Freakonomics

About 140 million people in the U.S. will attend a major-league sporting event this year, according to this NPR article.
But as the same article says, museums will draw about 850 million attendees...

I'm a bit late getting to this, but I just saw that my friend Roland Fryer appeared on The Colbert Report on Monday. He was - officially - talking about his current experiments with providing incen...

Our resident quote bleggar Fred Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, is back with another request. If you have a bleg of your own - it needn't have anything to do with quotations - send ...

It looks like David Gregory has been selected by NBC to replace the late Tim Russert as host of Meet the Press. I predict he will flourish.
Why?
I don't know much about his talent, since I've rarel...

Ronald Reagan famously described the distinction between a recession and a depression as follows: "A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours."
Right now,...

I spent my Thanksgiving at the New Orleans Fair Grounds Racetrack in a gaudy hat, betting on horses. A U.S.A. Today photographer snapped this photo of me:
Photo: Sean Gardner/U.S.A. Today
By the t...

Photo: That Guy Who's Going Places
Here's a desperate bleg from a reader named Theo Bryan. (Send your own blegs here.)
Hey,
I am living with my stepfather and don't pay rent or food expenses. I am ...

In the long run, the increasing opportunity cost of people's time, as wages rise, is one of the most important driving forces in economic behavior.
Much of our racing around is due to adjustments ...

We blogged a while back about how human capital can shift from one industry to others, especially when there's a major shock to the economy or to social mores.
Here's another interesting take on hu...

Photo: Hussain Quantum
An economist friend, who is also an accomplished golfer, recently told me the following story.
He and two friends had made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of golf: the Old Cou...