A few observations about last night’s surprise result in the New Hampshire primary. Let me draw on the thoughts outlined in my column for the Wall Street Journal. First, red faces all around for the political prognosticators: Judging by the pre-vote polls and prediction markets, the Democratic primary in New Hampshire created one of the most surprising upsets in U.S. . . .
Album sales hit new lows in 2007. (Earlier) New InTrade markets predict the effects candidates may have on economic matters. Is this pollster luckier than everyone, or just better? Study shows monkeys may “pay” for sex. (Earlier)
How much influence do the primaries really have? Despite the “War on Drugs,” illegal drugs still a multi-billion dollar business. Holiday gifts for data addicts. (HT: Consumerist) Guatemala’s government moves to regulate baby trade.
The 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign is heating up, and as always a lot of the questions revolve around economic issues. So we thought we’d ask the economic advisers to all the main candidates to tell us about their roles. As you’ll see, we didn’t get all that many responses but we’re grateful to those who replied. Economic advisers for John . . .
Half of N.Y.U. students say they would sell their right to vote for $1 million, according to a poll published yesterday by the Washington Square News. Sixty-six percent said they would trade their voting rights for a free four-year ride at N.Y.U. (roughly $160,000, including room and board). Twenty percent would give up the vote for an iPod Touch (value: . . .
Today, you’ll recall, is Election Day. Which means that one year from now, we will be electing a new president (as if it really matters). The race is starting to heat up, as candidates shed their friendly veneers and start getting nasty with their rivals. (For what it’s worth, on the Republican side, Ron Paul — whom we’ve discussed before . . .
That’s the question asked by the Wharton economists Fernando Ferreira and Joseph Gyourko. But they are not talking about national political parties. In that realm, party affiliation has indeed been shown to have a strong effect on legislation and policy. No, Ferreira and Gyourko are interested in whether party affiliation matters on the local level — and their answer, essentially, . . .
If you’re wearing a necktie right now, you might want to take a moment to loosen it — especially if you’re a doctor. Years after studies first found that dangerous bacteria routinely hitch rides on the neckties of doctors, U.K. health officials have banished the old four-in-hand, along with jewelry and long sleeves, from their hospitals. They hope the ban . . .
This week’s New Yorker features an interesting article by Hendrik Hertzberg about American presidential dynasties. He quotes an A.P. article by Nancy Benac which states that “[f]orty per cent of Americans have never lived when there wasn’t a Bush or a Clinton in the White House.” Really? That’s amazing. Hertzberg quotes Benac further in the next paragraph: “Talk of Bush-Clinton . . .
Despite Fred Thompson‘s so-so performance in his first presidential debate, and despite his serious lag on InTrade (Giuliani, 39; Romney, 24; Thompson, 19.5), the blogger Noele Kensut is calling for Thompson to win the White House. Why? Because he has blue eyes. Eye color is one trait, Kensut writes at Mijka Samora‘s Reality Journal, that every president since Richard Nixon . . .
Levitt commends U.S. News and World Reports writer James Pethokoukis for his analysis of the faulty economics used by the Democratic Presidential candidates during their televised debate.
From a Q&A with John McCain in today’s N.Y. Times Magazine: Q. Well, maybe you will strike it rich with your coming book, “Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them.” How did you have time to write a 450-page look at history? A. Mark Salter, my co-writer, did it. What we usually do is use a . . .
Do you ever wonder why the media covers election campaigns so vigorously? Is it really necessary to know what each of the dozen-plus major-party early presidential candidates are doing on a daily basis, and what’s going on among their campaign staffs, and what their spouses like to eat and what sports their kids like to play? It may just be . . .
Greg Mankiw, an energetic blogger (you may have heard of him? he teaches econ at Harvard? and used to advise President Bush?) wrote a super-compelling piece in Sunday’s New York Times, whose headline says it all: “Fair Taxes? Depends on What You Mean By Fair.” It is about taxing the rich, and begins by explaining why Warren Buffett can afford . . .
It sounds as if Barack Obama has been listening to some economists (maybe even Austan Goolsbee): he has come out in favor of merit pay for schoolteachers. From an A.P. article: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told the largest teachers union Thursday that performance-based merit pay ought to be considered in public schools. Teachers at the National Education Association’s annual . . .
