Items by By Ian Ayres

• A New Method to the Freakonomics Madness

  —Freakonomics

  Number of comments: 15
  Contributor Ian Ayres sees two subtle shifts in methodology between Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics.

  
  

  [...]
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  Posted: December 08, 2009, 2:30pm EST
  by By IAN AYRES

• Monetizing Frustration

  —Freakonomics

  Number of comments: 15
  When I'm upset about the minor annoyances of life, I sometimes find it helpful to think of the price I'd charge for enduring the annoyance. For example, when my wallet was stolen, I wondered how many dollars would someone have had to pay me to consent to the taking.

  [...]

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  Posted: December 04, 2009, 9:54am EST
  by By IAN AYRES

• Why California's Tuition Hike Might Be a Good Thing

  —Freakonomics

  Students at University of California schools have been protesting the decision of the Board of Regents "to raise undergraduate fees - the equivalent of tuition - 32 percent next fall." But higher tuition, if it is accompanied with higher financial aid for lower- and middle-income students, improves equity. As Aaron [...]
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  Posted: November 24, 2009, 7:50am EST
  by By IAN AYRES

• "Just Compensation" Can Lead to More Government Takings

  —Freakonomics

  We are trapped in a world with far too few IRS audits. Law abiding tax payers hate being audited and their representatives in Congress have heard the message loud and clear - strangling the ability of the IRS to conduct field examinations. The problem with the current state of affairs [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 1:11pm EST
  by By IAN AYRES

• Let Me See You Wash Your Hands!

  —Freakonomics

  Number of comments: 15
  One of the heroes of SuperFreakonomics is Ignatz Semmelweis - who crunched numbers in the 1840's to champion the benefits of doctors washing their hands.

  
  

  ' [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 1:37pm EST
  by By IAN AYRES

• Is the Ban on Selling Bone Marrow Unconstitutional?

  —Freakonomics

  I've written a fair amount about organ transplantation in the past (for example, here and here). But it was only in reading SuperFreakonomics that I learned that "the Iranian government [pays] people to give up a kidney, roughly $1,200, with an additional sum paid by the kidney recipient." The book' [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 2:49pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• A Defense of Irrational Taxation?

  —Freakonomics

  Here's a behavioral puzzler: Why might it be more efficient for Connecticut to change its sales tax rate from 6 percent to e^2 percent ? Or more generally, why might using irrational numbers as tax rates be less distortionary than rational tax rates? A hint comes from a great article of' [...]
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  Posted: October 28, 2009, 1:23pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Beyoncé Logic

  —Freakonomics

  Implicitly, Alex was arguing, "If you are an independent, then you have a mind of your own." From which she concludes, "Conversely, if you are not an independent," then you do not have a mind of your own. Alex, I think, is making both a mistake in English usage and a mistake [...]
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  Posted: October 13, 2009, 10:41am EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Freakonomics Quiz: Doonesbury Logic

  —Freakonomics

  Here a pretty simple puzzler. Find a mistake in Alex's logic?

  
  

  ' [...]
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  Posted: October 07, 2009, 3:00pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Whiffenpoof

  —Freakonomics

  I sang this past weekend at the Whiffenpoof Centennial Reunion Concert (you can hear examples of recent groups singing, here). And I had a chance to sing with probably the best selling Whiff, Joseph Finder. Joe is the author of 9 corporate thrillers. (My favorite is "Company Man"). It will [...]
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  Posted: October 06, 2009, 12:23pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Shaq and the Case of the Missing Bribes

  —Freakonomics

  Number of comments: 15
  The extortion concern might explain a lot of our reluctance to offer bribes. But there are circumstances where a one-off bribe can work wonders. When my kids were little, I remember bribing a college student on an Amtrak train to move to another open seat so that my family could [...]
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  Posted: September 28, 2009, 2:18pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Etc. in the Graveyard

  —Freakonomics

  From my office window, I have a glorious view of the Grove Street Cemetery, where Yale students often go to read. By far, my favorite spot in this vast city of monuments is near the end of Cedar Avenue, past the graves of Eli Whitney and Noah Webster. There, just [...]
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  Posted: September 25, 2009, 1:14pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• The Economics of Disrespect

  —Freakonomics

  Number of comments: 15
  Representative Joe Wilson's much discussed "You Lie" outburst last Wednesday during President Obama's health care speech has been compared to the 1856 savage caning that Representative Preston Brooks delivered to Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner (for example, see here and here).

