A New Series for the Thugz?
David Simon, creator of The Wire and Homicide, announced plans to shoot an HBO pilot of Treme, about the New Orleans neighborhood of that name. New Orleans is unfortunately rife with material for a crime drama. As Simon tells the Times-Picayune, the show would explore “political corruption, the public housing controversy, the crippled criminal-justice system, Read More »
Experiments in Business
Here’s an article in today’s Financial Times about a class on business experimentation that John List and I taught at the Booth School of Business. It does a nice job of laying out our philosophy regarding data and experiments. Thankfully, the reporter did not mention that most of the students hated the class. Read More »
Why Some Bunt and Some Don't
Library of Congress In his recent New York Times article on scientific studies of baseball, Alan Schwarz discusses a study showing that sacrifice bunts benefited the 2008 Mets, who bunted a lot, but would have hurt the 2005 Red Sox, who sacrifice bunted very rarely. This seems to me to be a mundane illustration of Read More »
Pirate Economics 101: A Q&A With Invisible Hook Author Peter Leeson
The crew of the Maersk Alabama, having survived an attack by pirates in Somalia last week, has returned home for a much-deserved rest. But with tensions ratcheting up between the U.S. and the rag-tag confederation of Somali pirates, it’s worth looking to the past for clues on how to tame the outlaw seas. Read More »
and 
. You can also watch it on 