Taxes, Warren Buffett, and Paying My Fair Share
This week many of you will receive tax rebate checks from the I.R.S. Yes, that $600 you are receiving is meant to help kick start the economy. The government tried…
This week many of you will receive tax rebate checks from the I.R.S. Yes, that $600 you are receiving is meant to help kick start the economy. The government tried…
Photo: lilivanili and shawnzam Yesterday I suggested that tastes may not be stable. And then last night, I had the chance to confront the data directly; my local restaurant was…
Following my recent musings about the tax rebate checks, several people asked about the likely economic consequences of this sort of policy. My friend and colleague, Nick Souleles, is one…
Photo: tanakawho Last week I did something that felt very 1990’s: I purchased a compact disc. The CD wasn’t for me; it was a Christmas present. As I wrapped the…
One of the real barriers to widespread adoption of prediction markets by U.S. corporations has been a murky legal environment. Are prediction markets legitimate business tools, an alternative set of…
Ian Ayres‘s recent book, Super Crunchers, contains an interesting description of the secret to the success of Netflix (a company that’s been discussed before on this blog). According to Ayres,…
Last week I posed a simple challenge: Try to find any coherent economist willing to support the gas tax holiday proposed by candidates McCain and Clinton. The challenge remains unanswered,…
Photo: Pink Sherbet I typed this from 10,000 feet, while on my way to the annual econ gabfest known as the ASSA meetings. I was lucky enough to score an…
I’m struck to find that we pointy-headed economists have become a symbol in the presidential campaign. No, not evil trickle-down, right-wing economists who manufacture an uncaring government, or lunatic left-wing,…
Yesterday, Democrats voted in Indiana and North Carolina. My latest W.S.J. column parses the results. A few highlights: With Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton trading victories in North Carolina and…
I love my TiVo. And like a good economist, I’ve been trying to quantify this love. Here’s what I came up with. I watch about six hours of television programming…
A revised bailout plan has been announced, and President Bush has thrown his weight behind it. To my eye, the rewriting of Paulson‘s plan this past week has been worthwhile;…
Yesterday, Ian Ayres blogged about his recent weight loss, and frankly, it’s a pretty impressive achievement. The secret, Ian tells us, is finding a clever way to solve the problem…
When Betsey got home from her morning run earlier this week, she beamed and told me she had covered eight kilometers. And this Sunday, after running the first two hours…
Many teachers believe that a “few bad apples” can spoil a whole classroom, reducing the learning of everyone in the room. While this is part of the folk wisdom of…
What was Paul Krugman thinking when he met President Bush last week? Here’s a list of over 300 photo captions from readers of this blog, and another couple hundred from…
The political aficionados in Freakonomics Nation are probably doing the same thing that I’m doing right now — continually reloading the major news pages, in the hopes of finding some…
In many ways, the gender gap is closing. In others, not so much. And that’s not always a bad thing.
Yesterday, the Times reported the results of an intriguing new study, just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (subscription required). The focus of the story: the placebo…
Photo: sporkist My former Ph.D. student and frequent co-author Erik Snowberg sends along an interesting question: Why do discount clothing stores (like Nordstrom Rack — and clothing sales in general)…
There has been a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not the U.S. economy is currently in a recession. This morning’s data will, I think, lead to a near-unanimous view…
I’m currently in Sweden, spending a couple of weeks at Stockholm University’s Institute for International Economic Studies. It is really a remarkable place. “The Institute” was founded under the directorship…
A conversation with the Shark Tank star, entrepreneur, and Dallas Mavericks owner recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”…
Emek Basker is an incredibly creative (and under-appreciated) industrial organization economist. She is also surely the leading Wal-Mart-ologist, and has been studying big box stores for several years. Her most…
It’s social change alright: 26 percent of working wives out-earned their working husbands in 2006, up by nearly half from 20 years ago. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Now that…
As the Senate and the House look to reconcile competing stimulus plans, the big debate is whether to emphasize government spending or tax cuts. A new paper by the New…
Ronald Reagan famously described the distinction between a recession and a depression as follows: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.”…
Tomorrow is a big day for me — I’m running the Stockholm marathon. Here’s a simple wisdom of crowds experiment: A free piece of Freakonomics schwag to whoever comes closest…
My friend Joshua Gans is one of Australia’s best young economists, and he is also a parent. And as passionate as Joshua is about economics, he’s just as passionate about…
I’m a bit late getting to this, but I just saw that my friend Roland Fryer appeared on The Colbert Report on Monday. He was — officially — talking about…
