…new libertarian paternalism, a concept Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein introduced to the masses in describing the manager of a cafeteria who must decide on the order of food presentation…
…you how many calories you’ve burned. Photo: goldberg But since the people most influenced by calorie counts may be the least likely to go looking for cheese fries, what kind…
…market-driven innovation and scientific advancement are the best ways to reduce global meat consumption. Steve and Bruce talk about the negative externalities of factory-farmed meat, and why Bruce gave up…
Is evolution stacked against healthy eating? What policies could increase demand for nutritious food? And does Popeyes count as a cultural icon?…
…with Richard Thaler and he told me that he and Cass Sunstein were going to write a popular behavioral economics book about what they called “libertarian paternalism,” I have to…
The gist: the argument for open borders is compelling — and deeply problematic.
In restaurants and in life, bad things happen. But what happens next is just as important.
It may be surprising to learn that one of the leading scholars studying U.S. politics is in fact a Swedish economist. But the advantage of this unusual state of affairs…
The process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off at least a little bit.
The gist: the Nobel selection process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off, at least a little bit.
By day, two leaders of Britain’s famous Nudge Unit use behavioral tricks to make better government policy. By night, they repurpose those tricks to improve their personal lives. They want…
Do highway warnings save lives or cost lives? How do you keep men from peeing on the floor? And what’s Angela’s plan to get more people washing their hands?…
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…
My colleague Richard Thaler writes about his recent experience at economics conferences: Over the last month, one question seemed to be on everyone’s mind at the economic conferences I attended…
How is “negative reinforcement” different from punishment? Could positive reinforcement encourage prosocial behavior on a national scale? And what’s the deal with Taiwan’s dog-poop lottery?…
…subscriptions did get properly redirected last week, you will probably be unhappy about losing the full feed. 3. The partial feed that the Times been offering since the move was…
(Photo: HD41117) In a recent column in the New York Times, Jane Brody quotes a nutrition professor lamenting the fact that “restaurants have resisted her suggestion to serve half the…
One Yale economist certainly thinks so. But even if he’s right, are economists any better?…
As a neuroscientist and psychology professor at Columbia University who studies the immediate and long-term effects of illicit substances, Carl Hart believes that all drugs — including heroin, methamphetamines, and…
The Columbia neuroscientist and psychology professor Carl Hart believes that recreational drug use, even heroin, methamphetamines, and cocaine, is an inalienable right. Can he convince Steve?…
Starting in the late 1960s, the Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman began to redefine how the human mind actually works. Michael Lewis’s new book The Undoing Project explains…
…the efforts of the libertarian-minded are better spent forming a third party or joining the actual Libertarian Party? A. I never try to tell people exactly what to do, so…
Dubner and his Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt answer your questions about crime, traffic, real-estate agents, the Ph.D. glut, and how to not get eaten by a bear.
Steve usually asks his guests for advice, whether they’re magicians or Nobel laureates. After nearly 60 episodes, is any of it worth following — or should we just ask listeners…
It’s hard to know whether the benefits of hiring a celebrity are worth the risk. We dig into one gruesome story of an endorsement gone wrong, and find a surprising…
How can we distinguish between laziness and patience? Why do people do crossword puzzles? And how is Angie like a combination of a quantum computer and a Sherman tank? Take…
…counts fired up a lot of our readers. In it, he points to this Stanford study (ungated version here) that shows New York City’s calorie-count law to be fairly ineffective…
