Are Transportation Planners Smarter Than Mold?
Transportation planners are a noble and advanced species; all I have met have opposable thumbs, walk upright, and have a reasonable command of fire and language. But the results of a fascinating new experiment reported in the journal Science give us cause to question whether their work would be better performed by primordial slime. Read More »
Testing Geoengineering Before It’s Needed
The SuperFreakonomics chapter on geoengineering solutions to global warming has generated plenty of heat, but scientific and political interest in the concept is on the rise. Read More »
Can You Trust Census Data?
Let’s start with the 2000 Decennial Census. Your responses to the Census were used for two purposes. First, the Census Bureau tallied up every response to produce its official population counts. And second, it produced a 1-in-20 sub-sample of these responses, which it made available for analysis by researchers. Just about every economist I know has used this Census sub-sample, as do a fair number of demographers, sociologists, political scientists, and private-sector market researchers. Read More »
The Economics of Superstardom
Labor economists use the term “superstar” very specifically, based on a wonderful paper by the late Sherwin Rosen: A superstar is one of the very top people in an occupation offering huge pay because performances are widely reproducible (through recordings, TV, movies, books, etc.). (By this definition it is hard to imagine an economist superstar!) Read More »
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