Sorry, moms: it turns out that reading in low light won’t make you go blind; going hatless in the winter won’t make you freeze to death; and you could eat poinsettias all day and not be poisoned. All this holiday medical myth-busting and more is courtesy of our somber friends at the British Medical Journal (part one and part two). . . .
The winter holidays listed by Wikipedia word count. (Earlier) Is this blogger a financial Nostradamus or a really clever insider? The economics field takes time for some self-reflection. (Earlier) Lighten up with The Economist‘s Credit Crunch board game. (Earlier)
The last thing in the world I would have predicted at that time (as I headed off to management consulting) was that I would be included as one of the rising stars of the profession in the follow-up article the Economist wrote 10 years later.
Last week I did something that felt very 1990’s: I purchased a compact disc. The CD wasn’t for me; it was a Christmas present.
As I wrapped the CD, I pondered the silliness of the whole enterprise. After all, the recipient — like most of us these days — listens almost exclusively to MP3 files. In fact, I’m not even sure if he has a CD player beyond his laptop, which he will use to convert his disc-shaped gift into a more useful set of MP3 files.
There was a lot of noise last week about how the banks who’ve been drawing down the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program fund can’t account for how the money is being spent. It’s not like $700 billion can just disappear, right? Well, a reader named Gannon Hubbard wrote in with a hunch as to where the money is being spent. . . .
Nothing grabs headlines like dire warnings about homicide trends. And there is no criminologist better at garnering headlines than James Alan Fox, whom you might remember from Freakonomics for the ominous reports he produced about juvenile homicide for Attorney General Janet Reno in the 1990’s, even as crime began to plunge. James Alan Fox is baaaack with a new report . . .
English is everywhere — the lingua franca (should be lingua anglica) of today’s world! Its universal usage minimizes transaction costs in an increasingly integrated world — and that integration has increased interest in learning the lingua anglica. I feel guilty about this, and all American economists should: It’s easier for us to write our scholarly papers than it is for . . .
I just received the following e-mail from my accountants, who have several clients invested with Bernard Madoff. They are passing along some year-end tax advice that contains at least a sliver of good news: Taxpayers who invested in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC directly, or through a fund of funds, have a loss that is most probably categorized as . . .
Time‘s Amanda Ripley reminds us that last week’s crash of a Continental Airlines Jet in Denver wasn’t especially unusual. That’s because, as is typical of plane crashes, everyone survived. In this case, flight attendants and passengers worked together to evacuate the plane quickly after it veered off the runway during takeoff, crashing into a ditch and bursting into flames. Levitt . . .
If you’re looking for a silver lining in this bad economy and especially in a dismal Christmas retail season, you can at least console yourself with the thought that there will be less deadweight loss this year than in past Christmases — that is, less inefficiency generated by people spending money to buy things for other people who value the . . .
Alex Rigopulos started playing video games at 3 years old on a Magnavox Odyssey console, and has been an avid gamer ever since. He earned his B.S. in music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his M.S. from the computer music group of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory. In 1995, he co-founded the video-game development company Harmonix with the goal . . .
On Bloomberg.com, John Lippert presents an interesting and extremely well-reported article on the financial crisis’s impact on the thinking of Chicago economists. It does a nice job of capturing the multifaceted nature of the institution, with people on all sides of the issues. I absolutely love the following excerpt, which better captures what it is like to hang around with . . .
The car companies can barely give away an S.U.V. these days. The latest evidence of this comes in the form of three more closings of factories making S.U.V.’s. According to that New York Times article, S.U.V. sales plunged by more than 40 percent this year, compared to a 16 percent decline for new vehicles overall.
One of the most important but underreported financial indicators is the CBOE‘s Volatility Index (^VIX), which measures the market’s expectation of future volatility in stock prices. (The CBOE has written a nice technical white paper describing how it is calculated, here.) Traditionally, the annualized volatility of the S&P 500 has been 20 percent, but last month when I went to . . .
When I casually offered some Freakonomics schwag to the person who could find the most compelling similarity between prostitutes and rice, I didn’t expect much of a reader response, especially given that the contest wasn’t mentioned in the headline and came buried after paragraphs of rather dry economic argument. I knew, however, that I was mistaken as soon as the . . .