Mike Bloomberg regularly calls himself a “short, Jewish billionaire from New York” … but how Jewish is he? Here’s an interesting article from the Forward on Bloomberg’s brand of Jewishness in which an acquaintance calls Bloomberg something I’d never heard, but which is a pretty useful acronym: W.A.S.H., or a White Anglo-Saxon Hebrew. If widely adopted, this would give headline . . .
Slate, the 11-year-old online magazine that can lean pretty hard to the left, has just launched a video channel called Slate V. By the current standards of web video, these things are genius. It is interesting to note that the two leading GOP presidential candidates, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson, seem to be abnormally enthusiastic about prescribing mental-health treatment. Click . . .
Just in time for tonight’s GOP debates, Michael Scherer at Salon offers a closer look at the growing GOP shake-up caused by presidential candidate Ron Paul, whom we’ve blogged about before. News from the International Journal of Hospitality Management: Diners will spend more money in your restaurant if it is scented with lavender. The bad news, as pointed out by . . .
On the InTrade prediction market site, John Edwards has fallen behind the undeclared Al Gore. Here is Edwards’s recent price chart: And here is Gore’s: Note how far Gore has fallen since the Oscar hubbub. Note, also, that Gore remains (fairly) adamant that he won’t run. On the GOP side, meanwhile, the not-quite-yet-declared Fred Thompson has just about caught up . . .
From an A.P. article published widely the other day: Fred Thompson, a potential Republican presidential candidate, suggested that the 1986 immigration law signed by President Reagan is to blame for the country’s illegal immigrants and he bemoaned a nation beset by “suicidal maniacs.” “Twelve million illegal immigrants later, we are now living in a nation that is beset by people . . .
I am probably like the other 98% of Americans who know almost nothing about the libertarian Texas congressman Ron Paul, perhaps besides the fact that he’s running for President and that he seems to have a growing fringe following. So this e-mail, from a reader named Casey Hopkins, caught my eye: Why don’t you guys write about Ron Paul? 1. . . .
Over at MarginalRevolution, Tyler Cowen has posted a few suggestions, and is soliciting more. One of Cowen’s ideas: Allow all candidates to watch a short debate of experts — with a fraud or two thrown in — and ask them to evaluate what they just heard and why they reached the conclusion they did. He also suggests they should conduct . . .
Now that it’s looking a bit more likely that Michael Bloomberg could maybe, perhaps, possibly run for President on a third-party ticket, you’ve got to at least entertain this bizarre ballot possibility in 2008: For U.S. President: Hillary Clinton (D-NY) Rudolph Giuliani (R-NY) Michael Bloomberg (I-NY) How nice it would be, speaking as a NYC resident, to know that regardless . . .
At this moment, a boycott of the Beijing Olympics would seem pretty unlikely. It took a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan for the U.S. and other countries to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics. (The Soviets repaid the favor in 1984, staying home from the Los Angeles games.) On the other hand, a lot of people around the world harbor feelings of . . .
Today, ABC News director of polling and Freakonomics.com guest blogger Gary Langer offers an interesting breakdown of recent poll numbers on a particularly timely topic: Whether a pro-abortion stance by a Republican candidate (in this instance, Rudy Giuliani, whose position on the issue has been cited as a major hurdle in his pursuit of the presidential nomination) will in fact . . .
A few days ago, I blogged about how pre-election polls have historically overstated a minority candidate’s standing, but how that gap seems to be shrinking. In other words, according to the Pew Research Center article I cited, people used to lie to pollsters about their willingness to vote for a minority candidate, but now they do so less often. This . . .
Here’s a really interesting article (albeit a few months old) from the Pew Research Center that concerns a point we’ve touched on before: Minority political candidates tend to do better in pre-election polls than in the actual elections, suggesting that voters want to sound color-blind to pollsters but in fact carry a strong racial preference into the booth. The article . . .
University of Chicago economists have a reputation for being outspoken, libertarian, and conservative. My good friend and Chicago colleague Austan Goolsbee, who has been advising Barack Obama on economic policy since his Senate campaign, is only the first of these. There is an article about economists advising presidential candidates that features Goolsbee in today’s New York Times. My guess is . . .
Despite speculation about Rudy Giuliani’s reluctance to run for President, and skepticism that he’s a viable candidate, it looks as though he’s about ready to officially declare himself a candidate. This comes as little surprise to anyone who received the following “Team Rudy” e-mail from Brent Seaborn, a former Bush operative now putting together the Giuliani campaign team. Are Giuliani’s . . .