  
  

  [...]
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  Posted: September 16, 2009, 10:20am EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Ask Your Teachers for a Rebate

  —Freakonomics

  Students, if your professor has asked you to buy his or her book, ask for a rebate.

  
  

  [...]
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  Posted: September 11, 2009, 10:46am EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Find My Phone

  —Freakonomics

  Corporations like Amazon and Sirius won't help owners recover their lost gadgets, like cell phones or Kindles or the Sirius receiver. The article points out that "iPhone owners have a number of options to search for their handsets, including features that use GPS technology to send out virtual semaphores."

  [...]

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  Posted: September 09, 2009, 2:42pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Statistical Slumps

  —Freakonomics

  It was during a trip to the Boston Science Museum that I had an idea about calculating statistical slumps.

  
  

  [...]
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  Posted: August 26, 2009, 4:42pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Observational Detectives

  —Freakonomics

  Lisa Sanders, the diagnosis columnist for New York Times Magazine (and, I should disclose, my close friend), has just published a truly interesting book, Every Patient Tells A Story, on how good doctors go about making difficult diagnoses. [...]
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  Posted: August 19, 2009, 2:21pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• The Value of Statistics

  —Freakonomics

  Number of comments: 9
  Last week's excellent article on the just one sign of the market value of number crunching. As I wrote in the afterword to the paperback version of Super Crunchers:

  
  

  ' [...]
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  Posted: August 13, 2009, 10:08am EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Swine Flu + Nightmare = Crazy Victims' Rights Idea

  —Freakonomics

  I am writing this at 4:25 a.m. on Friday and I'm a bit woozy. On Wednesday afternoon, my body seriously crashed. On very short notice, my beloved spouse got me in to see to see a physician, who told me I definitely had a bad flu and the only one' [...]
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  Posted: July 24, 2009, 3:49pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• When Credit Card Companies Compete, You Win

  —Freakonomics

  Barry Nalebuff and I have a new column in Forbes ("A Market Test for Credit Cards") which criticizes some aspects of the recent credit-card legislation as being too anti-market.

  
  

  [...]
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  Posted: July 10, 2009, 11:43am EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• So Long and Thanks for All the F-Tests

  —Freakonomics

  I've been reading a truly excellent book by Joshua Angrist and Jorn-Steffen Pischke called Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion. It's not written for a general audience, but if you pulled an A- or better on a college-level econometrics course (and if you love Freakonomics), then this is the' [...]
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  Posted: June 30, 2009, 12:44pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Vegetarianism as a Sometimes Thing

  —Freakonomics

  I'm toiling away this summer writing a book about commitment contracts. And out of the blue, I received an email from an aspiring economist (who is planning to apply to PhD programs this fall), named Matt Johnson, who has an interesting new wrinkle. Matt writes...' [...]
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  Posted: June 19, 2009, 1:07pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Fun With WolframAlpha

  —Freakonomics

  The jury's still out on whether WolframAlpha.com will turn into a tool that is useful to solve real world computational problems, but it certainly is fun to play with.' [...]
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  Posted: June 05, 2009, 2:03pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• D.I.Y. Home Price Protection

  —Freakonomics

  Number of comments: 4
  Daniel Markovits and I have a new piece in Slate arguing that sellers could use a fairly simple escrow agreement to provide buyers with price protection.

  
  

  [...]
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  Posted: June 02, 2009, 2:33pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• A Traffic Sign for John C. Calhoun

  —Freakonomics

  New traffic signs have appeared on the drive to my son's school that perplex me and have me thinking of John C. Calhoon.

