A new study has apparently proven that being a king is the most dangerous occupation of all time. Manuel Eisner, a professor at Cambridge, researched the deaths of over 1,500 monarchs between 600 and 1800 AD. He found that almost 25% of them died violently during this time, and almost 15% of them died from being murdered. Their risk of dying violently was about 700 times greater than those they ruled, and was also greater than the risk facing those living in even the most dangerous places on earth today.

Source: guardian.co.uk

Via: Freakonomics Blog

We’ve previously covered some of the odd things that can alter our approach to life. You can add weather to the list of things that can significantly alter the decisions you take. This blog took a look at just some of the ways that weather can influence you:

• Cloudiness during a college visit can increase the probability of you attending that college by almost 10%.
• Bad weather is likely to negatively affect your job interview.
• Men shift about half an hour of their time from leisure to work during rainy days.

Read more about how weather can also affect consumer spending, company profitability, art auctions, and street violence over here.

Source: Barking Up The Wrong Tree

We’ve previously covered how college sex conforms quite well to the laws of supply and demand. A Florida University Social Psychologist recently decided to apply the same type of analysis to see how gender equality changes the ‘market forces’ involved in sex. He concludes that “gender equality means more sex”. In an interview with Salon he answered some questions about his research. The highlights of the interview include:

• In the sexual market “women have the supply and men represent the demand.” The price of sex is the amount that men have to commit to attain it.
• On describing how women treat sex the researcher argued that “It’s a bit like OPEC.” Sex is a resource that women control, and to ensure that the price of sex remains high women restrict each other’s sexuality through the use of tools such as gossip and shame.
• Because gender equality means that sex is no longer “a woman’s only ticket to a good life” she no longer needs “to get a really good return” and this brings down the price of sex thus increasing the promiscuity of a society.

Read the rest of the interview over here.

Source: Salon

In this article, the financial situations of those who cohabit and those who get married are compared. First off, the number of people who cohabit has more than doubled since the mid 1990s. Those without a college education are also much more likely to cohabit than those with college degrees. When the finances of those who cohabit and those who get married are compared, education becomes a major factor. Those with college degrees who cohabit have greater median household incomes than those with college degrees who get married. However, among those without a college education, couples who get married earn a greater median household income than those who cohabit.

Source: Freakonomics Blog

Match.com is the world’s leading internet dating website. In an article from the Financial Times that appeared in Slate Magazine, a journalist decided to find out more about how the site had now evolved beyond its origins to the point where it can make recommendations for the types of relationships that individuals should pursue. Some of the highlights from the article include:

• Match’s algorithm takes into account both your preferences and your behaviour. If the types of profiles you check don’t match your stated requirements then the software will take that into account.
• Software engineers at Match compare the algorithms they use to the same algorithms that Amazon , Pandora and Netflix use to come up with recommendations for their users. They note, however, that unlike other websites, the attraction to the ‘product’ has to be mutual and this makes the process more complicated.
• Empirical data shows that men care a lot about hair colour when selecting partners.
• It’s estimated that between 15-20% of relationships and marriages begin online.
• Diet ads are popular on the site.

Read more about why the site was initially designed with women in mind and how the founder of the site had his girlfriend leave him…for a man she met on Match.com over here.

Source: Slate

With the recent credit rating downgrade by S&P of the U.S. to AA+ from AAA, is U.S. debt still a safe investment? After the downgrade, the stock market was sent into a tailspin on Monday as investors lost even more confidence in the economic recovery and the future prospects of U.S. and international businesses. It seems that there is no safe place for these investors to go these days considering the troubles the U.S. is facing and the problems affecting the EU. So where did they decide to seek a little security after this latest round of bad news? Well, it appears that they headed straight to U.S. debt – the very thing which the S&P downgraded. Therefore, the credit rating downgrade by S&P of U.S. debt seems to have had the effect of making U.S. debt a safer bet – at least in the minds of investors.

Source: Freakonomics Blog

In this article, the average earnings resulting from different levels of education are compared. As you can see, those holding professional degrees have the greatest income while those who did not finish high school have the lowest. The article goes on to point out that the level of education attained isn’t always the best indicator of income, though. Rather, it is what was studied. Therefore, using education levels to compare incomes can only tell you so much – after all, what those degrees are in may end up giving you better information. Nonetheless, general data such as this is telling, and clearly shows that more education tends to lead to higher earnings.

Source: Economix Blog

Why do gangs have gang colours? Wouldn’t that just make it easier for the police to identify them? Andrew Mell, an Oxford Economist, decided to find out.

Perhaps the most interesting argument in his paper is that prominent gang colours increase the likelihood that other people will want to do business with them because it makes it more difficult for them to operate. A gang’s success despite their handicap is seen by potential business partners as a signal of their reliability and effectiveness. The author further argues that this would mean that increased penalties for gang activities around certain areas such as school zones might be counter-productive as they might encourage gang activity in those areas because the risk of operating is greater.

Source: University of Oxford

Via: The Wall Street Journal, William Dearden

It’s common for small businesses to pass from parent to child. But what effect does this implicit nepotism have on the performance of the company? One Stanford Economist decided to find out. The ultimate outcome of his analysis was that:

• CEOs that inherit their position generally see a decline in their return on assets, but not their profitability.
• Merit seems to make the largest difference. As the report notes “Family CEOs who attended less selective colleges…account for the entire decline in performance observed by the group of firms that promote family CEOs”

Read more about the details of the study and find a link to the full paper over here.

Source: Freakonomics