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FREAK-est Links

1. NPR offers a taxonomy of online complainers; which kind are you?
2. The next sports book I’m dying to read; some background.
3. “Judicial Hellholes“: Philadelphia tops the list. (HT: Ryan)
4. Carl Bialik on silly cocaine stats.



Of Lags and Caps: Possible Implementations of a Brandeis Tax

Last Monday, Aaron Edlin and I published a cri de coeur op-ed in the New York Times calling for a Brandeis tax, an automatic tax that would put the brakes on income inequality. This is the third in a series of posts (the first and second posts are here and here) explaining more about our rationale and providing more details on how a Brandeis tax might be implemented. You can also listen to my hour-long interview on Connecticut Public Radio’s “Where we Live” here.

Of Lags and Caps: More Details About Possible Implementations of a Brandeis Tax
By Ian Ayres & Aaron Edlin

Remarkably of the hundreds of emails we received in reaction to our op-ed, almost no one questioned Brandeis’s idea that we can have great concentrations of wealth, or democracy but not both. People questioned other aspects of our proposal, asking questions like (1) how would it work in a world of income bunching; (2) would people still have the incentive to work hard; and (2) is it fair to have very high tax rates on the affluent.

Our last post talked about alternative potential triggers. Here we tackle some more detailed questions about implementation including how to trade off different kinds of distortions. Read More »



“Football Freakonomics”: Does Firing Your Head Coach Fix Anything?

‘Tis the season – for the firing of head coaches, that is. In the space of two weeks, three teams – the Jaguars, Chiefs, and Dolphins – canned their top man.

Allow me to make two seemingly contradictory points:

  • An NFL head coach is probably the most influential, hands-on coach in the four major sports; but:
  • Firing the head coach of a bad team probably does a lot less to improve that team than most of us think.

Our latest “Football Freakonomics” segment (video below) asks whether firing a head coach really does much to improve a team’s chances – or if it’s simply the standard move for losing organizations, meant to appease critics in the media, the stands, and even the locker room. Read More »



Is There a Rooftop Solar Bubble? And Is It About to Burst?

Government efforts to boost affordability and expectations of unsustainably high investment returns generated a booming market destined to crash.

I’m talking, of course, about the market for rooftop solar, which has grown exponentially in recent years.

Most people are aware of the government subsidies that offset 30 percent or more of the installation cost of commercial and residential rooftop solar—more than $10,000 for a typical solar home in California. Less known is that those up-front savings, as big as they are, still aren’t enough to generate the double-digit investment returns that solar promoters promise. In fact, for residential solar panels to pay for themselves over their 20-25-year lifespans, households and businesses must receive a second, hidden subsidy for their solar electricity generation that is far too high to be justified by economic fundamentals, and that cannot be sustained in the long run. In California, some residential solar electricity fetches a price nearly four times its energy value. Read More »



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