Read When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants Online
Authors: Steven D. Levitt,Stephen J. Dubner
| 165 | “IS THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT . . .”: “He’s got a new working paper”: See John A. List, Michael Margolis, and Daniel E. Osgood, “Is the Endangered Species Act Endangering Species?,” NBER working paper 12777, December 2006. / 166 “Sam Peltzman’s observation that only 39 of the 1,3000 species list have ever been removed”: See Sam Peltzman, “Regulation and the Natural Progress of Opulence,” American Enterprise Institute monograph, May 23, 2005. |
| 166 | “BE GREEN: Drive”: “via John Tierney’s blog”: John Tierney, “How Virtuous Is Ed Begley Jr.?,” The New York Times (TierneyLab), February 25, 2008. / 167 “Goodall is no right-wing nut”: See Chris Goodall, How to Live a Low-Carbon Life (Earthscan, 2007). |
| 168 | “DO WE REALLY NEED A FEW BILLION LOCAVORES?”: “As we have written before”: See Dubner and Levitt, “Laid-Back Labor,” The New York Times Magazine , May 6, 2007. / 171 “consider the ‘food miles’ argument and a recent article”: See Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews, “Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States,” Environmental Science & Technology 42, no. 10 (April 2008). |
| 172 | “GOING GREEN TO INCREASE PROFITS”: “As Mary MacPherson Lane writes in an A.P. article”: See Mary MacPherson Lane, “Brothel Cuts Rates for ‘Green’ Customers,” Associated Press, October 17, 2009. |
| 175 | “HOW ABOUT THEM (WRAPPED) APPLES”: “Similar numbers have been found for potatoes and grapes”: See “Food Packaging and Climate Change,” carboncommentary.com, October 29, 2007. / 177 “One study estimates that U.S. consumers throw out about half the food they buy”: See J. Lundqvist, C. de Fraiture, and D. Molden, “Saving Water: From Field to Fork—Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain,” SIWI policy brief (2008). |
| 179 | “AGNOSTIC CARNIVORES AND GLOBAL WARMING . . .”: “Neither he nor 350.org will actively promote a vegan diet”: when asked in February, 2015, if this were still the case, a 350.org spokesperson replied: “No, we still don’t have an active campaign pushing for people to go vegan. Then again, we don’t have active campaigns for people to drive less, recycle, use less paper, or any other long list of worthy ways to combat climate change. 350.org doesn’t work on individual lifestyle change— there are lots of good groups that do that— but instead works at building more of a social movement to fight the problem.” / 179 “A recent report from the World Preservation Foundation confirms”: See “Reducing Shorter-Lived Climate Forcers Through Dietary Change,” World Preservation Foundation. / 181 “A recent article McKibben wrote for Orion ”: See Bill McKibben, “The Only Way to Have a Cow,” Orion , April 2010. |
| 184 | “HEY BABY, IS THAT A PRIUS YOU’RE DRIVING?”: “A research paper written by Alison and Steve Sexton”: See “Conspicuous Conservation: The Prius Effect and Willingness to Pay for Environmental Bona Fides,” working paper, June 30, 2011. / 185 “Here’s how Steve Sexton explains it”: See Stephen J. Dubner, “Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You’re Driving?,” Freakonomics Radio, July 7, 2011. |
| 189 | “VEGAS RULES”: “for a Times column on Super Bowl gambling”: See Dubner and Levitt, “Dissecting the Line,” The New York Times Magazine , February 5, 2006. |
| 192 | “ONE CARD AWAY . . .”: “Brandon Adams . . . a great writer”: See Adams, Broke: A Poker Novel (iUniverse, 2006). |
| 198 | “WHAT ARE MY CHANCES OF MAKING THE CHAMPIONS TOUR . . .”: “My friend Anders Ericsson popularized the magic number of 10,000 hours of practice”: See Dubner and Levitt, “A Star is Made,” The New York Times Magazine , May 7, 2006; K. Anders Ericsson, Neil Charness, Paul J. Feltovich, and Robert R. Hoffman, The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance , Cambridge University Press, 2006. |
| 206 | “LOSS AVERSION IN THE NFL”: “Just about everyone . . . capuchin monkeys”: See Dubner and Levitt, “Monkey Business,” The New York Times Magazine, June 5, 2005. |
| 208 | “BILL BELICHICK IS GREAT”: “Teams seem to punt way too much”: See David Romer, “Do Firms Maximize? Evidence from Professional Football,” Journal of Political Economy 118, no. 2 (2006). / 209 “I’ve seen the same thing in my research on penalty kicks in soccer”: Pierre-André Chiappori, Steven D. Levitt, and Timothy Groseclose, “Testing Mixed-Strategy Equilibria When Players Are Heterogeneous: The Case of Penalty Kicks in Soccer,” The American Economic Review 92, no. 4 (September 2002). |
