In golf, there is a tradition of the last winner of the Masters helping the latest victor slip into a green jacket. In economics, we don’t have the same tradition, but if we did, it would have been an honor for me to bestow a green pocket protector on Daron Acemoglu last week when [...]

[for a Freakonomics status report, click here]
Our publisher has been busily promoting and selling Freakonomics, which of course is its job, and which we, not surprisingly, applaud. When something good happens — a nice review in the Wall Street Journal, for instance, or an upcoming appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart – the [...]

Whenever I post on baseball, people get very agitated. So I figured it was time to ruffle a few more feathers.
My contention is that the secret to Oakland’s success has little to do with the things described in Moneyball, such as the emphasis on finding the skills in baseball that are good at producing [...]

Over the years I have had the opportunity to write about a great many interesting people. My mother had an extraordinary (and long-buried) story to tell. I’ve interviewed Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; the rookie class of the N.F.L. ; a remarkable cat burglar who stole only sterling silver. But lately I have been writing about [...]

The prices at McDonald’s didn’t go down yesterday, but eating fatty foods nonetheless just got a lot cheaper.
A new study released by the CDC is described in news reports as follows:
The death toll from obesity is less than a third of the government’s previous estimate, researchers are reporting today, contradicting warnings that poor diet and [...]

Not that Malcolm Gladwell needs us to blog about him. He only happens to have the #1 ranked book on both the New York Times hardcover and paperback lists (Blink and The Tipping Point respectively). Those are the two most interesting and entertaining books I have read in the last five years. And his New [...]

Well, Freakonomics is finally on sale. It should be in most bookstores today, and is ready to ship from Amazon.com, bn.com, etc. The good news is that the book is already in a fourth printing. The bad news is … well, there is no bad news, not yet at least. Early reviews are excellent. On [...]

Not many people dream the dreams of economists. But for someone like me, I was able to live out a little fantasy today. As part of the Center I run, we had a conference call with our board of advisors. In the room or on the phone were many of the greatest living economists: Gary [...]

Freakonomics is almost officially for sale (Tues., April 12 is the date), and on Amazon.com and bn.com, where it can be pre-ordered, it has jumped onto the best-seller lists. (As of 9:00 p.m. EDT on April 9, it was #15 on Amazon.) Its authors are happily mystified. This spike seems attributable to a very nice [...]

Of the top 50 selling books at Amazon when I checked the other day, 47 were sole-authored. In contrast, I would guess that more than 80 percent of articles published in academic journals are co-authored. This strikes me as a real puzzle.
Why should this be?
Usually, we tend to think that as projects become [...]

I do not deny that the Oakland As record in the past is amazing. People seem to be missing this point. What I am arguing is that they were not successful for the reasons that were most prominently trotted out in Moneyball, namely the ability to find good offensive players cheap. I think it is [...]

If you happen to listen to NPR’s “Weekend Edition” with Scott Simon, you will hear Steve Levitt discussing Freakonomics this Sat., April 9. (Click here to find the time and station in your area.) Simon himself has a new book out soon, Pretty Birds; we haven’t read it yet but if it is half as [...]

My comments on Billy Beane have a lot of people upset, as usual.
So you tell me. If the Oakland A’s win 80 games a year for the next five years, would those who think Billy Beane should be the next pope still hold that opinion?
(BTW, I see Beane is a real long shot to succeed [...]

My friend and colleague Gary Becker is arguably the most influential economist of the last fifty years. I published a study in the American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings a few years back that attempted to identify which economic theories and economic theorists were having an influence on cutting edge, data driven economic research today. [...]

It seems like just about everyone thinks Billy Beane is a genius, thanks to the Michael Lewis book Moneyball, which details the way in which his Oakland A’s use statistics in innovative ways to choose talent and win games.
I’ve never been part of the Billy Beane cult. For instance, in a January 2004 Financial [...]