[I am relaunching my blog. I am at a new job, but I don’t have any new ideas. Here are some old ones.]

Archives of Questionable Research: Sad National Anthems Lead to more Suicides

This study on trees leading to less crime (HT Matt Yglesias) reminded me of a story from a friend. Students in a graduate stats class were given data on tornado damage and trailer parks. The assignment was to disprove that trailer parks cause tornadoes. Turns out to be harder than you would think.

My colleague, Jacob Montgomery, just pointed me to this study on sad national anthems and suicide rates.

These studies remind me of some of the stories I heard in my undergrad finance classes about stock market performance. These range from the AFC Superbowl wins leading to higher returns to the skirt length hypothesis (shorter average skirt lengths are correlated with higher stock returns).

Do I even have to comment on these studies? Bill Easterly’s “Elusive Quest for Growth” has a few chapters on related points on economic growth and development.