How many bottles of wine are regifted? What’s wrong with giving cash? And should Angela give her husband a subscription to the Sausage of the Month Club?
Photo: Piez In his discussion of the Siege of Paris from 1870-71, David McCullough in The Greater Journey discusses the path of meat prices. One observer “considered cats ‘downright good…
…David Leonhardt does a splendid job of?writing up the paper in today’s New York Times (plus don’t miss the?great graphic). The big idea in the paper is to see what…
Our take: maybe the steps aren’t so easy, but a program run out of a Toronto housing project has had great success in turning around kids who were headed for…
…terms, it would harm public education. David Figlio is a professor of education, social policy and economics at Northwestern University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research,…
We often look to other countries for smart policies on education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. But can a smart policy be simply transplanted into a country as culturally unusual (and as…
David Segal had a wonderful piece in The Times on Sunday pointing out a missing market in theft protection. “Tracking down cellphones is not rocket science.” Corporations like Amazon and…
Also: how do you avoid screwing up your kids?
…program, which John Gibson and David McKenzie evaluate in a new paper. The effects are substantial. “In addition to estimating per-capita income gains of 30-40%, we find that participating in…
…Publisher’s Margin: $4.75 hardcover; $6.32 e-book. Publisher’s E-Gain = +33% Hell’s Corner, by David Baldacci Author’s Standard Royalty: $4.20 hardcover; $2.63 e-book. Author’s E-Loss = -37% Publisher’s Margin: $5.80…
…you help? The Yale Book of Quotations has versions of this by Pascal, Henry David Thoreau, and Woodrow Wilson. The most “original” of these is the following by Blaise Pascal,…
Also: are the most memorable stories less likely to be true?
In this live episode of “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know,” we learn why New York has skinny skyscrapers, how to weaponize water, and what astronauts talk about in space….
…and economics researcher Timothy Searchinger, found that replacing fossil fuels with corn-based ethanol could actually double greenhouse gas emissions for the next thirty years. As Scientific American writer David Biello…
A new paper by psychologists E.J. Masicampo and David Lalande finds that an uncanny number of psychology findings just barely qualify as statistically significant. From the abstract: We examined a…
…[an] outright stupid fool?” asked Shine, who loves to discredit former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. “He let [Rudy] Giuliani get control of the streets. See, most black men,…
…had no children, this was not a risk. Indeed, David McCullough says that Thomas Jefferson‘s supporters made a similar argument in the run up to the 1796 election against John…
…piece of artwork. (The article it accompanied, by David Remnick, was also terrific.) My 8-year-old son looked at it for a minute and said, “It’s Jackie Robinson. Wait, it’s Barack…
…besides the intoxicated drivers. For example, we all pay for drunk driving through higher car insurance premiums. Ted R. Miller, Rebecca S. Spicer and David T. Levy estimated that each…
We explore votes for English, Indonesian and … Esperanto! The search for a common language goes back millennia, but so much still gets lost in translation. Will technology finally solve…
A team of economists has been running the numbers on the U.N.’s development goals. They have a different view of how those billions of dollars should be spent.
…Freakonomics we offered evidence suggesting that black candidates do better in pre-election polling than in actual voting; and that a white racist like David Duke does better in the actual…
Victoria Groce is one of the best trivia contestants on earth. She explains the structure of a good question, why she knits during competitions, and how to memorize 160,000 flashcards….
Game theorist Barry Nalebuff explains how he used basic economics to build Honest Tea into a multimillion-dollar business, and shares his innovative approach to negotiation.
…for myself. Q. Have you ever ‘fallen in love’ with a customer? – David Chowes A. Yes. Q. Do you feel that the inelasticity of demand for your services was…
…rejuvenate the fashion industry – at least the part of the fashion industry she likes. Recent research by David Yermack indicates that the First Lady has the power to move…
Also: why do we habituate to life’s greatest pleasures?
…to the right, and you’ll find them). FWIW, here are a couple of passages that caught my eye in an appreciation of Friedman by David J. Craig, published in the…
…Freddie Kronenberg, David Eisenberg, Mark Hyman, and Andy Weill, are devising new approaches to this important issue. Q: The medical industry seems to make most of its profits from illness…
Couples get divorced for all kinds of reasons. Is having kids one of them? Bapu talks about research that investigates what happens to parents who unexpectedly have twins. Plus, an…