  
  

  ' [...]
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  Posted: June 01, 2009, 3:47pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• More Good News

  —Freakonomics

  Number of comments: 8
  Just before Christmas, I reported that the CBOE's Volatility Index (^VIX) had fallen from "an apocalyptic 80 percent" to a merely extraordinary 45 percent. And I said: When it drops below 30 percent, it will be a strong indication that the market correction is complete and we're back [...]
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  Posted: May 21, 2009, 9:50am EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• An Heir and a Spare

  —Freakonomics

  Akhil Amar and I just published an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times suggesting that President Obama might nominate two justices for the Supreme Court: Souter's formal letter to Obama indicates that he will step down at the end of this term - presumably late June. But nothing prevents the' [...]
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  Posted: May 08, 2009, 10:29am EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• John Donohue Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

  —Freakonomics

  A hidden side of Freakonomics is the extraordinary mesh of collaboration that has grown up around the movement. There is no better example of this collaboration than my colleague and good friend John Donohue, who has coauthored with Levitt (on abortion), Ayres (on guns), and Wolfers (on the death penalty). [...]
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  Posted: May 05, 2009, 12:53pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Akhil Amar Got There First

  —Freakonomics

  Once again, Catherine Rampell has an interesting Economix post ("Minority Rules: Sex Ratios and Suffrage") describing a new empirical analysis arguing that "jurisdictions that granted women the right to vote earlier generally had lower concentrations of women." Why? [M]en had much to lose by enfranchising women. … The relative scarcity [...]
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  Posted: April 28, 2009, 1:22pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Yes, Part II

  —Freakonomics

  In a recent post, I extolled the virtues of Robert Cialdini's Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. The book is wonderfully designed in 50 short chapters to describe the results of 50 different randomized field experiments. The format of, say, 1,800 words per chapter is a bit unusual.' [...]
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  Posted: April 24, 2009, 2:09pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• A Financial Engine Shut-off Switch

  —Freakonomics

  AOL Autos has a great article on new technologies that shut off your engine if you fail to make payments on your car loan. The devices, which are required by a growing number of subprime loan contracts, are the product of a revolution in telematics - the blending of telecommunications and [...]
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  Posted: April 23, 2009, 2:07pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Real Commitment at the OMB

  —Freakonomics

  Catherine Rampell had a nice post last week over at Economix ("Do It Or Pay") telling of NPR's recent interview with Peter Orszag, the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, in which Orszag talks about writing an exercise contract exactly like what my beloved [...]
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  Posted: April 22, 2009, 2:52pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Teenage Virgins II

  —Freakonomics

  In my last post, I argued that (the truly excellent show) Friday Night Lights might unwittingly be exacerbating the mistaken idea that the vast majority of high-schoolers have sex. I worried that this discrepancy between what adolescents believe (virgins are rare) and the truth (high-school virgins are the norm) is [...]
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  Posted: April 16, 2009, 10:25am EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Friday Night Lights and the Teenage Virgin

  —Freakonomics

  I'm a huge fan of Friday Night Lights - to the point that when a student makes an especially good point in class, I sometimes intone "Clear eyes, full heart," emulating the coach in the series. But it was with some sadness that I watched a couple weeks ago an episode' [...]
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  Posted: April 14, 2009, 4:02pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Money-Back Guarantees

  —Freakonomics

  John Dunn/The New York Times Courtney Paris Oklahoma's loss in the N.C.A.A. tournament raises interesting questions of both economics and law. The Sooners's star player, Courtney Paris, promised before the tournament to pay back her scholarship if the Sooners didn't win the championship. As an economist, I can't wait to find [...]
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  Posted: April 07, 2009, 2:40pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• And Sarah

  —Freakonomics

  My family is somewhat obsessed with all things Sarah Dooley. We were first won over by her oddly moving songs. Check out this love song, "Watching Goonies at My House." But she is also writing and staring in her own comedies. As an undergraduate at Barnard College, she has started posting [...]
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  Posted: March 30, 2009, 12:17pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Can the Hair Club for Men Help Solve the Food Safety Problem?

  —Freakonomics

  Here's a post I coauthored with Peter Siegelman (an economist who teaches at University of Connecticut law school) who is one of my earliest and most frequent coauthors (see, for example, here and here). Screenshot from YouTube.com. By now, virtually everyone in the country has heard that the Peanut Corporation of America' [...]
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  Posted: March 27, 2009, 3:01pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Thank God It Was $65 Billion

  —Freakonomics

  When Bernie Madoff turned himself in, his firm owed investors $65 billion, but had only about a billion dollars on hand. Never before have we seen anything close to a $64 billion fraud. But in an important sense, the unprecedented vastness of Bernie Madoff's fraud is a good thing. "If" [...]
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  Posted: March 23, 2009, 12:23pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• A Coasean Sign