| 209 | “HOW ADVANTAGEOUS IS HOME-FIELD ADVANTAGE . . .”: See Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim, Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won (Crown Archetype, 2011). / 210 “Levitt once wrote an academic paper about . . . home underdogs”: See Levitt, “Why Are Gambling Markets Organised So Differently From Financial Markets?,” The Economic Journal 114 (April, 2004). / 210 “which we wrote about further in the Times ”: See Dubner and Levitt, “Dissecting the Line,” The New York Times Magazine , February 5, 2006. / 212 “a research paper . . . about home-field advantage in the Bundesliga”: See Thomas J. Dohmen, “In Support of the Supporters? Do Social Forces Shape Decisions of the Impartial?,” IZA discussion paper No. 755, April 2003. |
| 212 | “TEN REASONS TO LIKE THE PITTSBURGH STEELERS”: “A voice that sounded like gravel and Yiddish tossed in a blender”: See Myron Cope, Double Yoi! (Sports Publishing, 2002). / 216 “Franco Harris . . . yours truly even wrote a book about his strange appeal”: See Stephen J. Dubner, Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper (William Morrow, 2003). / 217 “Paucity of great books about football”: See Roy Blount Jr., About Three Bricks Shy of a Load (Little, Brown and Company, 1974). |
| 223 | “WHEN TO ROB A BANK”: “a story I was told while visiting Iowa”: See “Burnice Comes Home,” Time , July 8, 1966. / 225 “According to the FBI”: see the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) series. / 225 “a trove of robbery data from the British Bankers’ Association”: see Barry Reilly, Neil Rickman, and Robert Witt, “Robbing Banks: Crime Does Pay—But Not Very Much,” Significance (The Royal Statistical Society, June 2012). |
| 228 | “DON’T REMIND CRIMINALS THEY ARE CRIMINALS”: “failed to replicate them in one study I did”: See Roland G. Fryer, Steven D. Levitt, and John A. List, “Exploring the Impact of Financial Incentives on Stereotype Threat: Evidence From a Pilot Study,” American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 98, no. 2 (2008). / 228 “In an interesting new study: see Alain Cohn, Michel André Maréchal, and Thomas Noll “Bad Boys: The Effect of Criminal Identity on Dishonesty,” University of Zurich working paper No. 132 (October 2013). |
| 237 | “DON’T BURN THE FOOD”: “In a sample of 13 African countries between 1999 and 2004”: The Demographic and Health Surveys Program, U.S. Agency for International Development. |
| 239 | “IS PLAXICO BURRESS AN ANOMALY?”: “A few years back, I wrote an article”: See Dubner, “Life Is a Contact Sport,” The New York Times Magazine , August 18, 2002. / 240 “According to an ESPN report”: See Arty Berko, Steve Delsohn, and Lindsay Rovegno, “Athletes and Guns,” Outside the Lines and ESPN.com, December 15, 2006. |
| 245 | “WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO CUT GUN DEATHS?”: “For a project . . . I conducted”: See Philip J. Cook, Jens Ludwig, Sudhir Venkatesh, and Anthony A. Braga, “Underground Gun Markets,” The Economic Journal 117, no. 524 (November 2007). |
| 253 | “WEIRD BUT TRUE . . .”: “Here’s the news”: See Nellie Andreeva, “NBC Buys ‘Freakonomics’-Inspired Drama Procedural Produced by Kelsey Grammer, Deadline.com , August 7, 2012. |
| 255 | “BREAKING NEWS . . .”: World Cup brothel boom “hasn’t happened at all”: See, e.g., Mark Landler, “World Cup Brings Little Pleasure to German Brothels,” The New York Times, July 3, 2006. |
| 256 | “AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL: TIME FOR A SEX TAX?”: “Bernard Gladstone proposed such a measure in his state”: See “The Nation: Sex Tax,” Time, January 25, 1971. / 258 “The one tax that would probably be overpaid”: See “Sex Tax: ‘Broad-Based,’” The Tech (MIT newspaper), January 13, 1971. |
| 259 | “MORE SEX PLEASE, WE’RE ECONOMISTS”: “Women choke under pressure”: See Steven E. Landsburg, “Women Are Chokers,” Slate.com, February 9, 2007. / 259 “Miserliness is a form of generosity”: See Landsburg, “What I Like About Scrooge,” Slate.com, December 20, 2006. / 259 “He is the author of the books”: See e.g., Landsburg, The Armchair Economist (Free Press, 1993); Landsburg, Fair Play (Free Press, 1997); Landsburg, More Sex Is Safer Sex (Free Press, 2007). |
| 261 | “I’M A HIGH-END CALL GIRL; ASK ME ANYTHING”: for a fuller treatment of Allie’s business, see Levitt and Dubner, SuperFreakonomics (William Morrow, 2009). Allie was also featured in Dubner, “The Upside of Quitting,” Freakonomics Radio, September 30, 2011. |
