The (Very) Strange Economics of Tuesday Night’s Debate
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.
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.
Dubner discusses an excellent article in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, a former illegal immigrant who is now the director of the brain-tumor stem-cell laboratory at Johns Hopkins.
Sin in the Second City, a new book by Karen Abbott, offers an in-depth look at the prostitution trade in turn-of-the-century Chicago. In particular, Abbott focuses on the Everleigh sisters, two madams who ran a high-class brothel on South Dearborn Street that earned them extraordinary wealth and international fame. Abbott agreed to answer our questions about her book. Q: Could . . .
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 . . .
In testimony before the Senate health committee, James Holsinger, President Bush‘s nominee for Surgeon General, listed his three top priorities if approved. According to the New York Times, these priorities would be: “tackling childhood obesity, ‘making America a tobacco-free nation’ and improving the ability of the Public Health Service to respond to emergencies.” While these priorities are certainly in sync . . .
New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, unhappy with an official probe into the e-mails he sent to a former girlfriend who was also the state union president, has decided to swear off e-mail entirely. (In related news, stocks in smoke-signaling firms surged in overnight trading.) Meanwhile, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has also found that old online exchanges can come back . . .
Have you all heard of Conservapedia? It bills itself as “a conservative encyclopedia you can trust,” and it is pretty fascinating. It has a strong pro-Christian, anti-liberal (and especially anti-N.Y. Times) bent, and is just one of several user-run encyclopedias that have taken root in response (or tribute) to Wikipedia. (Here are our previous posts on Wikipedia). These also include . . .
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 . . .
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 . . .
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois is apparently not much of a Freakonomics fan, or maybe he thinks it’s something that it’s not. He trashed our good (ha!) name the other day during a Senate Appropriation Committee hearing that was probing the budget of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Here’s the story, as covered by OMB . . .
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 . . .
Jon Tester, the new senator from Montana, posts his daily appointment schedule on his website for all the world to see. According to this A.P. article by Mary Clare Jalonick, such transparency is “fulfilling a promise the Democrat made in his campaign against Republican Sen. Conrad Burns last year. Burns attracted heat for his relationship with Washington interests — most . . .
The April 2, 2006, Freakonomics column is about tax cheating. This blog post supplies additional research material.
Our latest Freakonomics column described a recent academic paper by Andy Francis. I asked him to respond to the comments that have been raised on our blog (see here). He was kind enough to oblige. Here is what Andy has to say: Thank you for all your comments. They were insightful, and I enjoyed reading them. Let me take a . . .
While 2005 is an off year for Presidential and Congressional elections, Tuesday is still Election Day, and in its honor, we got to wondering: why the heck do people bother to vote? That is the subject of our latest Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine. As always, we’ve posted a page elsewhere on this website with ancillary information. . . .
J. Eric Oliver has a new book called Fat Politics. I had lunch with the author (he is a professor in the Political Science department at the University of Chicago) about six months ago and was thoroughly entertained by the stories he told from this book. He let me read an early draft of the book, and I really liked . . .
Since the publication of Freakonomics, a lot of readers have written to comment upon or ask about “the Roe Effect,” the theory put forth by James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal. The Roe Effect posits that among the many unintended consequences of Roe v. Wade was a significant change in voting patterns. Although Taranto himself acknowledges many nuances and . . .
I had my 20 year high school reunion last weekend. There were three highlights for me: 1) I got to see all three of my prom dates — roughly the only three dates I had in high school. 2) My old high school quiz bowl team reunited and showed we still had the right stuff, handily beating the school’s highly . . .
A few days ago, in an online Q&A with the Washington Post, someone asked this question: Annapolis, Md.: Have you explored why some people vote against their own economic interest? And I gave the following answer: No. But it’s not that surprising, since one vote is really worth very very little. It probably comes down to the fact that most . . .