Fewer Murders, More Suicide?
GOOD produced this sharp info-graphic on murder rates worldwide. One interesting trend it doesn’t show: countries with lower murder rates tend to have higher rates of suicide. Take Japan, which…
GOOD produced this sharp info-graphic on murder rates worldwide. One interesting trend it doesn’t show: countries with lower murder rates tend to have higher rates of suicide. Take Japan, which…
On the football field, as in nearly every arena in life, the punishment doesn’t always fit the crime. James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers has become the poster child for…
In just a few weeks, the novel coronavirus has undone a century’s worth of our economic and social habits. What consequences will this have on our future — and is…
In the early 20th century, Max Weber argued that Protestantism created wealth. Finally, there are data to prove if he was right. All it took were some missionary experiments in…
…Ray Nagin ordered a full evacuation of New Orleans in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina. Little did he know that his order would temporarily drop the city’s crime rate to zero….
Photo: Lorri37 My friend Tim Groseclose passed along this interesting passage from the book Scratch Beginnings by Adam Shepard. The premise of the book is that the author, having just…
Have you ever heard of Chef Jeff Henderson? Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t either. That’s when our publicist mentioned him and his new book. (We have the same…
…la the early days of HIV hysteria)? A student of mine, Sarath Sanga, suggested that the no body tattoo policy might be an indirect attempt to exclude Yakuza, organized crime…
…between the surge in abortions in the 1970s and the fall in violent crime twenty years later. Their point is not to reargue that particular claim. It is to point…
August 29 is the day in 2000 when Pope John Paul II endorsed organ donation. No word on his endorsement of trading organs for shorter prison terms….
The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer and David Paterson….
Video We’ve written about the putative deterrent effect of capital punishment both in “Freakonomics,” and here on the blog. But none of those explanations were delivered by our International Video…
…racial tension or violence. In fact, most economic research finds no correlation at all between hate crimes and the economy. A 1998 study of economic motivations for hate crimes examined…
Why does listening to No Stupid Questions feel like you’re hanging out with your best friends? Why did the whole world take it personally when Princess Diana died? And how…
How much does a drink really cost? Many use alcohol responsibly, but one study found that thanks to DUI accidents, crime (impacts on victims, costs of policing, and costs of…
That is the finding of our informal “Would You Rather” poll, asking if you’d rather be arrested for embezzlement or prostitution. By a measure of nearly 4-to-1, you chose prostitution….
It’s hard to know whether the benefits of hiring a celebrity are worth the risk. We dig into one gruesome story of an endorsement gone wrong, and find a surprising…
This week’s New York Magazine breaks down how money is made by all kinds of New York City individuals and businesses from a yellow-cab driver to sex shops to financial…
We wrote in Freakonomics about two brothers named Winner and Loser. Winner became a lifetime criminal; Loser a detective in the NYPD. The story of these two brothers matched the…
Where is the line between a good guy and a doormat? Do people with sharp elbows make more money? And why did Angela’s mother give away her birthday present? Take…
…first glance, these cash-back transactions, while illegal, might seem a victim-less crime. After all, the seller gets his house sold and the buyer gets to move in with his family….
Can denial be a healthy way of dealing with the death of a loved one? What do the five stages of grief misrepresent about mourning? And why does Angie cover…
Photo: Hemera This is an amusing little story. WBBM radio reports that, “Elgin police say Gavina-Morales crashed his pickup truck into a curb and dug up parkway grass in the…
Nobel laureate, bestselling author, and groundbreaking psychologist Daniel Kahneman is also a friend and former business partner of Steve’s. In discussing Danny’s new book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment,…
…worldwide each year. We wrote a good bit about guns in Freakonomics — primarily about the lack of efficacy of gun-control laws and gun buybacks on the crime rate —…
Why do so many promising solutions — in education, medicine, criminal justice, etc. — fail to scale up into great policy? And can a new breed of “implementation scientists” crack…
The bad news: Roughly 70 percent of Americans are financially illiterate. The good news: All the important stuff can fit on one index card. Here’s how to become your own…
Video The latest video on FREAK-TV is about a subject that sets many economists’ hearts a-flutter: externalities. It’s a multiple-choice quiz about car theft, asking what’s the best anti-theft measure…
Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia sociologist and author of “Gang Leader for a Day,” is back once again for a seventh report after watching “The Wire” with a group of gangland acquaintances….
Photo: william_79 The UK riots continue as PM David Cameron and the Metropolitan police flood London with 16,000 officers in hopes of calming the civil unrest. Critics have suggested that…
