The Economics and Genetics of Parenting: A Guest Post by Bryan Caplan
…live. The upshot: Parents spend too much effort trying to mold their kids for the future, and not enough just enjoying life together. Vainly struggling to change your kids isn’t…
Harvard economist Claudia Goldin and Steve talk about how inflexible jobs and family responsibilities make it harder for women to earn wages equal to their male counterparts. But could Covid…
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?…
…live. The upshot: Parents spend too much effort trying to mold their kids for the future, and not enough just enjoying life together. Vainly struggling to change your kids isn’t…
Do you see yourself the same way others see you? What’s the difference between self-perception and self-awareness? And why do Mike and Angela both hate fishing?…
(Hemera) This bleg comes from reader Wayne Smith, who asks for suggestions on which economic concepts are the most important for kids to learn: What topics do the Freakonomics readers…
…allocated and more to do with who had to bribe whom to do what was jointly efficient. (You can find Levitt’s description of the theorem and examples of when it…
…“recourse.” Feldstein would not make the loan eligible for relief in bankruptcy. To me, it’s an open question whether many homeowners would accept the bribe of a subsidized write-down in…
An election cycle brings about more than voting around the world. There are many odd by-products, often inspired by how the incentives line up for those in power.
A new book by an unorthodox political scientist argues that the two rivals have more in common than we’d like to admit. It’s just that most American corruption is essentially…
…probably would have been a lot cheaper for the boosters just to bribe the Wisconsin legislature to pass a bill preventing the naming of the business school, although that strategy…
In ancient Rome, it was bread and circuses. Today, it’s a World Cup, an Olympics, and a new Saudi-backed golf league that’s challenging the P.G.A. Tour. Can a sporting event…
Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt talk about their new book and field questions about prestige, university life, and (yum yum) bacon.
…more likely you are to vote. The unwillingness of the U.S. system to bribe people to vote, or (as Australia does) punish people who don’t vote, operates as a kind…
…McEnroe… But some of the lesser players in men’s tennis could be tempted by bribe money, McEnroe said, and possibly would not need to be coerced by mafia threats. “I…
In ancient Rome, it was bread and circuses. Today, it’s a World Cup, an Olympics, and a new Saudi-backed golf league that’s challenging the PGA Tour. Can a sporting event…
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….
Security guards make malls feel safer, but what can they do when there’s trouble? Zachary Crockett observes and reports….
More than two decades ago, Adam Riess’s Nobel Prize-winning work fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe. His new work is reshaping cosmology for a second time….
As cities become ever-more expensive, politicians and housing advocates keep calling for rent control. Economists think that’s a terrible idea. They say it helps a small (albeit noisy) group of…
…a bribe in the past year – some to the police, some to permit officials and even some to the judiciary. Top reasons for bribery were divided by region: to…
…if transaction/coordination costs were small enough), the suburbs could band together and pay Moscow (or maybe it would be cheaper to simply bribe Luzhkov directly) not to carry out the…
…sweet, imploring note, perhaps with a crisp $20 bill tucked inside. Public-radio folks are as honest as the day as long but they are also underpaid, so a small bribe…
…with corruption, power politics, double-dealing, bribery, and betrayal. It’s a story that could only have dripped from the pen of one of the city’s Hollywood hacks–if it weren’t true. Despite…
…public institutions, and market outcomes– as well as more trustworthy: less willing to break the law, accept a bribe, cheat on taxes, and the like. Theoretical models, similarly, have emphasized…
What happens when tens of millions of fantasy-sports players are suddenly able to bet real money on real games? We’re about to find out. A recent Supreme Court decision has…
As cities become ever-more expensive, politicians and housing advocates keep calling for rent control. Economists think that’s a terrible idea. They say it helps a small (albeit noisy) group of…
…meant to be bribed. People who go to public health clinics assume they will need to bribe doctors to actually take care of them. Government ministers who have spent their…
…imagine how much more valuable it would be if, like marijuana, it were illegal. (Note to selves: corner the market on Chinese tea, then bribe the government to criminalize it.)…
…that sprung to mind include: If nothing else, it is nice to see that people of many ethnic and religious backgrounds can work together to allegedly bribe and cheat. You’ve…
Nepal’s prime minister was upset that officials at the country’s main airport had gained a reputation for bribe-taking. So the government is trying to put an end to corruption by…
