Cockpit Confidential: Debunking the Autopilot Myth
…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…
…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….
…of the sports-economics blog Wages of Wins, and is a frequent contributor to the Freakonomics blog. Soon after presents are opened on Christmas morning, the NBA – after a lengthy…
The following is a cross-post from NFL.com, where we’ve recently launched a Football Freakonomics Project. This segment aired before last Sunday’s Patriots-Broncos game. Tebow at a game in Denver on…
We’ve had the good fortune over the last few years here at the blog to bring you occasional nuggets from University of Arizona economist Price Fishback, whose research on the…
(Photo: Allan Lee) In SuperFreakonomics , we wrote about a media sensation in 2001 that came to be known as “Summer of the Shark.” A few particularly gruesome shark attacks…
…led to a full-blown crisis in the fall of 2008.” And a broad, if not unanimous, consensus among economists suggests that the ongoing economic malaise was induced by a financial…
…sports as well. A paper featured on the Freakonomics blog last week provided another lesson – a cautionary tale about the use of statistics in social science research to make…
…the press, Jammeh has become known for his eccentricities, including promoting a banana-and-herb cure for AIDS and rounding up those suspected of sorcery. After he was re-elected in 2011 to…
…research, recently updated his study of college football in a paper presented at the 2011 meeting of the North American Association of Sports Economists. Brown’s update indicated that in 2005,…
…“At the level of individual differences it has been demonstrated that economists are more willing to cheat,” the researchers write. “This is of some concern given that people with economics…
(Photo: Matthias Burch) Here’s a new study to keep in mind if you go to see the 3D rerelease of James Cameron’s Titanic. Economist Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson analyzed…
…$300 million annually and ensure jet fuel availability in the Northeast.” Mr. Anderson said the assets being purchased are worth $1 billion. … In 2011, Delta spent $11.7 billion on…
…from 28 mpg in 2011 to 54.5 mpg in 2025. On balance, of course, this is a very good thing. But it will be the source of wrenching and perhaps…
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the G20 Cannes summit in 2011. (Photo: Pablo Manriquez) Whenever you look at a political system and find it wanting, one tempting thought…
…last year’s decline, the highest percentage of any of the banks. They lost $570 million in 2011 as the shares plunged 44 percent. Bank of America Corp. (BAC) employees lost…
…teams in baseball have watched their star players take the field for the New York Yankees (and other big market teams). Economists would note that such movement makes sense. Players…
…2011 and found that while floods and droughts were remembered correctly, temperature changes were a different story. From Ars Technica: In fact, the actual trends in temperatures had nothing to…
…Was I right to not tip? Interesting question. But, Matt, you’re asking us if you were “right”? By now you should know that Freakonomics is not very strong in the…
…chose to describe these data: Based on the Gini index, income inequality increased by 1.6 percent between 2010 and 2011; this represents the first time the Gini index has shown…
…year more than two teams appeared in baseball’s postseason. Specifically: from 1969 to 1993, four teams made the post-season. from 1995 to 2011 (there was no post-season in 1994), eight…
…the public. Major cascading blackouts in the U.S. southwest in 2011, and in India in 2012, underscore the need for the measures discussed in this report. The nation’s power grid…
…recent work suggests that additional income can lead to reductions in cortisol in mothers, reducing biological harm due to persistent stress (Aizer, Stroud, and Buka, 2009, Evans and Garthwaite 2011).”…
(Photo: Lyn ingodsgarden) Most discussions about geoengineering start out with the tricky scientific issues but eventually get to the even trickier issue of governance. As we wrote in SuperFreakonomics: As…
…that there would be no going back. Economists call this method of pushing your future self into some behavior a “commitment device.” [Related: a Freakonomics podcast on the topic is…
…documenting that, in 2011, 52.9 percent of stops were of blacks, 33.7 percent were of Latinos, while whites accounted for only 9.3 percent of the stops. This disparate impact is…
…Anonymous versus Los Zetas, the Mexican drug cartel. Read the whole thing; here’s the first paragraph: In the fall of 2011, two clandestine non-state groups—a hacktivist collective and a Mexican…
…suspect it wasn’t working for Mike Rice. Across the past three seasons at Rutgers, Rice posted the following won-loss records: 2010-11: 15-17 2011-12: 14-18 2012-13: 15-16 Clearly this is not…
…workers aged 21-55 would have been lower by roughly 1.3 million in 2007. Over the total 12 year period between 2000 and 2011, our estimates imply that the housing market…
Photo Credit: torbakhopper via Compfight cc Planet Money reports on the surprising destination of most U.S. $100 bills: In fact, as of 2011, roughly two-thirds of all $100 bills were…