Notable

I have a new piece up at Forbes:

…the most reasonable judgment is that flying fresh food around the planet carries an environmental cost of no more than a few cents per meal. That sounds astonishing, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. Those Chilean grapes aren’t flying first class: They’re packed tight to save money, which incidentally saves on pollution. The most wasteful part of the journey is when you and I hop in our cars and drive to the shops and back with a bag of potato chips in the trunk of the car.

You can read the whole thing here; the Forbes piece also contains links to the research.

I’m a real cappuccino lover myself, but many of my female colleagues don’t seem to go for the stuff. I’d never thought too much about that until recently. I suppose I carelessly assumed that men and women have different tastes, probably as a result of different social influences. Now I know better: my female colleagues don’t go to coffee shops because they’re shabbily treated when they get there. Read the rest of this entry »

FT Comment, 27 October
An economist once dubbed “champion of choice” by The Guardian newspaper would like your employer to organise an exercise hour for you and your colleagues. Professor Julian Le Grand was once a social policy adviser who had the ear of Tony Blair.

Now he has everybody in Britain sitting up (sorry) and taking notice. Even though Prof Le Grand intends to offer an opt-out to anyone who doesn’t much care for the idea of doing a bench-press with the boss as spotter, that doesn’t make the idea appealing. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago shopping mall’s parking lot is packed. The white-haired grandfather pulls into a space with a 30-minute limit, not nearly long enough for the leisurely lunch we have planned. “We should be fine here. I don’t think they check that carefully,” he explains in gentle but distinctively Brooklyn tones. I look across at him and ask, “Was that a rational crime?” He doesn’t hesitate for a second. “Yes it was.”

The theory of rational crime is one of half a dozen explosive ideas that won Gary Becker the Nobel prize in economics. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Series of Poker in Las Vegas in 2000 attracted a record 500 players. Over four days, contestants were gradually eliminated until just two men were left to face off in poker’s flagship game, Texas Hold ‘Em. The more experienced player was a living legend named T.J. Cloutier, a 62-year-old Texan road gambler who was regarded by many as the best in the world. His opponent was a 37-year-old computer scientist from California named Chris Ferguson who had only been playing World Series games since 1996, never finishing higher than fourth place.
Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published in Slate.

Here’s a little secret that Starbucks doesn’t want you to know: They will serve you a better, stronger cappuccino if you want one, and they will charge you less for it. Ask for it in any Starbucks and the barista will comply without batting an eye. The puzzle is to work out why. Read the rest of this entry »

At first it looked as if I would never get to have lunch with Thomas Schelling, this year’s winner of the Nobel prize for economics. When I first tried to see him, he told me to wait a week or two, so he could “get over the celebrity activity” surrounding the prize. We picked another date but then he had to cancel: “I have to be at the Swedish Embassy and the White House,” he e-mailed. “I knew I should have asked my wife… sorry to confuse you with my confusion.” Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published on the New York Times op-ed page, 16 December 2005.

At this week’s ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization in Hong Kong, negotiators have once again hit an impasse over how and when to open the rich world’s agricultural markets to farmers in the poorest countries. What few people have realized, however, is that poor countries don’t have to wait for the World Trade Organization. There is plenty that they can and should do to help their own farmers to trade.
Imagine a dream scenario in which the trade ministers emerge from their negotiations this weekend holding hands and proclaiming an end to all agricultural protectionism. What then?

For, say, a banana picker in the Central African Republic, not a lot. Read the rest of this entry »

On a sunny day in London you can purchase a cappuccino and sip away as the capsules on the Eye, the capital’s landmark Ferris wheel, rotate high above you, occasionally passing between you and the sun… one of life’s simple pleasures. Everywhere you look around the Eye you can see vendors with scarce resources, trying to exploit that scarcity. There is only one coffee bar in the immediate area, for instance. There is also a lone souvenir shop doing brisk business. But the most obvious example is the London Eye itself. It towers over the majority of London’s most famous buildings and is the world’s largest observation wheel. The scarcity power is clearly considerable, but it is not unlimited: the Eye may be unique, but it is also optional. People can always choose not to go on it.
Further along the river, the Millennium Dome is similarly unique, ‘the largest fabric structure in the world’, boasts the local authority. Yet the Dome has proved a commercial disaster because uniqueness alone wasn’t enough to persuade people to pay enough to cover the vast costs of its construction. Business with scarcity power cannot force us to pay unlimited prices for their products, but they can choose from a variety of strategies to make us pay more. It’s time for the Undercover Economist to get to work and find out more. Read the rest of this entry »

At first, Steven Levitt is not sure where we should go for lunch. We’re meeting in his home city of Chicago, a place I’ve never visited, so I haven’t a clue what to suggest. He says he will get some advice and eventually comes up with the South Water Kitchen, a downtown bar and restaurant a few miles from his office at the University of Chicago.And so here, over a can of coke and an $11 hamburger, I meet the surprisingly uncontroversial looking Steven D. Levitt. Surprising because, despite his average hair, his average height and his very average shirt and chinos, the 37-year-old Levitt is one of the most notorious economists of our age.

Some critics compare him to Joseph Goebbels. Others say that he is a rabid liberal. His peers say that he has the most brilliant mind of his generation. The publishers of his first book describe him as a “rogue economist”. Read the rest of this entry »