The "Baseball Economist" Answers Your Questions
…review? – Lenny A. What a delicious question! I believe this was something that the Texas A&M system has been trying to do, and Daniel Hamermesh was critical of the…
…review? – Lenny A. What a delicious question! I believe this was something that the Texas A&M system has been trying to do, and Daniel Hamermesh was critical of the…
…laboratories because sports provide a controlled setting in which people make frequent, real decisions, allowing for the collection of copious amounts of data. For instance, last summer, Daniel Hamermesh and…
Freakonomics asks a dozen smart people for their best ideas. Get ready for a fat tax, a sugar ban, and a calorie-chomping tapeworm.
…journals (which are often not that different). While higher income — a higher value of time — leads to more stress (see Hamermesh and Lee, 2007), and while improved technology…
The gist: the Nobel selection process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off, at least a little bit.
A lot of full-time jobs in the modern economy simply don’t pay a living wage. And even those jobs may be obliterated by new technologies. What’s to be done so…
John Urschel was the only player in the N.F.L. simultaneously getting a math Ph.D. at M.I.T. But after a new study came out linking football to brain damage, he abruptly…
…that are consistent through time. Gapper delves into evolutionary biology and the research of Daniel Kahneman to better understand the nature of men like Nick Leeson, Joe Jett, and Jerome…
The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer and David Paterson….
Also: how does a cook become a chef? With Gabrielle Hamilton.
The process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off at least a little bit.
Delaware is beloved by corporations, bankruptcy lawyers, tax avoiders, and money launderers. Critics say the Delaware “franchise” is undemocratic and corrupt. Insiders say it’s wildly efficient. We say: they’re both…
Why does your horoscope seem so accurate? Is it possible to believe and not believe in something at the same time? And is Mike a classic Gemini?…
How do friendships change as we get older? Should you join a bowling league? And is Angela more important to Mike than Mike is to Angela?…
Studies by men published in scientific journals are more likely to include glowing, hyperbolic terms. Bapu talks about this “groundbreaking” research (see what we did there?) in a wide-ranging discussion…
Also: Why is it smart to ignore what your podcast hosts look like?…
Why do we use “literally” figuratively? Does conveying an “emotional truth” justify making things up? And are Angela’s kids really starving or just hungry?…
Also: Is short-sightedness part of human nature?…
Jim Yong Kim has an unorthodox background for a World Bank president — and his reign thus far is just as unorthodox.
Also: how do phone cameras affect the way we experience live events?…
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz combs through mountains of information to find advice for everyday life….
Jim Yong Kim has an unorthodox background for a World Bank president — and his reign has been just as unorthodox. He has just announced he’s stepping down, well before…
…Stiglitz-Atkinson–Leigh-Wolfers, or Stiglitz-Blinder–Reis-Wolfers. Steve Levitt is also a three: Stiglitz-Sachs–Poterba-Levitt, and so Steve endows both Stephen Dubner and Sudhir Venkatesh with a four. Dan Hamermesh has written so many papers…
…no good-teeth effect for men, since the research of Dan Hamermesh (who’s been doing great guest blogging here lately) showed that looks actually matter more for men than for women….
…(Hamermesh and Schmidt, 2003). The good news is that, where it really matters—in judging scholarly papers for publication—economists are remarkably fair (Blank, 1991; Abrevaya and Hamermesh, 2012), ignoring an author’s…
…very occasional appearances are related to low pork prices. Dan Hamermesh found this line of thinking sensible too. But … really? Aside from the fact that the correlation between McRib…
Germany is considering a new government-imposed minimum wage — a price floor in the labor market — to apply to postal carriers and related workers. One of the major proponents…
Class today is about bequests — wealth left over to one’s heirs. There are many interesting economic questions about bequests, including whether they are planned (partly yes, but partly no,…
