A Hannah Montana Concert (as Seen Through the Eyes of an Economist)
…economist who wants to see a Hannah Montana show to do? Here is the true story of one such escapade. (The economist in question has asked me to keep his…
…the central academics studying the labor market. The M.I.T. economist and Steve dissect the impact of technology on labor, spar on A.I., and discuss why economists can sometimes be oblivious….
…economist who wants to see a Hannah Montana show to do? Here is the true story of one such escapade. (The economist in question has asked me to keep his…
If you think talent and hard work give top athletes all the leverage to succeed, think again. As employees in the Sports-Industrial Complex, they’ve got a tight earnings window, a…
Humans have a built-in “negativity bias,” which means we give bad news much more power than good. Would the Covid-19 crisis be an opportune time to reverse this tendency?
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…
As the Biden administration rushes to address climate change, Stephen Dubner looks at another, hidden cost of air pollution — one that’s affecting how we think….
This week we solicited your questions for Dan Hamermesh, a regular Freakonomics contributor, and author of the new book Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful. A lot of…
The legendary venture capitalist believes the same intuition that led him to bet early on Google can help us reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But Steve wonders why his…
Sixty percent of the jobs that Americans do today didn’t exist in 1940. What happens as our labor becomes more technical and less physical? And what kinds of jobs will…
From baseball card conventions to Walmart, John List has always used field experiments to say revolutionary things about economics. He explains the value of an apology, why scaling shouldn’t be…
The gist: the Nobel selection process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off, at least a little bit.
In addition to publishing best-selling books about pregnancy and child-rearing, Emily Oster is a respected economist at Brown University. Over the course of the pandemic, she’s become the primary collector…
…1. Why Johnny Estrada Is Worth Kevin Millwood: Valuing Players as Assets 2. Down with the Triple Crown: Evaluating On-Field Performance 3. A Career Guide from Little League to Retirement:…
Steve shows a different side of himself in very personal interviews with his two oldest daughters. Amanda talks about growing up with social anxiety and her decision to not go…
Economists and politicians have turned him into a mascot for free-market ideology. Some on the left say the right has badly misread him. Prepare for a very Smithy tug of…
…like my life back” and Christine O’Donnell‘s “I’m not a witch.” I would welcome suggestions of notable quotations from 2011, particularly ones from politics or popular culture or entertainment or…
…Christine O’Donnell‘s “I’m not a witch.” I would welcome suggestions of notable quotations from 2011, particularly ones from politics or popular culture or entertainment or sports or business or technology….
…was a problem, the Yankees spending in 2011 had to be considered a bigger problem. What about competitive balance? Stanford economist Roger Noll and the late Gerald Scully developed a…
We hear you. And we are trying to work out a solution. There have been a lot of changes in the migration to NYTimes.com, there are a lot of details…
Architect Carolyn Steel‘s TED talk, posted this week, discusses how ancient food routes shaped the cities we live in today and the future of food in our world. Steel believes…
Does hunger affect risk aversion? A new study, written up on the British Psychological Society blog, says it does. Researchers had 19 males play a gambling game after a long…
…rather creative methods they were using to control them — namely banning public feedings and consigning all panhandling to 3-by-15-foot “panhandling zones” painted on sidewalks. Turns out the solutions have…
Bren Smith, who grew up fishing and fighting, is now part of a movement that seeks to feed the planet while putting less environmental stress on it. He makes his…
It’s a remarkable ecosystem that allows each of us to exercise control over our lives. But how much control do we truly have? How many of our decisions are really…
What surprises lurk in our sewage? How did racist city planners end up saving Black lives? Why does Arizona grow hay for cows in Saudi Arabia? Three strange stories about…
Once considered noble and heroic, pigeons are now viewed as an urban nuisance — one that costs cities millions of dollars a year. Zachary Crockett tosses some crumbs….
A famous economics essay features a pencil (yes, a pencil) arguing that “not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.” Is the pencil…
To you, it’s just a ride-sharing app that gets you where you’re going. But to an economist, Uber is a massive repository of moment-by-moment data that is helping answer some…
How did an affable 18th-century “moral philosopher” become the patron saint of cutthroat capitalism? Does “the invisible hand” mean what everyone thinks it does? We travel to Smith’s hometown in…
In the U.S. alone, we hold 55 million meetings a day. Most of them are woefully unproductive and tyrannize our offices. The revolution begins now — with better agendas, smaller…
