arguments, and Irish goodbyes….
Humans, it has long been thought, are the only animal to engage in economic activity. But what if we’ve had it exactly backward?…
Humans, it has long been thought, are the only animal to engage in economic activity. But what if we’ve had it exactly backward?
A kid’s name can tell us something about his parents — their race, social standing, even their politics. But is your name really your destiny?
A kid’s name can tell us something about his parents — their race, social standing, even their politics. But is your name really your destiny?
Also: Does knowing your family history affect your identity?…
…lot like the 18th. In the final episode of a series, we turn to “the father of economics” for solutions. (Part 3 of “In Search of the Real Adam Smith.”)…
Is it worse to regret something you’ve done, or something you haven’t done? What’s the upside of rejection? And which great American short-story writer convinced Angela to quit driving?…
