Boo Journal: There Goes the NASCAR Vote
So the First and Second Ladies (Michelle Obama and Jill Biden) were brought in as grand marshals for the NASCAR season finale at Homestead (won in spectacular fashion by the absurdly entertaining Tony Stewart), and there was enough booing from the crowd to turn the story into “Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden Draw Boos at NASCAR Event.” Video is here.
In our podcast “Boo…Who?”, we poked into political booing and sports booing, and how the two occasionally intersect. Bottom line: it’s often not pretty.
A couple twists worth noting in this case: these weren’t politicians getting booed but the wives of politicians (which would make the booing seem particularly hardcore); and they were there as part of a charitable campaign to help military personnel and veterans (which would make the booing seem to be a complaint about trying to score political points).
Now imagine for a moment that you were the person who handled this event from the White House side. Read More »
“Football Freakonomics”: Is Momentum a Myth?
The following is a cross-post from NFL.com, where we’ve recently launched a Football Freakonomics Project.
Is momentum a myth? That’s the question we ask in our latest installment of Football Freakonomics. It’s the kind of topic that academic researchers are increasingly interested in – and the kind of topic that makes a lot of sports fans hate academic researchers.
Why?
Because they take all the fun out of our arguments! Do we really want to haul out a spreadsheet to talk about whether Mike Smith was a bonehead for gambling on 4th down? Or whether icing the kicker is a good idea?
As someone who has one foot in both camps (fandom and academic research), I can see both sides of the argument. In the case of momentum, however, I really want to know the truth – perhaps because it’s the kind of phenomenon that is harder to prove than most. Read More »
The Problem with Recalls
This week, Apple announced that it will be recalling the first-generation iPod Nano.
I happen to have one, and it’s been working without a hitch since 2006. I’ve never had an incentive to replace it for a few key reasons: I think it’s aesthetically pleasing, storage space isn’t a problem for me, and battery life isn’t a problem either — I use it on my daily commute. I also prefer buttons to touch screens.
But after seeing photos of a melting iPod due to the battery problem, I’m inclined to take part. Especially after I learned I’d be getting the same product, just new and without the fear of fire.
Here’s the hidden cost of a recall, though: Apple will send the new product to me 6 to 8 weeks after they’ve received my old one. Read More »
Does Raising the Minimum Wage Increase Unemployment?
Conventional wisdom holds that instituting or raising the minimum wage will increase unemployment. But a recent paper by Jeremy Magruder, an economist at Berekley, finds the opposite effect. Magruder examines the case of Indonesia in the 1990s, “where real minimum wages rose rapidly in a varied way and then dropped quickly with the inflation rate in the South East Asian financial crash.” Here’s an excerpt:
Read More »When minimum wages rose in one district relative to their neighbors, that district observed an increase in formal sector employment and a decrease in informal employment. It also observed an increase in local expenditures, which is consistent with the hypothesized mechanism of the big push: that local product demand increases labor demand. Moreover, this increase was only observed in local industries which can be industrialized and do supply local demand, supporting the model further. Tradable manufacturing firms saw no growth in employment, and un-tradable, but non-industrializable services saw an increase in informal employment.
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 