Is Driving Drunk Rational?
…recidivism upon release. For example, it is possible that prison is a “crime school” and that more time behind bars hanging around with other criminals may make one more likely…
…recidivism upon release. For example, it is possible that prison is a “crime school” and that more time behind bars hanging around with other criminals may make one more likely…
We blogged a while back about how cassette tapes have found a niche in prisons, where the retro tech is considered a safe alternative to CD’s. Where else is old…
…bans is to lower crime. Do they actually work? There is remarkably little academic research that directly answers this question, but there is some indirect evidence. Let’s start with the…
…high enough to actually deter crime: The economics of crime prevention starts with a depressing assumption: executives simply weigh up all their options, including the illegal ones. Given a risk-free…
Are we too busy watching Friends? Is porn driving us apart? And why did New Yorkers stop vacationing in the Catskills? Take the Seven Deadly Sins survey: freakonomics.com/nsq-sins/…
Here’s a fascinating article in the Yale Journal of International Affairs, by Paul Rexton Kan of the U.S. Army War College, about cyberwar between non-state agents — in this case,…
…to feed themselves. But violent crime fell during the rainy years, at the same time property crimes were on the rise. Why should that be? Because, the economists contend, rye…
…for our solutions to his country’s seemingly endless crime problems. This week, The New York Times ran a piece on Mexican drug cartels and growing American infiltration of criminal organizations….
In addition to publishing best-selling books about pregnancy and child-rearing, Emily Oster is a respected economist at Brown University. Over the course of the pandemic, she’s become the primary collector…
Tania Tetlow, a former federal prosecutor and now the president of Fordham University, thinks the modern campus could use a dose of old-fashioned values….
Emily Oster answers relationship questions for WSJ readers. Researchers predict a 15 percent decrease in abortion rates if Roe is overturned. Is self-selection responsible for music students’ superior scores on…
…would be a bloodbath – that the Freakonomics perspective on the abortion question would enrage Robertson and a shouting match would ensue. (Indeed, my publicist was planning on turning down…
Most of us are are afraid to ask sensitive questions about money, sex, politics, etc. New research shows this fear is largely unfounded. Time for some interesting conversations!…
…diagnosis, I would probably lean towards an abortion. But if my wife instead carried the birth to term, I suspect that raising that child would be the most fulfilling thing…
…in the abortion-crime stuff), is that whenever I try to answer a question, I put myself in the shoes of the actors and I ask myself “what would I do…
…we revised the sections about the link between legalized abortion and crime and the bit about John Lott’s gun research, but we didn’t. The new edition does, however, include Levitt’s…
Since doctors are human, they bring their own beliefs and preferences into the examining room. But they’ve also taken an oath to act in the best interest of all patients….
After a dramatic election, Donald Trump has returned from exile. We hear what to expect at home and abroad — and what to do if you didn’t vote for Trump….
Dubner and Levitt are live onstage at the 92nd Street Y in New York to celebrate their new book “When to Rob a Bank” — and a decade of working…
The economist and social critic Glenn Loury has led a remarkably turbulent life, both professionally and personally. In a new memoir, he has chosen to reveal just about everything. Why?…
Frisco used to be just another sleepy bedroom community outside of Dallas. Now it’s got corporate headquarters, billions of investment dollars, and a bunch of Democrats in a place that…
The economist and social critic Glenn Loury has led a remarkably turbulent life, both professionally and personally. In a new memoir, he has chosen to reveal just about everything. Why?…
…A. Danger Powers, working paper. Steven D. Levitt and Matthew Gentzkow, “Measuring the Impact of TV’s Introduction on Crime,” working paper. Steven D. Levitt, “The Effect of Prison Population Size…
In this special episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, Steve Levitt speaks with the palliative physician B.J. Miller about modern medicine’s goal of “protecting a pulse at all costs.” Is…
…and me on legalized abortion and crime. I’m not saying these ideas necessarily originated with economists, but that, at a minimum, economists often find themselves on the “wrong” side of…
…nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the U.S. The Uniform Crime Report figures for 2006 reveal that 829,625 people were arrested on marijuana charges, nearly a 15 percent…
A lot of the conventional wisdom in medicine is nothing more than hunch or wishful thinking. A new breed of data detectives is hoping to change that.
| Say your evil twin successfully completes a multimillion-dollar jewel heist but leaves a DNA-tainted glove at the crime scene. The police have your DNA on file, because you and…
…they say crime is not a big problem in their neighborhood, but if you go to some other nearby area, the crime is terrible. If indeed crime is low, it…
We’ve written quite a bit about online identity theft here at Freakonomics. But there’s another form of crime that’s been spreading through the Internet over the past few years: click…
