Who’s the World’s Fastest Runner?
Justin Wolfers’s excellent post on Usain Bolt‘s extraordinary 200-meter race mentions in passing that “it is only a fairly recent phenomenon that the 200-meter typically yields a faster average speed…
Justin Wolfers’s excellent post on Usain Bolt‘s extraordinary 200-meter race mentions in passing that “it is only a fairly recent phenomenon that the 200-meter typically yields a faster average speed…
…my phone back.? Justin Wolfers analyzed data sets on?college and professional basketball games to uncover residue of?point-shaving and?racial bias.? I once called on the NBA to release more data to…
In my last post, I promised to say a bit more about prediction markets at Google. Google has been running internal prediction markets for a couple of years, and Eric…
One of the things that I have learned (the hard way) is that looking sensible on TV is harder than it looks. That’s why I was happy when Nightline decided…
…its influence on the economy, because most all of the economy has nothing to do with the government. You’ll also hear from Freakonomics blog regular Justin Wolfers, who, along with…
…me—cites my hair as evidence of expertise: Wolfers, a Wharton professor with an Australian accent and surfer-style blond hair, certainly seems like someone who should be an expert on happiness…
Wolfers finishing the 2008 Stockholm Marathon Marketplace, the economics program on American Public Media, is running a fun series this week — asking economists to reflect on how thinking like…
Justin Wolfers called a recession here not long ago. Ben Bernanke seems about ready to call it himself. Now a reader named Alexis Tatarsky has put the question to all…
When I tell my non-economist friends that I do research on the “economics of the family,” they often look puzzled. (The funniest response comes from those who think that this…
…to write a guest post filling in the missing pieces. What Does the Human Development Index Really Measure? By Francisco Rodriguez A Guest Post Last week, Justin Wolfers presented a…
…is definitely a victory of hope over experience. For a more thorough answer, though, we’re going to outsource to one of our favorite Freakonomics writers, Justin Wolfers, who, with his…
Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson discussed their happiness research on CNBC today. Arguably the most important finding from the emerging economics of happiness has been the Easterlin Paradox. What is…
…live, Part 2 may be released today.) In Part 1, Justin Wolfers explained how marriage has shifted from a model of “production complementarities” to a model of hedonic marriage. Psychology…
Yesterday I noted that there is powerful evidence from the recent Gallup World Poll that rich countries are happier than poor countries. Today, I want to show you how this…
…fruit. But I am an American, and in America we call the furry fruit “kiwi,” just as our Australian friend Justin Wolfers calls a beet a “beetroot.” So while I…
Color me confused, but I’ve never really understood the difference between a bet and “financial trade.” And if there ever really was a line, it’s definitely becoming blurrier. In recent…
…good friend John Donohue, who has coauthored with Levitt (on abortion), Ayres (on guns), and Wolfers (on the death penalty). There is simply no finer quantitative empiricist in the legal…
…on the subject of happiness, which has become a fairly popular research topic for economists of late. Justin Wolfers has been publishing an elegant series of posts about whether money…
As Justin Wolfers pointed out in his post on income inequality last week, the Census Bureau was talking statistical nonsense. I blame the whole idea of statistical significance. For its…
Continuing on the theme of the relationship between income and happiness (previous posts: 1, 2 , and 3), let me show you what Betsey Stevenson and I learned when comparing…
One of the fun things about living in Philadelphia is that elections here are always hard-fought, and often have a national impact. And today’s Democratic primary is no exception. What…
It turns out that 2012 is a kind of magnet for apocalyptic thinking. Justin Wolfers has predicted that the name Cash, currently riding a wave of popularity, will largely disappear…
…four years to finally produce a paper using the data! In the meantime, a whole academic literature has emerged in this area, spearheaded by Justin Wolfers. The timing is not…
…providing all three – the revised, original and ACS estimates – together to provide users with the full, transparent picture of our current measurement of same-sex couples.” HT [Justin Wolfers]…
What good is G.D.P., anyway? While my postings this week have shown that it is correlated with happiness, I have not spent much time asking just precisely what it is…
…the recovery, and so we support a well-designed hiring tax credit. In our personal capacities, we are sincerely yours, Mark Zandi Justin Wolfers Laura Tyson Mark Thoma Peter Temin Joseph…
…studies that show a different story.? For example, Joe Price and Justin Wolfers – in a fairly famous study – have presented evidence that referees in the NBA have a…
Public profanity now costs $20 in Middleborough, Mass. San Francisco tries to disincentivize panhandling with puppies. Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson chat with Gallup Business Journal. Is “big data” a…
A couple of months ago, Dubner and Levitt wrote about how poorly constructed laws can lead to some unintended consequences. Let me add one more example to their list, albeit…
Sports fans will probably be aware that Roger Clemens is currently before Congress, arguing that the Mitchell Report wrongly tagged him as having used performance-enhancing drugs. And last week, his…