China's Role in Worldwide Food Prices: A Guest Post
…book The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices. He explains the factors that lead to price increases and that may drive food prices in…
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?…
It was supposed to boost prosperity and democracy at the same time. What really happened? According to the legal scholar Anthea Roberts, it depends which story you believe….
What makes normal people do terrible things? Are there really bad apples — or just bad barrels? And how should you deal with a nefarious next-door neighbor?…
Does the future of food lie in its past — or inside a tank of liquid nitrogen? Also: how anti-social can you be on a social network? This is a…
Stephen Dubner’s conversation with the Facebook founder and C.E.O., recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.”…
…book The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices. He explains the factors that lead to price increases and that may drive food prices in…
To get a lot of followers on Twitter, do you need to follow a lot of other Tweeps? And if not, why not?
Broadway operates on a winner-take-most business model. A runaway hit like Stereophonic — which just won five Tony Awards — will create a few big winners. But even the stars…
Is it better to be the best player on the worst team or the worst player on the best team? How did Angela cope with her extremely impressive freshman dorm-mates?…
How many bottles of wine are regifted? What’s wrong with giving cash? And should Angela give her husband a subscription to the Sausage of the Month Club?
How many bottles of wine are regifted? What’s wrong with giving cash? And should Angela give her husband a subscription to the Sausage of the Month Club?…
Is it enough to toss a soda can in the recycling? Why is Maria obsessed with Nobel Prize lectures? And wait — is that a news alert or a tiger?…
…chief economist, Varian brings to the table his trademark assertion that “technology changes — economic laws do not.” A Googler since 2002, he has been involved in many aspects of…
Spontaneous order is everywhere if you know where to look for it.
Do more expensive wines taste better? And: what does one little rodent in a salad say about a restaurant’s future? This is a “mashupdate” of “Do More Expensive Wines Taste…
They should! It’s a cardinal rule: more expensive items are supposed to be qualitatively better than their cheaper versions. But is that true for wine?
…Prize-winning economist), Tom Schelling (Nobel Prize-winning economist), and Tyler Cowen (blog-champion economist). I am glad they let a civilian in on the action. Tim is about to embark on a…
When the uncelebrated Leicester City Football Club won the English Premier League, it wasn’t just the biggest underdog story in recent history. It was a sign of changing economics —…
Also: How do you recover from a bad day?…
They say they make companies more efficient through savvy management. Critics say they bend the rules to enrich themselves at the expense of consumers and employees. Can they both be…
Tax deadlines can stress us out. But do they also influence our conscious — and subconscious — behavior? Bapu Jena looks at why, with our health, timing is often everything….
The most expensive drugs in the world are treatments for genetic diseases. And more of these cures are on the horizon. How will anyone be able to afford them?…
Yayi Boni, an economist who used to run the West African Development Bank, has been elected president of the African country of Benin. He is at least the second economist…
…so I will write about her exploits more than I write about most other economists. It just so happens that I find the woman referred to as the “hippest-economist-ever” particularly…
When she’s not rescuing chickens from coyotes, Susan Athey uses economics to address real-world challenges — from online ad auctions to carbon capture technology….
How did a freshly looted Egyptian antiquity end up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Why did it take Kim Kardashian to crack the case? And how much of what…
…might have need of a freelance economist, I can be reached at economist.freelancer@gmail.com. I’m an empirical microeconomist, so my expertise is in data analysis. I love working with data. It…
The African-born economist has written four bestselling books, including Dead Aid, which Bill Gates described as “promoting evil.” In her new book about corporate boards, Dambisa uses her experience with…
