One of the things that I have learned (the hard way) is that looking sensible on TV is harder than it looks. That’s why I was happy when Nightline decided to interview my co-author Betsey Stevenson rather than me for a segment that ran last week summarizing our research on the relationship between income and happiness. Freakonomics readers have already . . .
You probably recall Hillary Clinton turning anti-economist in the dying days of her campaign: “Well I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.” And more recently John McCain has jumped aboard: “I trust the people and not the so-called economists to give the American people a little relief.” Honestly, I don’t get it. So . . .
Over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen draws an intriguing parallel between accusations made by disgraced NBA ex-referee Tim Donaghy, and models of collusion. While David Stern has denied explicit collusion between the league and the refs to influence game outcomes, Tyler argues that there may instead be implicit collusion: refs may simply perceive that the league wants them to produce . . .
It may be surprising to learn that one of the leading scholars studying U.S. politics is in fact a Swedish economist. But the advantage of this unusual state of affairs is that during my recent trip to Stockholm, I had a chance to catch up with David Strömberg. David and I spent an interesting afternoon exploring data from both political . . .
It isn’t often that economics makes the pages of Science, but I finally got around to taking a look at E. Roy Weintraub‘s review of Steve Marglin‘s The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community. (Gated copy here.) The prophet Jeremiah is alive and well and teaching economics at Harvard. It is not often that a scholar with . . .
The Noel Coward song suggests that “only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” Following Saturday’s Stockholm Marathon, I’ll add marathon runners and thousands of cheering Swedes to that list, too. Every novice runner begins a marathon with three aims: to finish; to run the whole way; and to beat some special time (usually four hours). Following . . .
Over a long dinner (and more than a few glasses of wine) with some economist friends, conversation turned to trying to understand why happiness is declining in Belgium. Helena Svaleryd offered an audacious new theory: the Belgians have not enjoyed the rise of celebrity culture that provides so much amusement for the rest of us. Concurring, Anna Sjögren argued that . . .
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 to guessing my finishing time. Leave your guesses in the comments anytime before the race begins (2 p.m. Stockholm time = 8 a.m. EST). And now, the form guide: The . . .
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 recent piece provides a very nice teaching example highlighting the importance of the income elasticity of demand; she also managed the perfectly accurate but cheeky turn of phrase that we . . .
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 of Nobellist Gunnar Myrdal, it thrived under the great Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, and is now guided by Torsten Persson, a giant in political economy. By any measure, that’s quite . . .
In a short piece in the latest Science journal, about the Promise of Prediction Markets, we provide a short review of the literature on prediction markets — how and why they work, and the accumulated empirical evidence. But our key point is public policy: Unfortunately, however, current federal and state laws limiting gambling create significant barriers to the establishment of . . .
I’ve been enjoying Arthur Brooks‘s musings on the relationship between personal politics and personal happiness. And so I was interested to read an interesting piece in The Times (of London), assessing how my own recent research with Betsey Stevenson on income and happiness fits into the broader political debate. And I’m a sucker for an article that can relate economic . . .
A couple of months ago, Dubner and Levitt wrote about how poorly constructed laws can lead to some unintended consequences. Let me add one more example to their list, albeit one that I’m enjoying. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board was set up in the wake of the 21st Amendment, and the end of Prohibition. A direct (and presumably intended) result . . .
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 securities markets requiring SEC regulation, illegal betting markets, allowable games of skill, or something else altogether? Fortunately, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is stepping up to the plate, and I’m . . .
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 Indiana, it’s tempting to call Tuesday’s primary vote a split decision. Instead, political prediction markets have declared Senator Obama a clear winner. Senator Obama began Election Day rated a 76 . . .
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, regulate-em-all central planners who want to destroy innovation — but all economists. Last week I issued a challenge to find a coherent economist who would support the gas tax holiday . . .
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, but here’s some interesting commentary collected during the week: 1. George Stephanopoulos posed my challenge directly to Senator Clinton (video here), asking: “Can you name one economist — a credible . . .
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 of the leading experts on these matters, so I asked him for a short primer on what we learned from when rebate checks were sent out in 2001. Here is . . .
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 the same thing in 2001, sending out $300 checks. But this time, there’s a difference — not all of us are getting a check. In fact, those earning six figures . . .
What good is G.D.P., anyway? While my postings this week have shown that it is correlated with happiness, I have not spent much time asking just precisely what it is about our subjective experiences that is correlated with higher G.D.P. In fact, the analysis in my previous posts, focused almost exclusively on simple responses to surveys asking people how happy . . .
How do you score a bruising fight like the Pennsylvania primary? In politics, it seems, expectations are everything. And regular readers will not be surprised to hear that I would argue that political prediction markets can help us understand which candidates actually exceeded pre-poll expectations. Some simple observations: Clinton‘s 9.5 point victory margin was roughly what one might expect from . . .
One of the fun things about living in Philadelphia is that elections here are always hard-fought, and often have a national impact. And today’s Democratic primary is no exception. What can I tell you from being on the ground here in Philly? First, there is no shortage of Penn students for Obama. They are everywhere. And second, in an unscientific . . .
Continuing on the theme of the relationship between income and happiness (previous posts: 1, 2 , and 3), let me show you what Betsey Stevenson and I learned when comparing the happiness of rich and poor people. Let’s begin with the most recent data from the 2006 General Social Survey, which asked: “Taken all together, how would you say things . . .
Yesterday I noted that there is powerful evidence from the recent Gallup World Poll that rich countries are happier than poor countries. Today, I want to show you how this fact remained hidden in the data for several decades. (And I don’t mean to suggest that we are the first to discover this, but rather that those who noted this . . .
Following yesterday’s post, I promised to describe the new evidence that rich countries are happier than poor countries. The simplest way to make this point is with a chart, using data from the Gallup World Poll. This amazing new dataset contains detailed data on subjective well-being for 132 countries in 2006. (Amazingly, Gallup plans to continue to field this poll . . .
This morning’s inbox leads me to two observations: 1) There is some excellent research out there about marriage and divorce. 2) There is no shortage of ways for imaginative advocates to distort the findings of this research. Let me begin with the first point: an intriguing paper by Elizabeth Ananat and Guy Michaels, forthcoming in the Journal of Human Resources. . . .
Justin Lahart at the Wall Street Journal suggests a new party game for economists (or at least something to keep you awake if a conference gets dull): Six Degrees of Joe Stiglitz. He’s suggesting the econ version of the Paul Erdos number in math: If you drew a diagram linking different mathematicians, many of the lines would cross at Erdos. . . .
On the bright side, that leaves a lot of running room for policy-oriented economists like me! On the dark side, that means that economists are often under the streetlight rather than closer to where their keys might be.
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 of my long weekend run, I gritted my teeth and told myself, “only five miles to go.” The strange thing about these observations is that I’m an Aussie, and so . . .
Today is apparently D-Day here at Freakonomics — the “D” stands for divorce. Along with Hamermesh’s earlier post and this post by Wolfers, there’s one more on the way. One of the most frustrating things about doing research on families is seeing how often even the simple facts are misreported in the press. And Sue Shellenbarger, writing in this morning’s . . .