In Think Like a Freak , we touch briefly on paying schoolkids for good grades -- which, much of the time, isn't successful. This inspired a note from a reader named GARY CROWLEY, who describes...
RYAN BRADLEY, writing for CNNMoney, highlights an interesting policy experiment currently underway in New York City: a social impact bond geared at reducing recidivism: > They are called "...
https://freakonomics.com/2014/01/reducing-recidivism-through-incentives/
From ERIC KIRKLAND, a photo of an ice-cream shop in Colorado Springs with a weather-sensitive customer-loyalty plan: The post How to Sell Ice Cream in Cold Weather appeared first on Freakonomi...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/11/how-to-sell-ice-cream-in-cold-weather/
JOHN LIST and URI GNEEZY have appeared on our blog many times . This guest post is part a series adapted from their new book The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics o...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/what-makes-people-do-what-they-do/
JOHN LIST and URI GNEEZY have appeared on our blog many times . This guest post is part of a series adapted from their book The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of ...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/what-can-the-olympics-teach-us-about-closing-the-achievement-gap/
Last spring, I blogged about the $5/day for in-house food purchases that many Sheraton hotels give guests who waive house-cleaning. In some hotels, they offer a choice between the $5 and 500 ...
If you have a tough decision to make, wander on over to FreakonomicsExperiments.com . So far we’ve helped more than 20,000 people make decisions, and the preliminary results look great. As a...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/09/freakonomics-experiments-lottery-winners/
The LAFFER Curve is a unicorn-y concept that seeks to explain the rate of taxation at which revenues will fall because earners either move away or decide to earn less (or cheat more, I guess). ...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/08/how-much-tax-are-athletes-willing-to-pay/
A reader from Wadsworth, Ohio, named TOM MORRIS writes with an idea. He is a lawyer and, he says, and an "occasional acting judge in a small town": > In my capacity as acting judge, I f...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/07/get-paid-1500-to-have-a-vasectomy/
As we've argued in Freakonomics and in a recent podcast , a child's first name isn't nearly as influential on that child's outcome as many people would like to think. That said, it would be a m...
ALEX TABARROK explores the world of egg donation, which is heavily regulated by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM)...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/06/egg-donors-fight-the-oocyte-cartel/
Cartoonist MANU CORNET has a simple economic fix for oversleeping . (HT: HANS VAN DER DRIFT) The post A Wake-Up App That Economists Would Love appeared first on Freakonomics .
https://freakonomics.com/2013/06/a-wake-up-app-that-economists-would-love/
An article in Science by NICOLA LACETERA, MARIO MACIS, and ROBERT SLONIM summarizes their research on economic incentives and blood donation (abstract ; PDF ). Contrary to previous studies, the...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/06/is-paying-for-blood-a-good-idea-after-all/
While it is true that human waste can indeed be recycled -- as a medical "transpoosion," as auto fuel , as heat for your home -- that is not what's happening in Portland, Oregon. People are ind...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/05/how-dirty-diapers-end-up-in-the-recyling-bin/
A new NBER working paper (PDF ; abstract ) by economists SCOTT E. CARRELL and BRUCE SACERDOTE finds that educational incentives, even those that are offered to students late in their senior ye...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/05/convincing-kids-to-go-to-college/
From Science World Report : > The participants were told to achieve the goal of losing 4 pounds > per month up to a predetermined goal weight. The researchers kept > tra...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/03/paying-people-to-lose-weight/
A reader named JASON STAUFFER writes: > I live with four guys in a house. We had no cleaning schedule until > about a month ago, but the house was never cluttered, and�...
https://freakonomics.com/2013/02/question-of-the-day-how-to-get-roommates-to-share-in-cleaning/
The Texas Legislature is back in session, providing its usual cookie jar of absurd economic proposals. A real winner is House Bill 649 , which would provide compensatory tax reductions to comp...
Starbucks recently came out with an ultra-high end cup of coffee . Wondering whether that cup of coffee was really worth $7, Kimmel took to the streets and ran some experiments. He didn’t ho...
https://freakonomics.com/2012/12/jimmy-kimmel-thinks-like-a-freak/
Fourth-graders in Declo, Idaho, faced an unusual incentive scheme for reading: if they didn't complete their work they could either forgo recess or have others kids draw on their face with marker...