Chinese cities today have more than 130 million migrant workers, most of whom have relocated from more rural parts of China, writes Leslie Chang in her recent book Factory Girls: “Together they represent the largest migration in human history — three times the number of people who emigrated to America from Europe over a century.”
I just spent a great week in London with the family (see here, and here) and yes, I did run across a few pasties, including these, in the breathtaking food halls at Harrods: I find it hard to believe that the food halls can be profitable; part of the spectacle is the volume and variety of every sort of food . . .
Sudhir Venkatesh wondered recently on this blog why the Wall Street meltdown hadn’t set off a wave of rioting in the streets. But riots may not be so far off, if the continuing unrest in Greece is any indication. (Take a look at a compelling set of photos from the always-compelling Big Picture blog.) In The Atlantic, meanwhile, Robert Kaplan . . .
I’m not a big fan of focus groups (when it comes to businesses figuring out what customers want) for a number of reasons. First, they are unnatural settings with a very high degree of scrutiny, which may distort how people respond. Second, it seems likely that people will tend to say what they think others expect them to say, or . . .
If things keep going as they are, Billboard is going to have to start a new Hot 100 chart just for songs about the Great Recession. Earlier we posted a music video of “Fannie Mae Eat Freddie Mac and Cheese.” Here now are two more recession blues: “Credit River,” by Constantines: Constantines – Credit River And “Everybody’s Getting Bailed Out . . .
My wife announced yesterday that she is “traveled out.” I’m not surprised — I am too: Since mid-August we’ve taken trips (mostly long weekends) to Istanbul, Munich, French Switzerland, northeast Italy, Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Barcelona, and, starting tomorrow, Paris plus London again.
Anyone who pays short-run capital gains tax this year is either really lucky or really dumb.
Freakonomics reader Presh Talwalkar, author of the Mind Your Decisions blog, wonders why there’s no holiday-gift guide for economists: I see many practical applications to such a list. It could help students give gifts to professors, businesses give gifts to hired economists, etc. Perhaps this list would reduce the “deadweight loss” of Christmas gifts. The problem, of course, is that . . .
Color me confused, but I’ve never really understood the difference between a bet and “financial trade.” And if there ever really was a line, it’s definitely becoming blurrier. In recent months, there have been millions of dollars bet in options markets, as traders seek a big payday in the event that the economy heads south — and this hasn’t raised . . .
In the wake of a crackdown on black-market alcohol in Indonesia, the country’s sole legal alcohol importer is suddenly faced with meeting demand four times higher than what the government’s import quotas allow. The resulting crunch has led to chronic alcohol shortages and skyrocketing prices across the country, the BBC reports. Alcohol consumption is generally frowned upon in Indonesia — . . .
CNBC delves into the Bernie Madoff story tonight at 9 p.m. E.S.T. For those intrigued by white-collar crime, this should be quite an interesting show. I’m still struggling to understand how a fund that claims to have $17 billion in assets can have defrauded investors for $50 billion. Had he also borrowed $33 billion that he will never repay, so . . .
At around 231 million percent, Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation (which we’ve written about before) is currently the highest in the world. Blog reader Ben Saltsman sent us this photo of a restroom sign in South Africa, which hints at one use for Zimbabwe’s severely devalued currency: Photo: Eugine Baron But is it cost-effective for Zimbabweans to use money instead of T.P.? A . . .
My Michigan son tells me that the Detroit Free Press will be doing home delivery only three days a week as a cost-cutting measure. I asked him what the source of the difficulty is, and he responded succinctly, “The internet, Dad!” Of course he’s right; internet advertising at least partly displaces print advertising, shifting the demand curve for newspapers leftward; . . .
We’ve been following James Altucher‘s continuing social experiment around the idea of ad-agency disintermediation — JungleSmash, a cash contest where people compete to make the best commercial for a product of James’s choosing. The submissions are in for the latest product: Monster Energy Drinks. It’s a little graphic, but “Garage Can-Opener Massacre” is definitely worth a watch — as are . . .
On family holiday in London, we were riding in a taxi out to the Imperial War Museum. As we passed the riverfront headquarters of MI6, a.k.a. the Secret Intelligence Service, my wife happened to be futzing with her iPhone. A list of Wi-Fi networks popped up. At the top: a network called KeepNoseOut. Coincidence? I’d like to think not. I . . .