In the United States especially, politics and economics don’t mix well. Politicians have all sorts of reasons to pass all sorts of laws that, as well-meaning as they may be, fail to account for the way real people respond to real-world incentives.

Scarcity is a captivating book, overflowing with new ideas, fantastic stories, and simple suggestions that just might change the way you live.

Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent--all depending on who wields it and how.

Data, I think, is one of the most powerful mechanisms for telling stories. I take a huge pile of data and I try to get it to tell stories.

If you own a gun and have a swimming pool in the yard, the swimming pool is almost 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.

When people don’t pay the true cost of something, they tend to consume it inefficiently.

Levitt admits to having the reading interests of a tweener girl, the Twilight series and Harry Potter in particular.