freakonomics

Innovation and the media

In the past two weeks, there’s been at least a dozen stories in the mainstream and not-so-mainstream media about the importance of innovation in a recession. For businesses, refocusing on R&D and innovation really is a good strategy in down times. There’s plenty of historic evidence to back the claim up (the invention of farming technologies and civil engineering breakthroughs in the Great Depression, alternative energy investments in the early 1970s, and a sharpening of Internet business models after the dot com bust in the late 90s). What’s also true is that writing about innovating … Read more

Understanding the financial market meltdown

Despite reading the WSJ and N.Y. Times every day I still don't completely understand what happened in the financial sector meltdown. Neither does Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt. Fortunately he has smart friends Doug Diamond and Anil Kashyap from the Chicago School of Business who explain much of the mess in this Times article.

Much of the trouble lies in too much risk and not enough long-term investment capital according to the authors.

And why does this matter to the average citizen?

As their own funding dries up, the remaining financial firms will be much more cautious in … Read more

The economics of iPhone pricing

Apple's surprising misstep on iPhone pricing could have come about because the company's executives took too many economics classes, and not enough psychology courses.

Earlier this summer it seemed Apple could do no wrong on the marketing and public relations front, but the company clearly did not foresee how its early adopters would react to the $200 drop in the price of the iPhone announced by CEO Steve Jobs last Wednesday. Steven Levitt, the man behind the book Freakonomics and currently writing a blog of the same name at The New York Times, has an interesting post today … Read more

'Freakonomics' moves to prime time

The New York Times seems to have figured out one way to deal with news blogs: treat them as a column--sort of.

As of Wednesday, NYTimes.com became the exclusive host of Freakonomics, the social-economics blog based on the best-selling book of the same name, placing it under its Opinions section.

The blogs' authors, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, however, do not appear alongside esteemed New York Times columnists, but floating above the paper's daily podcast. It's an undefined space left of the Letters section that doesn't list any other specific blogs.

While the placement may be … Read more