From Trash to Cash
What would motivate you to throw away less trash? Perhaps a healthy dose of environmental guilt would do the trick. Or would it take another kind of green — as in cold, hard cash — to force your hand? In the latest Freakonomics Radio Marketplace segment, host Kai Ryssdal talks with Stephen Dubner about how Read More »
An Air-Bag Wrinkle to Consider
In the SuperFreakonomics chapter on cheap and simple solutions, we wrote: And seat belts, at about $25 a pop, are one of the most cost-effective lifesaving devices ever invented. In a given year, it costs roughly $500 million to put them in every U.S. vehicle, which yields a rough estimate of $30,000 for every life saved. How does this compare with a far more complex safety feature like air bags? At an annual U.S. price of more than $4 billion, air bags cost about $1.8 million per life saved. Read More »
Peak Travel?
Call me a skeptic about the “peak oil” story. Human ingenuity has always found ways to produce more of, find substitutes for, or discover ways to do without a scarce resource when price signals tell us to. But if peak oil is true, doesn’t one good peak deserve another? Why not meet peak oil head on with its dreaded natural enemy: peak travel? Read More »
Haiku and the Invisible Hand
The economist Stephen T. Ziliak is also a haikuist. As he writes in Poetry magazine, using haiku helps add “feelings to economics.” Read More »
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. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie features Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and was made by a dream team of documentary directors. Paste Magazine named it one of the 