There is no shortage of groups made up of citizens banding together for a cause: Greenpeace, Doctors without Borders, Save the Children, the KKK, etc. I suspect that if you look at the data, you will see that economists are nearly always underrepresented in these organizations. No doubt there are many factors contributing to this result. In general, economists tend . . .
Few people outside of academic economists have ever heard of the National Bureau of Economic Research (N.B.E.R.). Within the profession, however, it plays an enormously important role as an information clearinghouse. Through a series of well-attended conferences and the ubiquitous, yellow-jacketed N.B.E.R. Working Paper series (which, by my estimates, may contain more than 13,000 papers by now), the N.B.E.R. serves . . .
Patricia Cohen has an article in today’s Times about a recent American Enterprise Institute panel on the notion of repugnance and how it affects markets. In other words, why are some behaviors considered repugnant while others are acceptable, and how and why do such demarcations change over time? Three of the panel’s five participants — Arthur Brooks, Sally Satel, and . . .
Here’s the second installment from our newest guest poster, Justin Wolfers. His first post can be found here. This weekend is the annual gabfest of the American Economic Association, running in New Orleans from Thursday through Sunday. It’s an econ-stravaganza, with dozens of parallel sessions running on just about every topic (the full program is here). For the past few . . .
Talk about a nickname that is hard to live up to! Franziska Michor, who is a friend, former Harvard Society Fellow, and honorary economist, is featured in this year’s Esquire “Genius” edition under the headline “The Isaac Newton of Biology.” And she is only 25, and can also drive an eighteen-wheeler. Here is a link to her research on cancer.
Yale economist Dean Karlan recently received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers — the highest honor given by the federal government to young researchers. I believe the prize comes with half a million dollars of research support to use over the next five years. Dean has been doing important and innovative work, often using field experiments to . . .
I honestly couldn’t tell at first if this was a joke or not. Economists can have a strange sense of humor. The Web site Year 2 is reporting that Berkeley economist Dan McFadden has scored a rare double: first a Nobel Prize and then a vote for the Heisman Trophy. It turns out it is a joke. Reading this, though, . . .
Congratulations to my friend and colleague Gary Becker who will receive the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. He’ll have to find a place in his trophy cabinet, which already has a Nobel Prize, a National Medal of Science, the John Bates Clark Medal, and sixteen honorary doctorates. No economist of Becker’s generation has had such . . .
In almost all countries, women are more likely to be obese than men. The economists Anne Case and Alicia Menendez set out to learn why, using data collected from a township outside of Cape Town, South Africa. Here’s what they determined: 1. “Women who were nutritionally deprived as children are significantly more likely to be obese as adults, while men . . .
I was delighted to wake up this morning and discover that I have yet another Nobel Laureate as a colleague. Congratulations to Roger Myerson! (And also to Eric Maskin and Leo Hurwicz, who shared the prize.) The prize was “for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory.” Mechanism design formalizes ways of thinking about how a social planner, manager, . . .
The following story is currently making the rounds on the Internet. The events probably didn’t happen exactly as described, but for my purposes it doesn’t really matter. Supposedly, a woman posted the following personal ad on Craigslist: What am I doing wrong? Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25-year-old girl. I’m articulate and . . .
Two arrested in “money-making potion” scam. (Hat tip: Consumerist) Are economists incapable of cognitive dissonance? Meteorite crashes in Peru, causes panic. Cigarette merchants sued for selling knockoff Marlboros.
One of the most important political questions of the day is whether the troop surge in Baghdad is working. If you ask politicians, the answer you get to that question is very predictable. Republicans say yes, Democrats say no. What do the data have to say about this question? Michael Greenstone, an M.I.T. professor, good friend, and one of the . . .
The legendary Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni died on Monday (which happened to be the same day that the legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman died). In its Antonioni obituary that ran yesterday, the New York Times noted that Antonioni “attended the University of Bologna, where he was a tennis champion and earned a degree in economics and commerce in 1935.” . . .
