This Is Not Another Great Depression
Few people in the world know more about the Great Depression than economic historian Price Fishback, which is why whenever he offers an opinion on the subject, I always listen carefully. Back in the fall, Fishback wrote two outstanding posts here at the Freakonomics blog, one on what the New Deal tells us about the Read More »
How Life Has Changed
I played Life with some grandkids today, a much revised game from what we played with our kids. The paychecks you receive as you move along the board are taxed at a constant marginal tax rate of 50 percent, with an exemption of $10,000 of income. Read More »
What Can the Credit Crisis Teach Us About Flu Pandemics?
Long before swine flu hit, Timothy Geithner testified to Congress about the danger of a strange new epidemic. “Contagion spreads,” he warned in 2008, “transmitting waves of distress to other markets.” The contagion was loan defaults, and Bear Stearns was patient zero. The Fed’s bailout of Bear, he hoped, would slow or stop the spread Read More »
The Downside of Feedback
Feedback is such an elemental ingredient of nearly any human activity — consider the importance of coaching and teaching in particular, but also think about the creative arts — and yet there is huge variance on how much feedback a given person may get, or choose to accept. The web is probably the grandest (or Read More »
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