Search the Site

Posts Tagged ‘sanitation’

Let Me See You Wash Your Hands!

One of the heroes of SuperFreakonomics is Ignatz Semmelweis — who crunched numbers in the 1840’s to champion the benefits of doctors washing their hands.




Freakonomics Contest Winners: What Economists Really Have in Common With Garbage

Blog readers did not get nearly as worked up about economists and garbage as they did about prostitutes and rice, at least as measured by hate mail. I received not a single piece of hate mail from an economist (although, in fairness, none of the hate mail I got on the prostitutes post was actually from a prostitute either). We . . .



If Your Income Goes Up, Will You Watch TV in the Bathroom?

In the long run, the increasing opportunity cost of people’s time, as wages rise, is one of the most important driving forces in economic behavior. Much of our racing around is due to adjustments to the increasing relative scarcity of time compared to income, as are efforts to introduce time-saving technology. A neat example of such an innovation is the . . .



Waste Happens: A Q&A With the Author of The Big Necessity

Photo: Felicity Paxton I’ve never thought much about my toilet. (Though we’ve discussed toilets on this blog here, here, and here.) It usually does its job; sometimes it needs a little help from the plunger. Rose George‘s new book The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters not only got me wildly interested in my . . .