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Should College Football Be Taxed? Bring Your Questions for Allen Sanderson

Allen R. Sanderson is an economist at the University of Chicago who enjoys, among other things, writing about sports. Some of his past work includes pieces on the puzzling economics of sports, why ties should be allowed in baseball, and how football highlights America’s least flattering features.

Sanderson’s most recent piece comes from the November 2011 issue of Chicago Life magazine, entitled “Taxes and Touchdowns.” In it, Sanderson argues in favor of imposing “steep” taxes on college football (and perhaps basketball) and that a college sports tax should be seen as the fifth sin tax, next to taxes on alcohol, cigarettes, gasoline and fat/sugar. And he’s not just talking about taxing certain aspects of college football; he’s talking about taxing the whole shebang: advertising, television broadcasts, logo merchandise sales, gate receipts. And then using that money to help support those “student-athletes” who don’t make it pro in their effort to finish up their education. Read More »



Why Gun Traffickers Should Live in Arizona

A new study by Brian Knight, an economist at Brown, explores the flow of the illegal firearm market in America and compares the source of guns used in crimes to gun laws in and around that state.

How big is the market for illegal firearms? Pretty big. Knight writes: “ATF investigations into tracking between July 1996 and December 1998 identify over 84,000 firearms that were diverted into this secondary market (ATF, 2000).” Meanwhile, each state in America legislates its own gun laws, resulting in cross-state externalities. For example, Knight cites anecdotal evidence showing that a gun purchased legally in Virginia for $150 – $200 typically resells in New York City for $500 – $600. This is the sort of thing that keeps Michael Bloomberg up at night.

Here’s the abstract: Read More »



Confessions of a Steve Jobs Fanboy

This is a cross-post from James Altucher‘s blog Altucher Confidential. His previous appearances on the Freakonomics blog can be found here.

I saw the news this morning when I looked at my iPad. Whenever I wake up, the first thing I do, before even going to the bathroom, is turn on the iPad and check the news. My heart sank when I saw the headline: Steve Jobs, dead at 56.

From my first Apple product (an Apple II+), to doing all my homework in college on the first Macintosh, to reading this news on my iPad, to typing this sentence on my Macbook Air, so much of my life has been influenced and changed by this man. Very sad day. My question for readers (please answer in the comments section) is: what was your first Apple product?

And now, here’s an essay I’ve written about Jobs:

I was standing right next to Steve Jobs in 1989, and felt completely inadequate. The guy was incredibly wealthy, good-looking: a nerd super-rockstar who had just convinced my school to buy a bunch of NeXT computers, which were in fact the best machines to program on at the time. I wanted to be him, badly. Read More »



Explaining the Black-White Wage Gap

As of 2010, black men in America earned 74.5 percent of a typical white man’s wage; black women earned 69.6 percent. A new paper from Harvard’s Roland Fryer (certified genius), Princeton’s Devah Pager and Jorg L. Spenkuch of the University of Chicago examines some of the factors driving the black-white wage gap.

Using data from unemployed workers in New Jersey who sought employment for up to 12 weeks, the authors show that racial discrimination accounts for one-third of the wage difference. They also estimate that blacks have a 7 percent lower reservation wage than their white counterparts at a comparable job that demands a comparable skill level. Fryer and his colleagues control for skill level by measuring the job applicants’ wage at their previous job against the wage they were seeking.

Here’s the abstract: Read More »



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