Why do so many promising solutions in education, medicine, and criminal justice fail to scale up into great policy? And can a new breed of “implementation scientists” crack the code?…
Decades of research has convinced just about everyone that a child with a single parent is, on average, more likely to have worse outcomes in life than a child with…
…terrorists, and even economists, I guess it is fitting that I have finally written a children’s book. It’s called The Boy With Two Belly Buttons, with illustrations by the remarkable…
The Jewish Daily Forward is reporting that more and more non-Jews are calling in the mohel, or ritual circumciser, to have their sons circumcised. The reasons for this include a…
A Texas State Senator has been ridiculed for his proposal to pay women $500 if they show up at an abortion clinic, elect not to have an abortion, and then…
Here’s an interesting paper from the British Medical Journal which argues that children’s anti-social behavior can be significantly altered by training their parents to be better parents. (And here is…
This piece in the Washington Post is one of the most interesting articles I have read in a newspaper in a long, long time. The Post arranged for Joshua Bell,…
…June and August in Indiana perform worse on standardized tests. I can believe that this conclusion might be true. Fifteen years ago, economists Josh Angrist and Alan Krueger found that…
The New York Times had an interesting article the other day, by Amy Harmon, on how more advanced and widespread testing for Down Syndrome is leading to a shrinking population…
Here’s an agreeable way to usher in Mother’s Day: A study released by The University of Melbourne’s School of Behavioural Science shows that a significant number of college students consider…
Last week I blogged about the decision to abort when faced with a diagnosis of Down Syndrome. A similar issue arises, perhaps in an even more intense way (if such…
There is a large body of literature on cultural bias in standardized testing. It generally has two components: 1. In some questions, white people are made to look superior to…
Nicolas Gueguen, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Bretagne-Sud, performed a study in which his male research assistants approached 240 women in the street and asked for…
Until recently, I had known Katherine Ozment only as the easy-to-like wife of my good friend and former colleague Michael Greenstone. Then I discovered her Web site, which contains examples…
One of the most controversial small points in Freakonomics was the claim that early childhood test scores are not correlated to the amount a child is read to at home….
My dad claims he reads this blog. I guess now we will figure out whether he is telling the truth or not. Here is an article from Discover magazine highlighting…
Via Wired: In addition to providing potential career-building skills, online gaming may be good for teens, according to a three-year study of adolescent gamers by researchers at Brunel University. The…
Back when I was a graduate student at MIT in desperate need of a haircut, I stumbled into a place called The Hair Connection. Little did I know it would…
…wants his business to succeed, she called him after the party to offer him some feedback. It should be said that she has had a lot of experience, both as…
I am scheduled to appear on Good Morning America tomorrow (Wed., Oct. 3), at about 8:30 a.m. E.D.T., to talk about my new kids’ book, The Boy With Two Belly…
There is no policy economists love more than school choice. Milton Friedman was an early proponent. The idea certainly makes sense: if parents have the ability to choose the best…
So this was a nice surprise: after I went on Good Morning America today to talk about The Boy With Two Belly Buttons, the book shot up to the No….
A while back, I solicited your suggestions for great children’s books, and you responded mightily, with more than 270 comments. Your answers made me realize how many children’s books we…
My son’s first-grade teacher recently held an open house to tell the parents what their kids will be learning this year, and how they’ll be going about it. I have…
Is ticket scalping really so bad? Are staph infections killing more Americans than AIDS? Parents now paying up to $40,000 to beat the college admissions process. (Earlier) Which careers correspond…
Video It is fairly well known by now that Levitt has more than a passing interest in poker, and he’s occasionally shown some promise. (His blackjack skills, meanwhile, are subject…
Huge percentage of world’s births & deaths go undocumented. Making your baby smarter: the myths continue. (Earlier) Should paying line-standers to hold seats at Congressional hearings be banned? Happiness levels…
I hadn’t worn a Halloween costume in many years until last night, when my kids — Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and a man-eating shark, respectively — encouraged me…
…attached to each offer, and I’d imagine you could learn quite a bit about human behavior, decision making, and biases by playing with their data. I wonder if any economists…
Dubner has blogged before about the difficulty of gathering accurate data from adults on subjects like racism. The problem, he noted, lies in people’s tendencies to give answers that are…
