marginalrevolution — In my email, from Eric Crampton: Imagine the following deal, which is entirely not on any PPF so it’s not really a deal anyway. But imagine it. Genie offers a button. Push the button, and it burns the last n years of every journal in economics, along with all knowledge that...
marginalrevolution — Hazel Meade wrote: The banning of catastrophic-only plans infuriates me the most. Those are the only plans that are actually financially sensible for a healthy individual to purchase. Everything else on the market is a perverse by-product of the employer-based insurance system. Worst case scenario with a catastrophic-only plan is you end...
marginalrevolution — 1. Honeybees trained to find land mines. 2. Felix Salmon on bubbles, and Alen Mattich on bubbles, more from him here. And here is Krugman on the Japanese stock market plunge. 3. Ross Douthat, on the relationship between social and economic inequality. 4. Is this what an interview with a very smart person...
freakonomics — For 41 years, the city of Seattle enjoyed NBA basketball. And then the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder. Across the past year, though, there was hope that the NBA was returning to the Emerald City. Sure the team was the Kings, a team that has lost at...
econlog.econlib — I agree with co-blogger Bryan that most voters are rationally irrational. My sense is that there are also a lot of voters and people in positions of influence who know just enough economics to be dangerous. As Steve Horwitz and I pointed out in a recent essay for the Library...
marginalrevolution — Thousands of the finest automobiles ever made are now being abandoned every year since Dubai’s financial meltdown, left by expatriates and locals alike who flee in a hurry because they face crippling debts. With big loans to repay to the banks (unpaid debt or even bouncing a cheque is a...
freakonomics — [MUSIC: Ed Hartman, “Simple Life”] DUBNER: Hey Levitt, of all the things that are in your power to do at this very moment in time, what would be your very most favorite thing to do? LEVITT: If I could be doing anything right now, what would I be doing? DUBNER: Yeah. LEVITT: Probably playing...
econlog.econlib — In a post on Tuesday, "Find the Flaw," I asked readers to find and evaluate the implicit assumption in the following passage from an economics textbook: When physicians must be licensed and new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before they can be marketed, buyers are spared the...
freakonomics — Our latest podcast is called “Can You Be Too Smart for Your Own Good? And Other FREAK-quently Asked Questions.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above. You can also read the transcript; it includes credits for the music you’ll hear in the episode.) In...
stumblingandmumbling.typepad — Why aren't the Scots doing more to combat their culture of violence? Why aren't its community leaders doing more to rein in their violent minority? Don't we need tougher laws to protect us from the threat posed by men of Scottish appearance? You might think I've lost my mind. From...
marginalrevolution — Higher Education Minister Genevieve Fioraso this past week introduced a bill that would allow French universities to teach more courses in English, even when English is not the subject. The goal, she explained, is to attract more students from such countries as Brazil, China and India, where English is widely...
econlog.econlib — This morning, I tweeted the following: Spend extra $ to cut your commute. I read (in @rdobelli's book?) that we underestimate commuting costs.— Art Carden (@artcarden) May 22, 2013 We've tried to model it. When we lived in Memphis, we lived in what a colleague called "Midtown East," near the intersection of...
marginalrevolution — The author is Ron Unz, and the topic is what the media chooses to cover or not. His thoughts run in directions very different than mine (I favor invisible hand mechanisms to a much greater degree, for one thing), but here is the essay. It is entitled “Our American Pravda.” It...
econlog.econlib — Vipul Naik drew my attention to Brian's comment on my last immigration post:If you are a good libertarian, you will care only about your own freedom and well being. The freedom of others is only of concern to the extent that it enhances your freedom and well being. Any concern...
marginalrevolution — In the United States, Julie Phillips, a sociologist at Rutgers University, was among the first researchers to frisk these middle-age suicides for deeper meaning. In 2010 she and a colleague declared the age range a new danger zone for self-harm. Many commentators took this as another fun fact about the...
freakonomics — (Photo: Steve Jurvetson) From the (Saskatoon) Star-Phoenix: When Jason Childs and his colleagues went about devising a new course in economics at the University of Regina, they wanted to find a focus that didn’t involve the overused and fictitious widget. What they arrived at was a product that was historic and central to...
freakonomics — Aon just released its 2013 Terrorism and Political Violence Risk Map. Interestingly, reports Business Insider, the risk levels in summer vacation favorites France and Spain are “actually equivalent to China and Russia, presumably on the basis of the former countries’ recent, heated demonstrations protesting austerity.” Denmark, Finland, Japan, Australia, Iceland, Uruguay and...
marginalrevolution — 1. More from Ryan Avent on liquidity leaks. 2. Why many Germans wish to keep their small denomination coins. 3. Applied lessons from the Joplin tornado, and the same authors on the lessons from Soviet sports and chess dominance. 4. Quick quiz: did this help Spain or hurt Spain? 5. Norbert Wiener’s lost essay...
econlog.econlib — Private Sector, 1: FEMA, 0 Social media is [sic] often recognized narrowly as a way to connect with friends, or to share and read the news. Yesterday it was demonstrated that social media can serve as a medium of mobilization for disaster relief, helping Americans all over the country reach...
freakonomics — My close friend, colleague, and frequent co-author John List has written a popular (non-academic) book with another economist, Uri Gneezy. John and Uri are pioneers in the area of “field experiments” which bring the power of randomized experiments into real-world settings. In my opinion, field experiments are the future of empirical economics. We’ve...
freakonomics — Six female scientists who didn’t get their due. Why kids in France don’t get ADHD. When averages don’t tell the story: the U.S. has many of the world’s brightest students, and also a lot of low-scoring students. Reverse colonialism: high unemployment at home drives Spanish youth to Latin America. The psychology of hoarding. Americans, especially...
marginalrevolution — Here is one typical complaint about bubbles, from Jesse Eisinger, excerpt: We are four years into the One Percent’s recovery. Now, we are in Round 3 of quantitative easing, the formal term for the Fed injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy by purchasing longer-term assets like Treasury bonds...
marginalrevolution — This is the kind of argument which no one will successfully rebut, but no one really will take on and adopt either. Does that mean we are defective? Or is there simply ineffable wisdom in “how things have been done”? Must we keep closed all Pandora’s boxes? Here is the abstract...
econlog.econlib — Are instrumental variables (IV) estimates really superior to ordinary least squares (OLS)? Most high-status empirical economists seem to think so. Meta-analyses often treat IV as presumptively superior to OLS. Yet when you ponder IV output, its often simply bizarre.Rose and Betts, "The Effect of High School Courses on Earnings" (Review...