Our podcast “Government Employees Gone Wild ” was about The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure , a guide published by the U.S. Department of Defense that details the true stories of big screw-...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/12/air-force-general-gone-wild/
Back when blog posts were composed with reed styluses on clay tablets, I put up a couple of posts (here and here ) on fuel subsidies in the developing world. These are generally 1) fiscally rui...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/11/a-12-step-program-for-fuel-subsidy-aholics/
Between the N.S.A./MERKEL mess and the OBAMACare mess, it seems a good time to ask a question we've asked in the past: just how much does the President of the United States really matter? Our ori...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/what-the-president-does-and-importantly-doesnt-do/
University of Arizona economist PRICE FISHBACK , who has been on this blog before , is one of the leading scholars of the economics of the New Deal. He has a great new set of insights to share ...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/09/the-folly-of-eminent-domain-takings-of-failing-mortgage-loans/
One of the major complaints of right-wing politicians against the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is its imposed mandates that individuals obtain health insurance and that larger businesses offer...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/09/dismantling-the-social-safety-net/
At the Queen Victoria Market , an immense city-run collection of stalls and shops in Melbourne, Australia, a fishmonger at a prime corner is paying $5,500 per month to the City to operate there.�...
RAY FISMAN and TIM SULLIVAN use the example of New York City's surprisingly efficient passport office to explore an interesting question: "Why do some government offices perform well and others...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/08/a-model-of-government-efficiency-not-a-typo/
1. How well does government work? Economists call for evaluations . 2. UMass Amherst grad student THOMAS HERNDON finds coding errors in key debt-load paper by REINHART and ROGOFF. 3. Price div...
Baggage fees are a small part of the misery of American air travel. There's also connecting flights, which, to paraphrase the Nuremberg judgment , contain within themselves the accumulated evil...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/03/the-quants-and-the-airlines-versus-the-public/
With the sequester looming large , Business Insider has created a set of interactive maps to demonstrate which states will be hit the hardest by cuts to the education budget. "The report clai...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/03/what-will-the-sequester-do-to-education-spending-in-your-state/
Most discussions about geoengineering start out with the tricky scientific issues but eventually get to the even trickier issue of governance. As we wrote in SuperFreakonomics: > As of this...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/01/who-controls-the-switch-on-a-geoengineering-machine/
A new working paper (abstract ; PDF ) by HILARY W. HOYNES , DIANE WHITMORE SCHANZENBACH , and DOUGLAS ALMOND examines the effects of in utero and childhood access to the social safety net, speci...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/11/the-benefits-of-the-safety-net/
I am not sure this is as meaningful as the authors think, but still it is an interesting experiment. From a new working paper called "Letter Grading Government Efficiency " by ALBERTO CHONG, RAFA...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/08/return-to-sender-what-can-postal-behavior-tell-us-about-a-nation/
California embarked this week on a grand experiment in common property resource management when, in order to help close a gaping budget hole, it turns over dozens of state parks to private firms ...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/07/how-will-californias-parks-do-under-private-management/
The Times-Picayune reports on Louisiana's prison ecosystem -- and the perverse incentives for sheriffs to keep inmate numbers high: > Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Ir...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/05/the-economics-of-for-profit-prisons/
Hi all! Sorry I haven’t been writing much of late; I’ve been dealing with the minor matters of filing a dissertation and finding myself gainful employment. The first step is complete: I get t...
We are installing over 30 solar panels on our roof. The City of Austin currently offers a rebate up to $15,000 of 60 percent of the cost, and the federal government gives a 30 percent credit on t...
Last week, we solicited your questions for economist DARON ACEMOGLU and political scientist JIM ROBINSON , who just published a new book called Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosper...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/04/acemoglu-and-robinson-answer-your-questions/
Chances are, you’re going to spend tonight finalizing your taxes, making sure that you ferret every last deduction. And probably pretty pleased to be getting these deductions; but when you dig ...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/04/tax-deductions-or-tax-expenditures/
Since putting email back in its corral , I've turned some recovered time to reading actual books in print --- the latest being Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest E...