Articles 2005
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Market Share
Economists have long used their tools to analyze social phenomena. Now sociologists are learning to stop worrying and love -- or at least study -- the market.
The Boston Globe, July 22, 2005
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Research Changes Ideas About Children and Work
The New York Times, "Economic Scene", July 14, 2005
When Americans think about child labor in poor countries, they rarely picture girls fetching water or boys tending livestock. Yet most of the 211 million children, ages 5 to 14, who work worldwide are not in factories. They are working in agriculture -- from 92 percent in Vietnam to 63 percent in Guatemala -- and most are not paid directly.
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One Possible Cure for the Common Criminal
The New York Times, "Economic Scene", June 16, 2005
When Jonathan M. Klick worked in Washington, he noticed a striking effect every time the terrorism alert level went from its usual yellow ("elevated") to the more urgent orange ("high").
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Consumer Vertigo
A new wave of social critics claim that freedom’s just another word for way too much to choose. Here’s why they’re wrong.
Reason, June 2005
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Mass Medium
Forbes, May 22, 2005
Something about blogs makes a lot of respectable journalists hyperventilate. News pros seem terribly threatened by online amateurs.Blogging is a "solipsistic, self-aggrandizing, journalist-wannabe genre," writes David Shaw in the Los Angeles Times. Shaw, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his media criticism, declares that bloggers are "practitioners of what is at best pseudo-journalism" and that "many bloggers--not all, perhaps not even most--don't seem to worry much about being accurate." (Emphasis added.)
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Another View of News Bias, as Selling Point
There is a widespread belief that the media are biased, but good journalism is not easy to define.
The New York Times, "Economic Scene", May 18, 2005
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Gadgets and Glamour: Let's Make Some Magic, With No Strings Attached
The New York Times, May 03, 2005
WIRELESS technology has always had a glamorous aura. The word "glamour," after all, originally referred to a magic spell, an illusion that makes things look different from what they really are.
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Innovation moves from the laboratory to the bike trail and the kitchen.
The New York Times, "Economic Scene", April 21, 2005
WHEN most people think about where new or improved products come from, they imagine two kinds of innovators: either engineers and marketers in big companies trying to "find a need and fill it" or garage entrepreneurs hoping to strike it rich by inventing the next big thing.
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The Function of Fashion
Blueprint, April 2005
Arguing that aesthetics in design are more important that it is fashionable to admit, Virginia Postrel’s voice has not yet carried as far as the UK. But given the waves she is making Stateside with her book The Substance of Style, it won’t be long before it does. -
I'm Pro-Choice
Too much choice may cause regret, but no choice is worse. Subjects who ate a chocolate selected by the experimenter, rather than the one they'd picked, were much less satisfied.
Forbes, March 26, 2005