| 268 | “FREAKONOMICS RADIO GETS RESULTS”: “How drivers are legally allowed to fatally run over pedestrians”: See Dubner, “The Most Dangerous Machine,” Freakonomics Radio, May 1, 2014. / 268 “Fighting Poverty With Actual Evidence”: See Dubner, “Fighting Poverty With Actual Evidence,” Freakonomics Radio, November 27, 2013. / 268 “How avocadoes help fund Mexican crime cartels”: See Dubner, “What Came First, the Chicken or the Avocado?,” Freakonomics Radio, April 24, 2014. / 268 “What You Don’t Know About Online Dating”: See Dubner, “What You Don’t Know About Online Dating,” Freakonomics Radio, February 6, 2014; this episode featured the research of Stanford economist Paul Oyer, author of Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned from Online Dating (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014). |
| 282 | “IF YOU LIKE HOAXES”: “You have to admit that this is a pretty good one”: See Sarah Lyall, “In Literary London, the Strange Case of the Steamy Letter,” The New York Times , August 31, 2006. |
| 283 | “FROM GOOD TO GREAT . . . TO BELOW AVERAGE”: See Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t (HarperCollins, 2001). / 284 “The classic Peters and Waterman” : See Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies (Harper & Row, 1982; HarperBusiness Essentials, 2004). |
| 287 | “WHY I LIKE WRITING ABOUT ECONOMISTS”: “My mother had an extraordinary (and long-buried) story to tell”: See Dubner, Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son’s Return to His Jewish Family (William Morrow, 1998); republished as Choosing My Religion: A Memoir of a Family Beyond Belief (HarperPerennial, 2006.) / 287 “I’ve interviewed Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber”: See Dubner, “I Don’t Want to Live Long. I Would Rather Get the Death Penalty Than Spend the Rest of My Life in Prison,” Time , October 18, 1999. / 287 “The rookie class of the N.F.L.”: See Dubner, “Life Is a Contact Sport,” The New York Times Magazine , August 18, 2002. / 287 “A remarkable cat burglar who stole only sterling silver”: See Dubner, “The Silver Thief,” The New Yorker , May 17, 2004. / 288 “After I wrote about the economist Roland Fryer”: See Dubner, “Toward a Unified Theory of Black America,” The New York Times Magazine, March 20, 2005. |
| 314 | “PIRATE ECONOMICS 101”: Ryan Hagen was at the time of this Q&A a Freakonomics research assistant who contributed mightily to the blog, the books, and elsewhere; he is currently completing his Ph.D. in sociology at Columbia. / 314 “The Maersk crew has returned home”: See Matt Zapotosky, “Amid Breakfast of Champions, Pirated Ship’s Crew Shares a Story of Turnabout,” The Washington Post , April 17, 2009. / 314 “But with tensions growing”: See Reuters, “Pirates Attack U.S. Ship Off Somalia,” The New York Times, April 14, 2009. / 314 “ The Invisible Hook ”: See Peter T. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates (Prince ton, 2009). |
| 319 | “THE VISIBLE HAND”: “Some new research”: See Jennifer L. Doleac and Luke C.D. Stein, “The Visible Hand: Race and Online Market Outcomes,” SSRN working paper, May 1, 2010. |
| 324 | “HOW PURE IS YOUR ALTRUISM”: “Consider a recent paper”: See Philip H. Brown and Jessica H. Minty, “Media Coverage and Charitable Giving After the 2004 Tsunami,” William Davidson Institute working paper No. 855, December 2006. / 327 “Considering how unevenly disaster aid is often distributed”: See, e.g., “Tsunami Aid ‘Went to the Richest,” BBC.com, June 25, 2005. / 328 “The single best thing . . . is to be an attractive blond woman”: See Craig E. Landry, Andreas Lange, John A. List, Michael K. Price, and Nicholas G. Rupp, “Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Charity: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 121, no. 2 (May 2006). |
| 337 | “BRIBING KIDS TO TRY HARDER ON TESTS”: “We recently wrote up the results”: See Steven D. Levitt, John A. List, Susanne Neckermann, and Sally Sadoff, “The Impact of Short-Term Incentives on Student Performance,” University of Chicago working paper, September 2011. |
| 341 | “SHRIMPONOMICS”: “According to one academic article, the real price of shrimp fell”: See U. Rashid Sumaila, A. Dale Marsden, Reg Watson, and Daniel Pauly, “A Global Ex-Vessel Fish Price Database: Construction and Applications,” Journal of Bioeconomics 9, no. 1 (April, 2007). / 344 “An article in Slate argues . . .”: Brendan Koerner, “The Shrimp Factor,” Slate.com, January 13, 2006. |
| 344 | “WHY ARE WOMEN SO UNHAPPY?”: “The first was in the form of a Times op-ed”: See Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “Divorced From Reality,” The New York Times , September 29, 2007. / 345 “Stevenson and Wolfers released a new study”: See Stevenson and Wolfers, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” IZA discussion paper No. 42347 (2009). / 347 “There is some pretty good evidence . . . that declarations of happiness leave a lot to be desired”: See Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Do People Mean What They Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data,” MIT Economics working paper No. 01-04 (January 2001). |