Equal Opportunity Greed
One of the President’s budget proposals treats tax deductions as if a person’s marginal tax rate were 28 percent, rather than the actual possibly 39.6 percent. This would bring in substantial extra...
View ArticleIt’s the Weather, Stupid
We’ve written in the past about how weather can have a surprisingly strong effect on things like civil war and riots. (Short story: rioters don’t like getting rained on and droughts can start a war.)...
View ArticleLiberals in Disguise?
Our podcast “The Truth Is Out There…Isn’t It?” showed that even very smart people can fool themselves into confirming their own beliefs, especially when surrounded by peers with the same beliefs....
View ArticleTitles of Laws as Propaganda
How illiterate do our politicians think we are? In the old days we had plain titles of laws, such as the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act. In the United Kingdom, the titles of laws still...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Politicians Plug Electric Cars
(Photo: mariordo59) A new study by Bradley W. Lane, Natalie Messer-Betts, Devin Hartmann, Sanya Carley, Rachel M. Krause, and John D. Graham on why governments promote electric vehicles finds that the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Startup Party
There’s a new political party in town: it’s primarily focused on creating more political parties. Jared Hardy recently wrote to us about Startup Party USA, the “first 3+ political party in the United...
View ArticleWho Drinks More: Liberals or Conservatives?
Liberals, according to a new paper in the Journal of Wine Economics by Pavel A. Yakovlev and Walter P. Guessford of Duquesne University. The paper, “Alcohol Consumption and Political Ideology: What’s...
View ArticleAre Vaccines Red or Blue?
As the long-running debate continues over whether childhood vaccines cause autism, Yale professor Dan M. Kahan (who has appeared on Freakonomics Radio) takes a look at people’s attitudes toward...
View ArticleSome Evidence on Whether Money Buys Political Influence
A new paper by graduate students David Broockman and Josh Kalla tackles an eternal, oft-debated question: does money buy influence? Here’s the abstract: Concern that lawmakers grant preferential...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Tax Man Nudgeth: A New Marketplace Podcast
Photo Credit: Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “The Tax Man Nudgeth.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Candy We Still Believe In: A Halloween Experiment
(Photo: Steven Depolo) Instead of trick or treat, how about treatment or control? We conducted two new studies on my porch this year for Halloween. Unfortunately, the mayor of New Haven recommended...
View ArticleAre Independents More Immune to Bias Than Liberals or Conservatives?
Dan Kahan‘s research at the Cultural Cognition Project has found that even very smart people fit their knowledge to their ideology. (He has appeared on this blog a few times, and in our podcast “The...
View ArticleBad Incentives That Work Quite Well: The Opportunity Cost of Political...
Nick Kristof, writing in the N.Y. Times: This is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads...
View ArticleA Solid Fiscal-Cliff Plan
As Republicans and Democrats continue to bicker about spending and taxes, the Onion has stepped in with an excellent plan for averting a fiscal crisis: STEP ONE: Eliminate school breakfast and lunch...
View ArticleThe True Rise in Cost of Living
For more than eight decades, some of the smartest people in the economics business have worked on index-number theory. The basic issue is how to measure price inflation. A few years ago the...
View ArticleHow Political Are Judges?
Cass Sunstein, writing on Bloomberg View, reviews the research on judicial voting patterns to determine whether judges are really as “political” as people seem to think. The good news: federal judges...
View ArticlePetitioning the President
The Atlantic has a roundup of the 12 goofiest petitions submitted so far to the White House’s We the People initiative. Our two favorites: “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Look at Today's Israeli Election Ballot
For Americans who rarely get a look at a multi-party (make that multi-multi-party?) election: Here is one preview of the outcome. This was the first I’ve heard of a Pirate Party, but it is hardly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sure, I Remember That (Ep. 113)
[omny:https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/aaea4e69-af51-495e-afc9-a9760146922b/14a43378-edb2-49be-8511-ab0d000a7030/3321f252-bc4f-4fc8-8b7e-ab0d001a60e9/audio.mp3] Do you remember this skeet-shooting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Gerrymandering Works
Photo Credit: Tom Adamson via Compfight cc Writing for Bloomberg, Chris Christoff and Greg Giroux explore the math behind gerrymandering in Michigan with some fascinating examples and graphics. The...
View Article
