I’ve had the chance to meet a lot of smart people in my life. Without question, Kevin Murphy is the smartest of them all. Not only is he smart, but he is also one of the kindest, most loyal, and most generous people I’ve known. So I could not be happier that the MacArthur Foundation today named him as one . . .
I know, I know, I know: Wikipedia is one of the wonders of the online world. I hear this regularly, especially from young journalist friends and also in e-mails concerning Freakonomics. A casual mention in our book concerning the derivation of the Chicago Black Sox’ nickname began a debate chronicled here, a debate in which participants regularly cited the Wikipedia . . .
Morgan Reynolds was chief economist for the Department of Labor in the first term of the George W. Bush administration. He was in the economics department at Texas A&M (now retired), and he has published in the top economics journals like JPE, AER, and QJE. Now he’s traveling a slightly different road: From a United Press International report in the . . .
Should we be surprised? This article comes from a website called InsideHigherEd.com. (I only posted part of the article here, follow the link to see the whole thing. Thanks to Patrick McCusker for providing the link to me.) Cheating Scandal at Virginia An ‘alarmingly large fraction” of the first-year class of economics graduate students at the University of Virginia were . . .
All economists love markets. Most economists hate gambling. So I don’t know whether or not to be surprised by the fact that my friends at tradesports are offering a line on which economist will be the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. (At Tradesports, go to the trading screen and search under “Current Events – Federal Reserve.” Consistent with the . . .
In golf, there is a tradition of the last winner of the Masters helping the latest victor slip into a green jacket. In economics, we don’t have the same tradition, but if we did, it would have been an honor for me to bestow a green pocket protector on Daron Acemoglu last week when he won the John Bates Clark . . .
Over the years I have had the opportunity to write about a great many interesting people. My mother had an extraordinary (and long-buried) story to tell. I’ve interviewed Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; the rookie class of the N.F.L. ; a remarkable cat burglar who stole only sterling silver. But lately I have been writing about economists — and, most fruitfully, . . .
My friend and colleague Gary Becker is arguably the most influential economist of the last fifty years. I published a study in the American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings a few years back that attempted to identify which economic theories and economic theorists were having an influence on cutting edge, data driven economic research today. The most amazing finding was . . .
Roland G. Fryer Jr. is a young black economist at Harvard whose work and background are equally fascinating. (At least I think so.) He and Steve Levitt have written a number of papers together, and Fryer is scattered throughout the last couple chapters of Freakonomics. Quite separately, I’ve written a profile of Fryer that appears in today’s New York Times . . .