The Economics of Doing What You Love
…ratio. The true advantage of thinking like an economist is that it can help you make better decisions: To an economist, the choice is still a no-brainer. We think you…
Breaking news! Sources say American journalism exploits our negativity bias to maximize profits, and social media algorithms add fuel to the fire. Stephen Dubner investigates. (This is part of the…
What does Pride and Prejudice have to do with nuclear deterrence?…
…ratio. The true advantage of thinking like an economist is that it can help you make better decisions: To an economist, the choice is still a no-brainer. We think you…
We saw a magnificent art exhibit, The Impressionists in Paris, at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany. It contained paintings from all over the world, including the National Galleries in…
…created the biggest standard-of-living boost in U.S. history. The only problem, argues the economist Robert Gordon, is that the Second Industrial Revolution was a one-time event. So what happens next?…
…promised for decades has finally arrived. Will it stick? Will it cut costs — and improve outcomes? We ring up two doctors and, of course, an economist to find out….
Is booing an act of verbal vandalism or the last true expression of democracy? And: when you drive a Prius, are you guilty of “conspicuous conservation”? This is a “mashupdate”…
Markets are hardly perfect, but the results can be ugly when you try to subvert them.
Bapu Jena was already a double threat: a doctor who is also an economist. Now he’s a podcast host too. In this sneak preview of the Freakonomics Radio Network’s newest…
Sunday’s Oscar night will be different.? First, there are now ten nominees for best picture.? But perhaps more importantly,?the voting system has changed. Interested in figuring out how this changes…
Two European economists have told me of their experiences interviewing for senior, tenured positions in the U.K. In both cases they, and the other two finalists, visited the campus at…
Our take: maybe the steps aren’t so easy, but a program run out of a Toronto housing project has had great success in turning around kids who were headed for…
Photo: dbking Last week, the Supreme Court ordered California to release at least 30,000 prisoners due to poor prison conditions caused by overcrowding. This is what economists call a “natural…
The Washington Post profiles the omnivorous, endlessly fascinating and fascinated Tyler Cowen (best known in these parts as co-proprietor of Marginal Revolution), asking questions about ethnic food (he’s a devotee);…
Everyone agrees that massive deforestation is an environmental disaster. But most of the standard solutions — scolding the Brazilians, invoking universal morality — ignore the one solution that might actually…
People who sleep better earn more money. Now all we have to do is teach everyone to sleep better.
Photo: HarshLight A few days ago, I appeared on NPR Morning Edition talking about Monopoly (the game, not the market form). Until then I hadn’t thought much about the economics…
A new proposal from the Biden administration calls for a nationwide cap on rent increases. Economists think that’s a terrible idea. We revisit a 2019 episode to hear why….
Even a brutal natural disaster doesn’t diminish our appetite for procreating. This surely means we’re heading toward massive overpopulation, right? Probably not.
Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson, authors of the new book Spousonomics, are seeking marital advice from economists on their blog. Their “Economists in Love” series asks amusing (yet pragmatic) questions…
…GMA piece will run in the first hour and will be a preview of Sunday’s New York Times column about NASCAR. The WNT piece will address the Freakonomics of parenting….
In Chapter 5 of Freakonomics, which explores the art and science of parenting, we pose this question: Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? It turns out…
…parenting, and gender. The book is already a New York Times best-seller; here’s more information on Stossel and the new book. I am guessing that most people who hang on…
…Of course there are obvious problems concerning both accuracy and privacy when living in a coveillance world. My kids want me to display a “How’s My Parenting?” sticker so that…
…marriage and custodial parenting is responsive to what we think of as the specific features of caregiving written into the “scripts” of marriage, but no one should be forced into…
…for parenting? What can parents do to help their kids achieve greatness? A. In this limited space, let me just stick to one point, which is that parents need to…
…buzzwords. She felt she was committing treason – and bad parenting – whenever she had to buy milk from a store. By the time I went off to college, that…
…(see, e.g., The Death Instinct and The Emperor of Ocean Park).? My colleague Amy Chua is about to publish an amazing book on parenting, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.?…
…both humor and parenting & families sections. The movie rights have been optioned. It might seem like a long shot that a profanity-laced purported kids book from a niche publisher…
