Keegy United States - Freakonomics: Getting Off the Waitlist

Getting Off the Waitlist

I gave a talk not too long ago on a college campus. The event was sold out, so the administration started a waiting list for seats. The daughter of a good friend found herself on the waiting list. When I heard she still hadn't gotten a ticket the day before the event, with just a touch of guilt f...

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Freakonomics — October 28

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A Defense of Irrational Taxation?

Here's a behavioral puzzler: Why might it be more efficient for Connecticut to change its sales tax rate from 6 percent to e^2 percent ? Or more generally, why might using irrational numbers as tax rates be less distortionary than rational tax rates? A hint comes from a great article o...

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Freakonomics — October 28

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Baby Einstein's Refund: Not so Smart?

Roughly 15 years ago, before there was such a thing as Baby Einstein, I had a business idea that emerged from a dinner conversation with a linguist. We got to talking about how hard it was for adults learning foreign languages to ever sound like native speakers. One reason for this is, apparen...

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Freakonomics — October 28

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Sorry About That

Gizmodo lists eight "Regrettable Tech Inventions" and their inventors' apologies for them, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee's apology for the double-slash in web addresses - "Really, if you think about it, it doesn't need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //" ....

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Freakonomics — October 28

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Pray for Me: I'm Going on The Daily Show Tonight

The first time I went on The Daily Show, nearly five years ago, I dreaded it for weeks in advance. I had a terrible fear of going on TV and had avoided it scrupulously, even in publicizing our first book. When Jon Stewart came knocking, however, it was impossible to come up with a credible reason...

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Freakonomics — October 27

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What the Secretary of Transportation Has to Say About My Car Seat Research

On his blog, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood dismisses my research (see here and here) on car seats. My favorite quote from the secretary: "Now, if you want to slice up the data to be provocative, have at it. As a grandfather and as secretary of an agency whose number one mi...

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Freakonomics — October 27