Discover magazine examines the attempts by physicists to break down the Planck scale, “a region where distances and intervals are so short that the very concepts of time and space start to break down.” So far, all tries have been unsuccessful, leading more than one physicist to conclude that, “at the most fundamental level of physical reality,” time may not . . .
Most of our blog readers couldn’t care less about refereeing in academic publishing. And they should be thankful. For a tenure-track economist, getting published is a brutal process. You spend a year or two coming up with an idea, try to think over every aspect of the problem, collect and analyze data, and finally produce a 30-page paper summarizing all . . .
I once had the honor of sharing a meal with Steven Pinker. He was as fun and brilliant in person as he is in his writing. The Chicago Sun-Times recently published a piece by him (which we’ve mentioned before) that’s also the preface to a book entitled “What is Your Dangerous Idea? Today’s Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable.” The article . . .
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 . . .
Steven Landsburg is not known for having temperate opinions. An economics professor at the University of Rochester and a prolific writer, Landsburg regularly raises provocative theories in his Slate column: women choke under pressure, e.g., or miserliness is a form of generosity. He is the author of the books Armchair Economist and Fair Play, which are in some ways direct . . .
There was a nifty article in the New York Times Magazine a while back about “literary spam,” junk e-mail that includes passages from literary classics, in the hopes that legitimate text would fool spam filters. (Apparently, it doesn’t.) I just got a piece of spam that’s even niftier. Its subject line: “yipping econometrica psychophysiology flourish.” Considering the kind of messages . . .
Here’s heartening news for all those who believe that economists not only can’t predict the economic future, but can’t even describe the economic past. Daniel Altman, for his Economic View column for the New York Times, e-mailed the 177 members of the National Bureau of Economic Research who concentrate on economic fluctuations and growth. He asked them a seemingly simple . . .
I’ve been reading an advance copy of Tyler Cowen‘s book Discover Your Inner Economist. Many of you may know Cowen as co-proprietor of the excellent MarginalRevolution blog, which we’ve cited here often. The book is fast, furious, and fun, with great examples of how to apply economic thinking to nontraditional subjects. (My favorite: Cowen’s advice for keeping a meeting short . . .
The John Bates Clark Medal is given every two years to the American economist under the age of 40 who is deemed most influential. Congratulations to Susan Athey, a Harvard professor, who won the award today! She is the first woman to win the award. I got to know Susan and her husband Guido Imbens very well four years ago . . .
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 . . .
An economist at an elite university, wishing to remain anonymous, has written the following rap in honor of Levitt. S/he sent it directly to me (Dubner) to ensure that even Levitt doesn’t know who wrote it. I think you’ll agree it’s sick enough to be worthwhile. Sing it to the tune of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems.” If you’re getting rejected I . . .
I blogged yesterday about a new game show called “Deal or No Deal” and how it was an obvious candidate for economists to study risk aversion. So obvious, in fact, that Jennifer List (who is not even an economist, only married to one of my colleagues here at University of Chicago), yelled up to her husband that she had his . . .
Steven Landsburg has an interesting column on the impact that delaying having a family has on a woman’s lifetime income. It is based on a study by Amalia Miller who is an economist at the University of Virginia. The column is less about the specifics of the problem Miller solves than about her approach: cobbling together four of five different . . .
I’ve changed addresses 10 times since I graduated from college. And each time I’ve moved, I’ve looked at the battered old box of college notebooks and debated whether it was time to throw the box out. After all, it has been more than 15 years and the box has never once been opened. Thomas Schelling winning the Nobel prize in . . .
I found this list of what is supposed to be the future winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics on a blackboard at the U of C, for what it is worth. Who knows whether the people who made the list know what they are talking about. There are about 40 people on the list, and about 2 people get . . .
A while back, there was discussion, only half in jest, that Levitt might make a good Supreme Court Justice. Now things have gotten even crazier: he has been nominated (again, only half in jest) by the BBC to help rule the world: click here for the opening page, then the “click to start” tab and then “Economists.” (It is telling . . .