It’s Not the President, Stupid (Ep. 65)
…in fact the opposite turned out to be true. (Ungated paper here.) FWIW, here’s a TV interview I did with Yahoo! Finance on the topic a few weeks back. And…
When Richard Thaler published Nudge in 2008 with co-author Cass Sunstein, the world was just starting to believe in his brand of behavioral economics. How did nudge theory hold up…
Ideas are currency. This couldn’t be more true in academia, where it’s the job of researchers to think of questions and, hopefully, find answers. Bapu talks with economists Steve Levitt…
Enrollment is down for the first time in memory, and critics complain college is too expensive, too elitist, and too politicized. The economist Chris Paxson — who happens to be…
…in fact the opposite turned out to be true. (Ungated paper here.) FWIW, here’s a TV interview I did with Yahoo! Finance on the topic a few weeks back. And…
Discrimination can’t explain why women earn so much less than men. If only it were that easy.
…Hsu, one of two young Merrill Lynch employees who left finance to start a yo-yo company, Yo-Yo Nation. Weber asked if we wanted them to create a special promotional Freakonomics…
If two parents can run a family, why shouldn’t two executives run a company? We dig into the research and hear firsthand stories of both triumph and disaster. Also: lessons…
A team of economists has been running the numbers on the U.N.’s development goals. They have a different view of how those billions of dollars should be spent.
The author of Sapiens has a knack for finding the profound in the obvious. He tells Steve why money is fiction, traffic can be mind-blowing, and politicians have a right…
…places them in the top 1.5 percent of the household income distribution, are not wealthy by modern standards), but they are comfortable. They can afford to finance their retirement through…
…proceeded to study accounting and finance and work his way up a few corporate ladders before founding his own firm, but that is not what makes him remarkable. What makes…
The gist: the argument for open borders is compelling — and deeply problematic.
Until recently, Delaware was almost universally agreed to be the best place for companies to incorporate. Now, with Elon Musk leading a corporate stampede out of the First State, we…
If we could reboot the planet and create new systems and institutions from scratch, would they be any better than what we’ve blundered our way into through trial and error?…
…of Honor Guangdong Economics Publishing House The publishers of “Freakonomics” are hereby awarded the 2006 “New Path Prize” for finance publications. Jesse explained that he came up with “New Path…
…the Carnegie Conjecture. DUBNER: That’s Vikas Mehrotra. He’s a finance professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. The Carnegie Conjecture goes back to Andrew Carnegie, who made a huge…
…about any endeavor is likely to pay Marshmallow benefits even outside that area of specialization.? My personal bias is in guiding my children toward endeavors (like learning statistics or US…
Our most recent podcast, “Why Is ‘I Don’t Know’ So Hard to Say?,” continues to draw interesting replies. Here’s one from Erich Knobil, who works in the finance office of…
A year ago, nobody was taking Andrew Yang very seriously. Now he is America’s favorite entrepre-nerd, with a candidacy that keeps gaining momentum. This episode includes our Jan. 2019 conversation…
Thinking of Bitcoin as just a digital currency is like thinking about the Internet as just email. Its potential is much more exciting than that.
Youth baseball — long a widely accessible American pastime — has become overrun by $10,000-per-year for-profit travel leagues. Zachary Crockett peers inside the dugout….
The families of U.S. troops killed and wounded in Afghanistan are suing several companies that did reconstruction there. Why? These companies, they say, paid the Taliban protection money, which gave…
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…
What’s the connection between conversations about money and financial literacy? Could the taboo against talking about your salary be fading? And why did Angie’s teenage daughter call Vanguard to learn…
…City. It’s a high-income place, and has for more than a century been a creative powerhouse: publishing, music, fashion, art, finance, software, you name it. But energy consumption per person…
Paul Collier Last week, we solicited your questions for award-winning Oxford University economist Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion and the just-published Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous…
…far, the software has been applied primarily to sports statistics, but Frankel sees applications in medicine, crime and finance as well. (Note to self: consider a new career, soon.) [%comments]…
…details about inequality, international trade, national accounting, government budgets, monetary policy, exchange rates, regulation, social policy, finance and the labor market. After this sort of exposure, it’s little surprise that…
In their chase for a global audience, American movie studios spend billions to make their films look amazing. But almost none of those dollars stay in America. What would it…
…a bet is framed. One is modern finance, while the other is a repugnant market. Both, of course, are simply state-contingent contracts. But I’m also confused for another reason. The…
