Turns out that a real-estate agent keeps her own home on the market an average of ten days longer and sells it for an extra 3-plus percent, or $10,000 on a $300,000 house.
This theory rapidly became an article of faith because it appealed to the factors that, according to John Kenneth Galbraith, most contribute to the formation of conventional wisdom: the ease with whic...
That we think with neither fear nor favor, with neither blind optimism nor sour skepticism. That we think like—ahem—a Freak.
THE BRANCH OF ECONOMICS concerned with issues like inflation, recessions, and financial shocks is known as macroeconomics. When the economy is going well, macroeconomists are lauded as heroes; when it...
Some of Becker’s most compelling research concerned altruism. He argued, for instance, that the same person who might be purely selfish in business could be exceedingly altruistic among people he knew...
On a per capita basis, Switzerland has more firearms than just about any other country, and yet it is one of the safest places in the world. In other words, guns do not cause crime.
Most of us have a lot more experience being consumers than producers, so we tend to view things through the lens of demand rather than supply.
If there is one thing we’ve learned from a lifetime of designing and analyzing incentives, the best way to get what you want is to treat other people with decency.
If morality represents how people would like the world to work, then economics shows how it actually does work.
I don’t expect perfection, I expect excellence. I expect 100 percent effort in all you do.
Being confident you are right is not the same as being right.
Paid $2.50 to smother a baby girl born with a cleft deformity
Namely, how much kids have learned from their parents, how hard they work at home, and whether the parents have instilled an appetite for education. If these home
Bohemian,
When was the last time you sat for an hour of pure, unadulterated thinking?
We associate truth with convenience, he wrote, with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We a...
To an economist, the strategy is obvious. Since even a penny is more valuable than nothing, it makes sense for Zelda to accept an offer as low as a penny—and, therefore, it makes sense for Annika to o...
To Borody and a small band of like-minded brethren who believe in the power of poop, we are standing at the threshold of a new era in medicine. Borody sees the benefits of fecal therapy as equivalent...
The next time you run into a question that you can only pretend to answer, go ahead and say I don’t know—and then follow up, certainly, with but maybe I can find out. And work as hard as you can to do...
The ECLS data do show, for instance, that a child with a lot of books in his home tends to test higher than a child with no books.