  —Freakonomics

  Last fall, I spoke at an SPSS conference in Las Vegas. As I was heading home, I saw a sign on a convenience store (right next to Bally's) that made me do a double-take. I got so interested that after a couple of blocks, I convinced my driver to turn' [...]
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  Posted: March 18, 2009, 5:08pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• Want A Politically Viable Gas Tax? Make It Voluntary

  —Freakonomics

  Like Greg Mankiw, I think it's a no-brainer that we should raise the gas tax. But it's incredibly difficult to muster the political will to impose a traditional tax. (Witness California's inability to increase the state gas tax by a measly 12 cents.) Last year, Robert Samuelson (and a host of' [...]
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  Posted: March 10, 2009, 3:19pm EDT
  by By Ian Ayres

• "This Is No Picnic for Me Either, Buster": Obama and Outliers

  —Freakonomics

  My favorite Obama quotation is not one of his most poetic: My mother [would] … wake me up at 4:30 in the morning, and we'd sit there and go through my lessons. And I used to complain and grumble. And she'd say, "Well this is no picnic for me either, buster." He [...]
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  Posted: February 25, 2009, 2:20pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Put Your Money Where Your B-Tush Is

  —Freakonomics

  Thanks to The Times's nice writeup ("Dieting? Put Your Money Where Your Fat Is"), an Internet company that I helped found, www.stickK.com, has been getting a spike in commitment contracts. As readers of this blog know, stickK (shameless plug) is a commitment store that helps you stick to your goals.' [...]
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  Posted: February 18, 2009, 12:52pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• A Voucher System for Investigative Reporting

  —Freakonomics

  Dozens of proposals are floating around suggesting different ways to fix what seems to be the broken business model for newspapers. Michael Kinsley's Op-Ed, working backwards from the gross numbers, provides a devastating critique of the claim that micropayments on the Internet could save the industry: Micropayment advocates imagine extracting as [...]
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  Posted: February 17, 2009, 12:11pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Our Daily Bleg: Happy Meal Toys

  —Freakonomics

  Photo: flavouz Here's a bleg asking what happened the last time you ordered a Happy Meal at McDonald's. I'm particularly interested in whether you were asked a toy question and how it was framed. Here in Connecticut, when I drive through, I'm sometimes asked whether the toy is for a boy [...]
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  Posted: February 11, 2009, 10:07am EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• I Pay Them to Leave

  —Freakonomics

  A business exec told me that he thinks of consulting firms a bit like Charlie Sheen thinks about prostitutes. When I asked him to explain, he said that when Sheen was being sentenced for using a prostitute, the judge asked him why a man like him would have to pay [...]
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  Posted: February 06, 2009, 2:27pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Airlines and Opting Ethics

  —Freakonomics

  Here's a post with my co-author and colleague at Yale Law School, Jonathan Macey. Jon is the author of the just-published book Corporate Governance: Promises Kept, Promises Broken. Airlines and Opting Ethics By Ian Ayres and Jonathan Macey Some airlines and travel sites are trying to goose their revenues by running a' [...]
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  Posted: February 02, 2009, 1:32pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Mike D'Antoni and the Difference Between a Concealed Handgun and LoJack

  —Freakonomics

  John Donohue and I have weighed in again on the concealed-handgun debate. (You can read previous writings on this subject here, here, and here.) This time we have responded to an empirical article by Carlisle Moody and Thomas Marvell, who claim they are "confident" that "the evidence, such as it" [...]
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  Posted: January 26, 2009, 2:23pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Shove

  —Freakonomics

  Last November, I had the chance to go to Dubai for the first time to participate in the World Economic Forum Summit on the Global Agenda. Peter Ubel One of the most interesting people I met there was Peter Ubel, a practicing physician who is also trained in the ways of behavioral [...]
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  Posted: January 22, 2009, 2:41pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Our Daily Bleg: Did Your Kids' School Broadcast Obama's Speech?

