Freakonomics Poll: Will New Cigarette Warning Labels Reduce Smoking?
Soon, new warning labels on cigarette packs will have even scarier messages, and photos too. Canada has been doing this for years. Will it reduce smoking?
Here are three quick thoughts.
1) I strongly doubt it will increase the quantity of information about smoking. Folks know it is bad for you already.
2) This does not mean it won’t work. Maybe people try to forget the health risks in that moment of passion (folks know birth control helps prevent pregnancy, but similarly, when faced with impending temptations, magically forget such trivial details). Will these photos remind them at that moment of temptation? Maybe. Or maybe it will increase how often their kids or friends give them grief for it, thus creating some social pressure to stop. Naturally there is a counter-argument, that this may enhance teenage smoking, if “being bad” makes it cooler. Read More »
Prove Paul Krugman Wrong! Vote Wolfers
(8/24) Update: It appears that Real Paul Krugman was never on Google+. Instead, it was a hoax by a prankster with an ideological axe to grind. I’ll just say: He was convincing. And I was punk’d.
OK, so I’m in week three of my Twitter experiment. And a funny thing happened along the way. Google Plus. I’m enjoying the conversation at Twitter. But I think G+ is the better technology. So I’ve started posting my more polished (and sometimes more verbose) gems over on Google+.
So far, it’s a bit quiet. But helpfully, Patrick Bernau has compiled a page of economists publicly posting at Google+. So if you prefer Google, you’ll love this page. Read More »
Raising MPG Standards: The Second-best Solution to a Gas Tax Increase
It got surprisingly little press coverage given the degree to which it will affect our lives (thanks, pesky world economic meltdown), but in case you missed it, the Obama administration recently worked out a compromise with the major automakers that will dramatically raise the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards.
The new regulations mandate that the mix of new cars sold in the year 2025 must achieve about 54.5 miles per gallon (though if you read the fine print you’ll see that credits for various other green innovations mean that actual fuel economy will be more like 40 MPG.) For reference, the auto fleet currently on the road gets about 27 MPG. It’s a well-done agreement that will help avoid well-done citizens as global warming accelerates.
Before proceeding, let me note that I am strongly in favor of this policy. The problem of excessive fossil fuel use in transportation is multidimensional: if the issue of global warming doesn’t move you, the thought of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad using our own hard-earned dollars to tweak our geopolitical noses should.
However, it is worth noting that raising CAFE standards is what political scientists and economists call a “second-best” solution; we could be doing considerably better if we thought all of this through more clearly. Read More »
and 
. 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 