Ball Hogs and Long Meetings
Listen to an NBA coach during a game and you will often hear him scream something like the following: “You have to share the ball.” “Start looking for your teammates.”…
Listen to an NBA coach during a game and you will often hear him scream something like the following: “You have to share the ball.” “Start looking for your teammates.”…
Is grade inflation on the rise? How much does your G.P.A. matter in the long run? And when did M.I.T., of all places, become “the cool university”?…
Starting in the late 1960s, the Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman began to redefine how the human mind actually works. Michael Lewis’s new book The Undoing Project explains…
…first episode of a special series originally published in 2022, we ask what our chaotic system gets right — and wrong. (Part 1 of “Freakonomics Radio Goes Back to School.”)…
…at the very beginning of SuperFreakonomics: As profitable as it might have been to pump out a quick follow-up – think “Freakonomics for Dummies” or “Chicken Soup for the Freakonomics…
There are more than twice as many suicides as murders in the U.S., but suicide attracts far less scrutiny. Freakonomics Radio digs through the numbers and finds all kinds of…
Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, is less reserved than the average banker. He explains why vibes are overrated, why the Fed’s independence is non-negotiable, and…
There’s someone hiring on Craig’s List in Minneapolis: Freakonomics for Baby Names Reply to: jillyouse@yahoo.com Date: 2006-07-11, 9:32PM CDT We are writing a book on baby names and parent occupation….
Yesterday, after posting this item wondering whether 9/11 had begun to diminish our collective remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day, I wrote to Bill Tancer of Hitwise.com. I asked Bill to…
…published by our publisher and, the last time I checked Amazon.com, was paired with Freakonomics in a discount deal: While Number Freaking is the closest there is to an outright…
…the famed July 4 Coney Island eating contest. A rival thinks he may be bluffing. This week’s New Yorker profiles economist and former banking executive Harry Kat, who has spent…
Tomorrow’s date is 7/7/07. If you believe in lucky 7’s (the influence of which we’ve written about before), it’s a good day. During a recent trip to Las Vegas, I…
The answer is a firm yes, at least according to three IMF economists who studied the correlation between firms’ lobbying efforts, financial risk-taking, and default rates. Their findings (abstract here;…
They’re heading to the Super Bowl for the second time in five years. But back in 2018, they were coming off a long losing streak — and that’s the year…
You wouldn’t think you could win a Nobel Prize for showing that humans tend to make irrational decisions. But that’s what Richard Thaler has done. In an interview from 2018,…
…and too politicized. The economist Chris Paxson — who happens to be the president of Brown University — does not agree. (Part 3 of “Freakonomics Radio Goes Back to School.”)…
Sure, you were “in love.” But economists — using evidence from Bridgerton to Tinder — point to what’s called “assortative mating.” And it has some unpleasant consequences for society….
Sure, you were “in love.” But economists — using evidence from Bridgerton to Tinder — point to what’s called “assortative mating.” And it has some unpleasant consequences for society….
Robert Solow is 98 years old and a giant among economists. He tells Steve about cracking German codes in World War II, why it’s so hard to reduce inequality, and…
Medicine has evolved from a calling into an industry, adept at dispensing procedures and pills (and gigantic bills), but less good at actual health. Most reformers call for big, bold…
Covid-19 is the biggest job killer in a century. As the lockdown eases, what does re-employment look like? Who will be first and who last? Which sectors will surge and…
The economist Joseph Stiglitz has devoted his life to exposing the limits of markets. He tells Steve about winning an argument with fellow Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, why small governments…
…as the Undercover Economist; at the FT, he goes by Dear Economist. His latest book combines the two: Dear Undercover Economist. He explains why an economist is actually a perfect…
An expert on urban economics and co-author of the new book Survival of the City, Ed says cities have faced far worse than Covid. Steve talks with the Harvard professor…
The pandemic has hit America’s biggest city particularly hard. Amidst a deep fiscal hole, rising homicides, and a flight to the suburbs, some people think the city is heading back…
…and increased interest costs by nearly $3 trillion between 2001 and 2011. In 2011, Federal tax receipts amounted to just 14.4 percent of GDP, far below the postwar average of…
How is “negative reinforcement” different from punishment? Could positive reinforcement encourage prosocial behavior on a national scale? And what’s the deal with Taiwan’s dog-poop lottery?…
Video We wrote quite a bit in Freakonomics about parenting, trying to figure out what makes someone a good parent. (Here’s an adaptation of one section, from USA Today.) A…
Freakonomics makes the case that good parenting doesn’t necessarily produce good children. But what’s the effect of bad parenting — especially child abuse? Martin Amis offered some evidence on that…
Shankar Vedantam of Slate hypothesizes that people continue to procreate, despite overwhelming evidence that parenting isn’t very fun, for much the same reason that cocaine users can’t quit: they’re addicts….
