Kadima and the Wall

Kadima’s recent “victory” (meaning barely 25% of seats, the largest bloc in the deeply fractious Knesset) combined with the discussion of 1990s crime perception in the US in Freakonomics, has reminded me of one of my most uncomfortable political agreements with the right-wing in Israel: the need for a wall.

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Freakonomics

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…

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Hunting with Scalia

My friend, Mike S., made a hilarious comment to me over drinks at Casanova this evening. I think everybody has forgotten the story of Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia going on a duck hunting trip together in Louisiana just a few weeks before the Supreme…

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Profile of Edward Glaeser

Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had, to me, a fascinating profile by Jon Gertner about the economist Edward Glaeser and his views about urban development, real estate prices, and zoning restrictions. Gertner wrote that Glaeser recently completed a study on the Boston metro residential real estate market between 1980…

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