  —Freakonomics

  My kids' schools never stopped class to listen to President Bush's inauguration speech; but my sense in Connecticut is that many public and private schools stopped normally scheduled classes to listen to Obama's inauguration speech. News articles suggested that many schools considered his inauguration address a teachable moment. The empiricist [...]
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  Posted: January 21, 2009, 10:52am EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Comment, Comment on the Wall, Are You Community or Not at All

  —Freakonomics

  One of the coolest things about posting at Freakonomics is the chance to be educated by your high-quality comments, which add to our posts and sometimes correct our mistakes. But to be honest, every once in a while I have been depressed by the harsh general tone of criticism. (For [...]
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  Posted: January 06, 2009, 9:56am EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Investment Tips for Retirees Worried About Inflation

  —Freakonomics

  As I was getting coffee in the faculty lounge, I started talking to a senior colleague who is nearing retirement. He said that he avoided a lot of the market pain of the last year because he had only about 25 percent of his savings in stock. (Now with the [...]
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  Posted: January 05, 2009, 3:30pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Good Economic News for the Holidays: Volatility Is Down

  —Freakonomics

  One of the most important but underreported financial indicators is the CBOE's Volatility Index (^VIX), which measures the market's expectation of future volatility in stock prices. (The CBOE has written a nice technical white paper describing how it is calculated, here.) Traditionally, the annualized volatility of the S&P 500 has [...]
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  Posted: December 24, 2008, 11:51am EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• The Art of SATergy

  —Freakonomics

  My son took the SSAT exam this past Saturday. And while I was sitting in the Choate athletic facility waiting for him to finish, I remembered that Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff's new book, The Art of Strategy, has a great example concerning standardized testing. Game theory is so powerful [...]
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  Posted: December 18, 2008, 10:01am EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Dubai, Shanghai, Mumbai, or the Highway

  —Freakonomics

  In early December, I spoke at a Yale Law School breakfast on the current financial crisis - focusing on Robert Shiller's book, The Subprime Solution. (Several of my earlier posts - here and here - were actually preparation for my presentation.) The first question to Shiller from the audience began: [...]
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  Posted: December 17, 2008, 8:48am EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• An All-Pay Auction

  —Freakonomics

  Martin Shubik invented a famous game-theory exercise, sometimes called "the dollar auction," where a teacher auctions off a $20 bill to the highest bidder. Bids have to be in round dollar amounts, but the twist is that both the highest and the second-highest bidder have to pay. When uninitiated students [...]
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  Posted: December 16, 2008, 11:15am EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• What Do Neil Patrick Harris and Jennifer Gerarda Brown Have in Common?

  —Freakonomics

  See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die. In "Proposition 8 - The Musical," Neil Patrick Harris argues "there's money to be made" - from weddings (and subsequent divorces) if California legalizes same-sex marriage. But my coauthor Jennifer Gerard Brown beat him to the punch. In "Competitive Federalism and the [...]
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  Posted: December 09, 2008, 3:15pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Who Killed Jdimytai Damour?

  —Freakonomics

  Like many others, I've had a difficult time during this Thanksgiving weekend to get my mind around the tragic trampling of Wal-Mart employee Jdimytai Damour. Did people keep shopping? Did the Valley Stream store make any sales before the police closed it down? Who put up the sign outside the [...]
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  Posted: December 02, 2008, 10:07am EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Will Obama Reduce the Chance That You Are Called for Jury Duty?

  —Freakonomics

  Photo: Tom Lemo One of the changes that the "Yes We Can" movement has already wrought is a substantial increase in voter registration - particularly in swing states. In Virginia, for example, the number of registered voters increased by almost 10 percent. Since voter-registration lists are also used to construct juror lists, [...]
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  Posted: December 01, 2008, 1:45pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Recourse, Of Course

  —Freakonomics

  Martin Feldstein has written another Wall Street Journal op-ed (here's an NBER version) extending his idea for stabilizing home prices. Steven Levitt has written about Feldstein's basic idea before. The basic idea is for the government to provide low-interest loans to mortgage holders in return for mortgage debt: The federal government [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2008, 10:08am EST
  by By Ian Ayres

• Larry Summers for Treasury Secretary

  —Freakonomics

  Larry Summers There is a lot of speculation about whether President-elect Barack Obama will choose Larry Summers to be his Treasury Secretary. But some people are openly opposing Summers's appointment, in part because of controversial comments he made about women in science. It's a close question, but I'm hoping that Obama appoints [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2008, 3:37pm EST
  by By Ian Ayres