The Happiness Wars Continue
Photo: iStockphoto There’s a growing sentiment among economists that GDP is a poor measure of a country’s well-being. (See our recent podcast on the topic; also, the research of Joseph…
Photo: iStockphoto There’s a growing sentiment among economists that GDP is a poor measure of a country’s well-being. (See our recent podcast on the topic; also, the research of Joseph…
…responses to some of your questions. A Billion Wicked Thoughts Freakonomics Q&A By Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam Since we’ve written a book offering new ideas about a very intimate…
…2011, p. 5 of the optics supplement). The article touted laser-based “green technologies,” including their use in reducing carbon-dioxide emissions: Volvo’s Johnny Larson says it is possible to shave a…
…secretive behaviors have already become harder to hide. A person in the year 2011 who visits a strip club, cheats on his spouse, evades taxes, or murders someone can surely…
…About 7,000 people who could benefit from an organ transplant will die in 2011. Most of those who will die are patients on the transplant wait list. The patients who…
Photo: Saad.Akhtar A recent study by a team of economists at Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies argues that the current economic recovery is the worst since World War…
…for war-related purposes would decline over a five-year period to an average of 180,000 in 2011, 130,000 in 2012,100,000 in 2013, 65,000 in 2014, and 45,000 in 2015 and there-after….
…2011 in Los Angeles, California. The bridge is being demolished as part of a $1 billion project to add carpool lanes and make other improvements along the 405 freeway from…
…ahead by $62. And that was in 2009. While the price for a weekly pass has since increased to $29, the cost of the fine has not, so in 2011…
…the 18 months before and after warming events between 2000 and 2011. “The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the…
…9.3 million. The game has paid off its full jackpot just once since 2004, and has so far generated $11.8 million in profits in 2011, though it accounts for just…
…is already “sweating” it); Phil Friedrichs, who collects cornfield data for the USDA; and our trusted economist and Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt. We’ll also hear from journalist Vlad Mixich in…
Beauty Pays is out!! (Princeton University Press, 2011, available from the Press, or either hardbound or Kindle version). Its central point is that beauty affects outcomes in markets because it…
…of members with a bachelor’s degree or higher, and the fiscal budget deficit as a percentage of 2011 spending on the y. California has the most educated legislature in the…
…legislatures. According to a Guttmacher Institute survey, of the 162 reproductive health provisions passed in the first six months of 2011, 80 restrict abortion, twice the number from 2005. …
…$10,000 (in 2011 dollars) [H. E. Bell, The Price of Books in Medieval England, Library s4-XVII (3):312-332 (1936)]. This cost makes sense: Copying a book by hand might take a…
…seems to be plenty of optimism about the future share price. Check out the odds from Irish bookmaker Paddy Power on where Apple’s stock price will end 2011. …
…for a demonstration at Cairo’s Tahrir Square on April 8, 2011, two months after president Hosni Mubarak was ousted, to demand that former regime officials including the veteran strongman be…
(Comstock) Does media concentration lead to biased coverage? A new paper from two Berkeley economists, Stefano Delavigna and Alec Kennedy, studies News Corp. and Time Warner, and approaches the big…
…major change in the America Invents Act of 2011: a shift in the patent priority rules from the United States’ traditional “first-to-invent” system to the dominant “first-to-file” system. This is…
…the Open Government Partnership, launched by US president Barack Obama at the UN General Assembly in September 2011. In a Q&A, Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Kenya’s information and communications minister, discusses…
…listen to our Freakonomics Radio podcast, “The Folly of Predictions,” to find out where we stand on the whole notion of predictions. So Freakonomics readers, who are you betting on?…
This Freaky stat comes courtesy of reader Benjamin Bias, who brought to our attention this oddity, as noted by Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider: Yesterday, Oct. 3, 2011, the S&P…
(iStockphoto) We blogged recently about the challenges of communicating scientific uncertainty to the public, especially when it comes to climate science. The October 2011 issue of Physics Today contains yet…
…a reduction of $5,500 or 22% from 2011-12 tuition of $25,000. Tuition for new freshmen and undergraduate transfer students will be $19,500. Tuition for returning undergraduates next year will be…
…in 1999 by German artist Andreas Gursky, beat out Cindy Sherman‘s previous photo auction record of $3.89 million in May, 2011. We can’t repost an image of it, copyright and…
…based on 2011 sales at STR Marketplace, a website authorized by the Steelers to allow fans to buy and sell seat licenses. A seat license that went for $500 in…
…but was hard to quantify. Hard to quantify, indeed. FWIW, we’ve been told by a lot of youngish readers that Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics led them to major in economics. John…
…and author Atul Gawande in a 2011 article for The New Yorker. “But the capabilities of doctors matter every bit as much as the technology. This is true of all…
Norway is in the midst of a butter shortage. Yes, butter. There are a few explanations: low-carb diets have been popular, and the summer of 2011 wasn’t ideal for dairy….