Superfreakonomics_ global cooling, patri - Steven D. Levitt [97]
S.D.L.
People like Sudhir Venkatesh, Allie, Craig Feied, Ian Horsley, Joe De May Jr., John List, Nathan Myhrvold, and Lowell Wood make me grateful every day that I became a writer. They are full of insights and surprises that are a joy to learn. Steve Levitt is not only a great collaborator but a wonderful economics teacher as well. For outstanding research assistance, thanks to Rhena Tantisunthorn, Rachel Fershleiser, Nicole Tourtelot, Danielle Holtz, and especially Ryan Hagen, who did great work on this book and will write great books of his own one day. To Ellen, my extraordinary wife, and to the fantastic creatures known as Solomon and Anya: you are all pretty damn swell.
S.J.D.
SuperFreakonomics
SuperFreakonomics
NOTES
INTRODUCTION: PUTTING THE FREAK IN ECONOMICS
THE PERILS OF WALKING DRUNK: The brilliant economist Kevin Murphy called our attention to the relative risk of walking drunk. For background on the dangers of drunk driving, see Steven D. Levitt and Jack Porter, “How Dangerous Are Drinking Drivers?” Journal of Political Economy 109, no. 6 (2001). / 2 One of the benefits of a cumbersome federal bureaucracy is that it hires tens of thousands of employees to staff hundreds of agencies that collect and organize endless reams of statistical data. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is one such agency, and it supplies definitive and valuable data on traffic safety. Regarding the proportion of miles driven drunk, see “Impaired Driving in the United States,” NHTSA, 2006. / 2 For drunk pedestrian deaths, see “Pedestrian Roadway Fatalities,” NHTSA, DOT HS 809 456, April 2003. / 2 For drunk driving deaths, see “Traffic Safety Facts 2006,” NHTSA, DOT HS 810 801, March 2008. / 2 “They lie down to rest on country roads”: see William E. Schmidt, “A Rural Phenomenon: Lying-in-the-Road Deaths,” The New York Times, June 30, 1986. / 3 The number of Americans of driving age: here and elsewhere in this book, population statistics and characteristics are generally drawn from U.S. Census Bureau data. / 3 “Friends Don’t Let Friends…”: By total happenstance, we recently met one of the creators of the original slogan “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk.” Her name is Susan Wershba Zerin. In the early 1980s, she worked at the Leber Katz Partners ad agency in New York and was the account manager on a pro bono anti-drunk-driving campaign for the U.S. Department of Transportation. “Elizabeth Dole, the secretary of transportation, was our key contact,” she recalls. The phrase “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” was written as the campaign’s internal strategic statement, but it proved so memorable in-house that it was adopted as the campaign’s tagline.
THE UNLIKELY SAVIOR OF INDIAN WOMEN: This section draws substantially from Robert Jensen and Emily Oster, “The Power of TV: Cable Television and Women’s Status in India,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming. For more on living standards in India, see the United Nations Human Development Report for India; “National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), 2005–06, India,” The International Institute for Population Sciences and Macro Intl.; and “India Corruption Study 2005,” Center for Media Studies, Transparency International, India. / 4 On the unwantedness of girls in India and the use of ultrasounds to identify them for abortion, see NFHS-3 report; and Peter Wonacott, “India’s Skewed Sex Ratio Puts GE Sales in Spotlight,” The Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2007; and Neil Samson Katz and Marisa Sherry, “India: The Missing Girls,” Frontline, April 26, 2007. / 4 For more on the persistence of dowry in India, see Siwan Anderson, “Why Dowry Payments Declined with Modernization in Europe but Are Rising in India,” Journal of Political Economy 111, no. 2 (April 2003); Sharda Srinivasan and Arjun S. Bedi, “Domestic Violence and Dowry: Evidence from a South Indian Village,” World Development 35, no. 5 (2007); and Amelia Gentleman, “Indian Brides Pay a High Price,” The International Herald Tribune, October 22, 2006. / 4 The Smile Train story comes from author