Quotes from Steven D. Levitt

In a typical election period that includes campaigns for the Presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives, about one billion dollars is spent per year, which sounds like a lot of money, unless you care to measure it against something seemingly less important than Democratic elections.It is the same amount, for instance, that Americans spend every year on chewing gum.

So the conventional wisdom in Galbraith's view must be simple, convenient, comfortable, and comforting—though not necessarily true. It would be silly to argue that the conventional wisdom is never true.

The key is to learn to climb inside other people's minds to figure out what really matters to them.

Engañar es un acto económico primitivo: obtener más a cambio de menos.

La disposición de causas y consecuencias de este mundo es tan inescrutable que un impuesto de dos peniques sobre el té, aplicado injustamente en una parte aislada, cambia la condición de todos sus habitantes.»

Tis much better to do a little with certainty and leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

Furthermore, in some countries—Finland and Singapore and South Korea, for instance—future schoolteachers are recruited from the best college-bound students, whereas a teacher in the United States is more likely to come from the bottom half of her class.

Yes, it may be money they're after—but just as often they are motivated by wanting to be liked, or not be hated; by wanting to stand out in a crowd, or perhaps not stand out.

que sugiere que el contacto típico de Internet es mentiroso, narcisista o sencillamente tiene una idea muy particular del significado de «media».

How selfish soever man may be supposed," Smith wrote, "there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it." There

really care about, not what they say they care about. 2. Incentivize them on the dimensions that are valuable to them but cheap for you to provide. 3. Pay attention to how people respond; if their response surprises

Humans respond to incentives.

Failure may be an option but quitting is not.

learn from it and try something different. 4. Whenever possible, create incentives that switch the frame from adversarial to cooperative. 5. Never, ever think that people will do something just because it is the "right" thing to do. 6. Know that some people will do everything they can to game the system, finding ways to win that you never could have imagined. If only to keep yourself sane, try to applaud their ingenuity rather than curse their greed.

And there are few incentives more powerful than the fear of random violence - which, in essence, is why terrorism is so effective.

That is the idea behind a prize-linked savings (PLS) account.

What does tenure do? It distorts people's effort so that they face strong incentives early in their career (and presumably work very hard early on as a consequence) and very weak incentives forever after (and presumably work much less hard on average as a consequence).

Anecdotes often represent the lowest form of persuasion.

El 28% de las mujeres de la página web declaraban ser rubias, un número bastante superior a la media, lo cual indica grandes dosis de tinte, de mentira, o de ambos.

I hope when my kids have kids, there are still books around, and I don't really care if mine are around, but I hope there are books around because I love the idea of that. I love doing this. I love doing a podcast, but to me, a book is a thing that has no equal.

But while there are exceptions to every rule, it's also good to know the rule.

when there are a lot of people willing and able to do a job, that job generally doesn't pay well. This is one of four meaningful factors that determine a wage. The others are the specialized skills a job requires, the unpleasantness of a job, and the demand for services that the job fulfills.

How can this type of data be made to tell a reliable story? By subjecting it to the economist's favorite trick: regression analysis. No, regression analysis is not some forgotten form of psychiatric treatment. It is a powerful—if limited—tool that uses statistical techniques to identify otherwise elusive correlations.

you cannot solve tomorrow's problem if you aren't willing to abandon today's dud.