Via Wired: In addition to providing potential career-building skills, online gaming may be good for teens, according to a three-year study of adolescent gamers by researchers at Brunel University. The…
Back when I was a graduate student at MIT in desperate need of a haircut, I stumbled into a place called The Hair Connection. Little did I know it would…
I recently blogged about a suboptimal customer service experience with Delta Air Lines. (As a couple of commenters pointed out — see Nos. 28, 36, and 44 — one of…
…have this fantastic opportunity to go on TV to talk about my book. (It is because of Freakonomics.) But just because I am not deluded does not mean I am…
There is no policy economists love more than school choice. Milton Friedman was an early proponent. The idea certainly makes sense: if parents have the ability to choose the best…
So this was a nice surprise: after I went on Good Morning America today to talk about The Boy With Two Belly Buttons, the book shot up to the No….
A while back, I solicited your suggestions for great children’s books, and you responded mightily, with more than 270 comments. Your answers made me realize how many children’s books we…
My son’s first-grade teacher recently held an open house to tell the parents what their kids will be learning this year, and how they’ll be going about it. I have…
Is ticket scalping really so bad? Are staph infections killing more Americans than AIDS? Parents now paying up to $40,000 to beat the college admissions process. (Earlier) Which careers correspond…
Video It is fairly well known by now that Levitt has more than a passing interest in poker, and he’s occasionally shown some promise. (His blackjack skills, meanwhile, are subject…
Huge percentage of world’s births & deaths go undocumented. Making your baby smarter: the myths continue. (Earlier) Should paying line-standers to hold seats at Congressional hearings be banned? Happiness levels…
I hadn’t worn a Halloween costume in many years until last night, when my kids — Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and a man-eating shark, respectively — encouraged me…
…attached to each offer, and I’d imagine you could learn quite a bit about human behavior, decision making, and biases by playing with their data. I wonder if any economists…
Dubner has blogged before about the difficulty of gathering accurate data from adults on subjects like racism. The problem, he noted, lies in people’s tendencies to give answers that are…
One of my daughters recently had a second-grade friend of hers over to the house for a play date. My wife, Jeannette, was down on the first floor, while the…
Here’s the latest guest post from Yale economist and law professor Ian Ayres. Here are Ayres’s past posts and here is a recent discussion of standardized tests. A recent article…
… just one of the choice quotes delivered by my father in this informative article about his life’s work….
The top 10 science and technology stories of 2007. Can scientists replace sleep with a drug? The key to raising gifted kids: don’t tell them they’re gifted. (Earlier) Libraries see…
…medical elements from trans fats to toxins in cleaning products. But what about economics? Can fertility rates be linked to financial incentives (or disincentives) to have children? Economists Alma Cohen,…
Gold farming to hit the big screen (Earlier) Islamic hedge funds on the rise Do we know what our kids are doing online? Recession upon us? Mac & cheese sales…
…According to this Economist article on their research, Nagel and Malmendier found that “people’s eventual appetite for risk is affected by the economic environment during their childhood, well before financial…
A while back, I wrote about the Game Theorist blog, in which my friend Joshua Gans writes about his adventures as an economist-parent (or equally, as a parent-economist). Each role…
I’m reading a biography about Buckminster Fuller written by Lloyd Steven Sieden. Fuller had a 4-year-old daughter Alexandra who caught the 1918 flu, later got meningitis, and finally was afflicted…
dno1967 An exceptionally neat new working paper points out that parents’ time spent with kids has increased hugely since the early 1990’s, particularly among highly educated parents. This is a…
If you own a Nook, the new e-reader from Barnes & Noble — and apparently quite a few of you do — you can bring a little Freakonomics to your…
Gary Becker and Richard Posner debate a timeless question: Will the next generation be better off than their parents’ generation? Becker’s take: “America has always been optimistic about its future….
Tamara Audi and Arlene Chang of the Wall Street Journal dissect the global baby industry, which is growing thanks to increasingly restrictive international adoption laws. “Prospective parents put off by…
A reader named Clark Case, who lives in Aurora, Ohio, and works as a product manager, writes in with a child-rearing observation. His kids are 7 and 4; his wife…
Busy fathers, pay attention: a?new study finds that if your kids think you’re not spending enough time with them, they’re more likely to exhibit bullying behavior at school. C. Andre…
Does bribing kids work? The debate rages on, although Levitt has done it effectively on at least one occasion. A new study (summarized by the BPS Research Digest) suggests that…