Less obviously, concern for the environment is a luxury good. Wealthy Americans are willing to spend more money to protect the environment as a fraction of their incomes than are less wealthy American...
Economic development is not a zero-sum game; the world does not need poor countries in order to have rich countries, nor must some people be poor in order for others to be rich. Families who live in p...
Remember, human capital embodies not only classroom training but also perseverance, honesty, creativity—virtues that lend themselves to finding work.) Some
Two percent who care deeply about something are a more potent political force than the 98 percent who feel the opposite but aren't motivated enough to do anything about it.
The world is producing more and more data, ever faster and faster. Yet, as the New York Times has noted, Data is merely the raw material of knowledge.3* Statistics is the most powerful tool we have fo...
The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects...
So, to return to the title chapter, what is the point of learning statistics? To summarize huge quantities of data. To make better decisions. To answer important social questions. To recognize pattern...
Most economists would concede that, in theory, government has the tools to smooth the business cycle. The problem is that fiscal policy is not made in theory; it's made in Congress.
Housing prices had never before fallen as far and as fast as they did beginning in 2007. But that’s what happened. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan explained to a congressional committee...
Descriptive statistics can be like online dating profiles: technically accurate and yet pretty darn misleading.
Consider a nonstatistics example: Did the U.S. invasion of Iraq make America safer? There is only one intellectually honest answer: We will never know. The reason we will never know is that we do not...
Therein lies the insight: Even though you will continue moving forever—with each move taking you half the remaining distance to the wall—the total distance you travel can never be more than 2 feet, wh...
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Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it maximized his utility.
Here is one of the most important things to remember when doing research that involves regression analysis: Try not to kill anyone. You can even put a little Post-it note on your computer monitor: Do...
VaR has been called potentially catastrophic, a fraud, and many other things not fit for a family book about statistics like this one. In particular, the model has been blamed for the onset and severi...
The beauty of the normal distribution - its Michael Jordan power, finesse, and elegance - comes from the fact that we know by definition exactly what proportion of the observations in a normal distrib...
The [Value at Risk model] was like a faulty speedometer, which is arguably worse than no speedometer at all. If you place too much faith in the broken speedometer, you will be oblivious to other signs...
Prices are supposed to transmit information in a market economy; inflation obscures that mechanism.
For as long as there have been creditors and debtors—which is a darn long time—creditors have tried to protect the value of the currency and debtors have sought to devalue it.