A few weeks ago, we posted an item about an ad executive in Australia named James Hurman who auctioned off his smoking habit, agreeing to pay a steep fine (about $800) for every cigarette he smoked after the auction closed. He wound up selling the contract, he writes, “for NZ $300 [about US $240] to [...]

Jessica’s past posts can be found here, her own blog here, and her new book here.

Craig Glenday with Lucky Diamond Rich, the most tattooed person. (c) Guinness World Records.
Last week we solicited your questions for Guinness Book of World Records editor Craig Glenday.
Among other interesting queries, you asked:
Is Barry Bonds in this year’s book? What (besides being in the book) is in it for the record breaker? How much alcohol, [...]

Tomorrow is a big day for me — I’m running the Stockholm marathon.
Here’s a simple wisdom of crowds experiment: A free piece of Freakonomics schwag to whoever comes closest to guessing my finishing time. Leave your guesses in the comments anytime before the race begins (2 p.m. Stockholm time = 8 a.m. EST).
And [...]

When Levitt and I were up in Boston a couple months ago to write about the Celtics’ reliance on statistical analysis to make strategic and personnel decisions, one goal was to figure out strengths and weaknesses the Celtics knew about their own players and other teams’ players that weren’t obvious. Danny Ainge and Mike Zarren [...]

My last post showed that people with relatively extreme political views tend to be significantly happier than moderates.
I’ll admit I have a harder time relating to political zealotry than I do to political views that simply oppose my own. I have definite opinions — especially on issues like regulation, taxes, and freedom — but I’ve [...]

Here’s the most recent guest bleg from Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations. His past blegs can be found here. Send us your own bleg requests here.
Thanks to the hundreds of people who have responded to my blegging for contributions of modern proverbs over the past two weeks. Now I turn to [...]

Emek Basker is an incredibly creative (and under-appreciated) industrial organization economist. She is also surely the leading Wal-Mart-ologist, and has been studying big box stores for several years.
Her most recent piece provides a very nice teaching example highlighting the importance of the income elasticity of demand; she also managed the perfectly accurate but cheeky [...]

We wrote not long ago about the various negative externalities produced by driving — congestion, pollution, accident risk, etc. — and how pay-as-you-drive insurance might help impose the true cost of driving on each driver.
Now a reader named Larry Holt, the director of research of the Birmingham (Alabama) Regional Chamber of Commerce, writes in with [...]

The headline says it all, although the unspoken question is: will globalization indeed result in the hegemony of English, as has long been promised/threatened?
We gathered up some wise people who spend their time thinking about such things — Christian Rolling, Mark Liberman, Henry Hitchings, and John Hayden — and asked them to answer our question. [...]

I’m currently in Sweden, spending a couple of weeks at Stockholm University’s Institute for International Economic Studies. It is really a remarkable place.
“The Institute” was founded under the directorship of Nobellist Gunnar Myrdal, it thrived under the great Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, and is now guided by Torsten Persson, a giant in [...]

Screen Shot from the Marketplace Web site.
It’s next to impossible to find an economist who will support a gas tax holiday, but cutting the gas tax altogether is an option in Budget Hero, a surprisingly entertaining online game that puts you in charge of balancing the federal budget.
Based on budget models from the Congressional [...]

I’m trying to decide what to do about train travel during our 5-month sabbatical in Germany.
For $55 I can buy a card that gives me a 25 percent discount on all train tickets I buy. So if I buy $220 worth of train tickets I break even — any more than that is a [...]

Lots of people want to buy property in outer-space, argues blogger Glenn Reynolds. He points to customers of Lunar Embassy who pay $16 or $20 for novelty acres on the moon.
But to go from gimmicky certificates to serious lunar (and Martian) real estate development takes a serious economic incentive — like the concept of [...]

What do American drivers, the children of Lake Wobegon, and termites have in common?
They are all above average.
Here’s what a regular reader called LLP pointed out in an e-mail:

There is a TV ad running here in Southern California for a pest control company. It states that “the average termite eats 24 hours a day, [...]