To Ask or Not to Ask: Experiments in Charitable Giving
Our recent podcast “What Makes a Donor Donate?” features economist John List, who has concentrated his research on the science of philanthropy. In short, when it comes to convincing people to give, some ways are better than others. But what about just directly asking them?
A new study from authors James Andreoni, Justin M. Rao, and Hannah Trachtman examines the way people behave when solicited for donations by bell-ringers from the Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign. The authors designed an experiment where bell-ringers were sent to a grocery store in suburban Boston, and positioned at either one or both of the store’s entrances. Read More »
How American Food Got So Bad: Full Transcript
This is the full transcript for “How American Food Got So Bad.”
Kai Ryssdal: Time now for a little Freakonomics Radio, that moment of our lives — every couple of weeks — where we talk to with Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and blog of the same name. The subject matter is the hidden side of everything.
Dubner, it’s good to talk to you my friend.
Stephen Dubner: Good to talk to you Kai. And I have a question for you if you don’t mind.
Ryssdal: Of course, that’s kind of how these things go, isn’t it?
Dubner: On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate America’s food — I’m curious to know?
Ryssdal: OK, big topics. Uh… 7.3.
Dubner: Yeah, all right. So… um…
Ryssdal: So is there a right answer?
Dubner: No, there is no right answer. I was just curious. You know why? Because we love to complain about our food.
Ryssdal: Yes.
Dubner: And for those who like to complain, there’s a new book coming out called “An Economist Gets Lunch,” by Tyler Cowen. And he explains — how he puts it — “How American Food Got Bad.” And some of the explanations are really interesting. For starters, he blames Prohibition. Read More »
How American Food Got So Bad: A New Marketplace Podcast
In our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast, Stephen Dubner and Kai Ryssdal talk about the unexpected reasons why American food got so bad. (Download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen live via the media player above, or read the transcript.)
In his forthcoming book An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies, economist Tyler Cowen pinpoints specific moments in history that affected American food for decades to come. From Prohibition to stringent immigration quotas to World War II, Cowen argues that large societal forces threw us into a food rut that lasted for roughly 70 years: Read More »
The Reminiscence Bump: Who’s Your Favorite Footballer?
Memory is a funny thing, as evidenced by a new experiment from Steve M. J. Janssen, David C. Rubin and Martin A. Conway. The BPS Research Digest blog summarizes:
Read More »Six hundred and nineteen people (aged 16 to 80) took part in the study online, conducted in Dutch and hosted on the website of the University of Amsterdam. Participants were presented with the names of 190 all-time leading football players and asked to name their judgment of the five best players of all time. They could either select from the list or choose their own.
The researchers calculated the mid-career point of the 172 players named by the participants and compared this against the participants’ age at that time. Participants overwhelming tended to name players whose career mid-point coincided with participants’ teens and early twenties. The modal age (i.e. the most common) of the participants at their chosen players’ mid-career was 17 years.
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