Yes, Part II
In a recent post, I extolled the virtues of Robert Cialdini‘s Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. The book is wonderfully designed in 50 short chapters to describe the results of 50 different randomized field experiments. The format of, say, 1,800 words per chapter is a bit unusual. But I found it a Read More »
Zimbabwe’s Novel Currency
Zimbabwe’s currency has been essentially worthless in-country for months. Now the Zimbabwe dollar is officially worth more on eBay, where collectors can snap up a few trillion-dollar notes for less than $25. Technically, a currency exchange would give you 37 million Zimbabwe dollars for every U.S. dollar, but since Zimbabwe’s government recently suspended its currency Read More »
Révolte des Vignerons
Levitt‘s cheap wine advocacy may have met its match. To protest the falling price of wine, a French group calling itself the Regional Union for Viticultural Action has attacked French supermarkets in the past. Now it has adopted a more supply-side approach: the wine militants recently broke into a cooperative in the south of France, Read More »
Another Way to Look at Free-Throw Percentage
In a recent blog post, we linked to a New York Times article by John Branch showing that the percentage of made basketball free throws has remained steady for 50 years. A reader named Ashley Smart (aptonym?) replied with an amplification/caveat that is well worth sharing: I, like many of your other Freakonomics readers, was Read More »
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