17 people indicted for identity theft in New York. (Earlier) Economists and psychologists tackle speed dating. Everything you ever wanted to know about U.S. cities. A foolproof strategy for winning at Monopoly. (Hat tip: BoingBoing)
A study by University of Toronto assistant professor of organizational behavior Jennifer Berdahl found that, contrary to the conventional belief that a woman’s acting “feminine” in the workplace leads to sexual harassment, just the opposite may be true. Berdahl’s paper concluded that women who “act like men” are more likely to experience harassment, possibly because of the conduct’s use as . . .
Maybe it was guest blogger Paul Kimmelman’s dissection of the Wii shortage, or your many-voiced response. Regardless: Nintendo is boosting its Wii production: Nintendo’s president acknowledged Friday that the shortage of the hit Wii game machine was “abnormal,” and promised production was being boosted to increase deliveries by next month.”We must do our best to fix this abnormal lack of . . .
I have never been a huge video gamer but, having run into the Nintendo Wii a few times in the past couple of months, I can see why it is beloved. But here’s the question: why is the Wii, which was famously scarce before Christmas this year, still so hard to buy? Paul Kimmelman, a technical architect who has guest-blogged . . .
Is illegal downloading responsible for the music industry’s woes? Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf say nope. The I.R.S. will give you a pile of money if you help them catch a big tax cheat. Too bad they weren’t this generous with John Szilagyi, who was one of their own. These three guys look pretty thrilled to have produced the first . . .
There’s an article in today’s New York Times about “Deal or No Deal.” (See previous posts here, here and here.) From the headline — “A Game Show for the Probabilities Theorist in All of Us” — it sounds like it might be heading into a nifty theoretical realm but, alas, it is really a TV review at heart.
Being a contestant on this show requires no talent whatsoever. You pick suitcases. You decide whether you prefer a riskless offer of money to a risky one. Then you go home with a bunch of money. Along the way, the crowd and your chosen friends scream and cheer like there is great skill in choosing among ex ante identical suitcases. . . .
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 . . .
Or at least somebody should be taping this new game show Deal or No Deal so they can write a paper about it. On the show, contestants get a suitcase with some amount of money in it and they get to keep the contents or take a certain offer that some “banker” on the phone is offering. A good chance . . .