A moral compass can convince you that all the answers are obvious (even when they’re not); that there is a bright line between right and wrong (when often there isn’t); and, worst, that you are certai...
Pesar de lo egoísta que un hombre pueda suponerse —escribió Smith—, evidentemente existen algunos principios en su naturaleza que lo llevan a interesarse por la suerte de los demás y a convertir la ne...
Los estados con los índices de aborto más altos en la década de los setenta experimentaron los mayores descensos del crimen en los noventa, mientras que los estados con bajos índices de abortos experi...
Declared preferences and revealed preferences.)
When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue—whether it’s fracking or gun control or genetically engineered food—it’s easy to lose track of what the issue actually is. A mora...
We’d like to bury the idea that there’s a right way and a wrong way, a smart way and a foolish way, a red way and a blue way. The modern world demands that we all think a bit more productively, more c...
La población negra resultó más perjudicada por el crack que por ninguna otra causa desde las leyes discriminatorias conocidas como Jim Crow.
It was Klan custom, for instance, to append a Kl to many words. (Thus would two Klansmen hold a Klonversation in the local Klavern.)
It also means that the pain of negative feedback will for most people trump the pleasure from positive feedback.
In examining the income gap between black and white adults—it is well established that blacks earn significantly less—scholars have found that the gap is virtually eradicated if the blacks’ lower eigh...
In Levitt’s view, economics is a science with excellent tools for gaining answers but a serious shortage of interesting questions. His particular gift is the ability to ask such questions. For instanc...
Households that got the once-and-done letter were twice as likely to become first-time donors as people who got a regular solicitation letter. By fund-raising standards, this was a colossal gain. Thes...
Glaucon’s story posed a moral question: could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? Glaucon seemed to think the answer was no. But Paul Feldman sides with S...
Given that the monkeys aren’t very smart in the first place, you might assume that any gambling strategy was well beyond their capabilities. In that case, you’d expect them to prefer it when a researc...
Enviros
Elephants, meanwhile, kill at least 200 people every year. So why aren’t we petrified of them?
El calentamiento es principalmente un fenómeno polar, y esto significa que las zonas de alta latitud son cuatro veces más sensibles al cambio climático que el ecuador.
Economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.
Don’t Burn the Food (SDL) In a sample of thirteen African countries between 1999 and 2004, 52 percent of women surveyed say they think that wife-beating is justified if she neglects the children; arou...
But as we’ve seen lately, such predictions are generally worthless.