A friend, Heather, recommended a book called Freakonomics–she suggested it focused on incentives, agency conflicts, game theory, etc., which is the part of economics that really interests me. The human behavior part, rather than market forces or industrial organization.
A surprisingly fast read–I started and finished it on the three-hour flight to Dallas. Good, light reading. Also surprisingly old news to me, at least some of it. The crack-dealer salary study I had read about a while back in The New York Times. Same for the abortion-crime relationship–I remember the controversy when the research first came out.
On the other hand, I hadn’t heard about the ineffectiveness of Head Start, though it made sense just with just the salary data. The broader regression analysis was the nail in the coffin. Having some data to attack school vouchers is nice: fix the existing schools. Parents who would elect to use the vouchers already provide enough motivation for their children that they will succeed. The better school doesn’t make a difference statistically speaking.
But two bits are near and dear to my heart: online dating and children’s names. Names are, w/o a doubt, a status/fashion phenomenon. But the author predicted that the names Finnegan and Ella–which are only popular with the over-educated at present–will become very popular in ten years. (My nephew and niece have those names).
As to online dating–as a participant in online dating on-and-off for three years now, I’m personally familiar with the hyperbole: women weigh twenty lbs less, men are four inches taller, and everyone is beautiful. I am absolutely fascinated with the incentives and economics of this sector of the internet economy. I’m sure I’ll expound on this topic ad nauseum at some future point, but it just makes me wonder if I should lie on my profile? Add two inches to my height?
Nah.