Archive for the 'books' Category

The Colbert Bump

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

An analysis of “The Colbert Bump”, the bump in book sales after an author appears on the show. I wish there was more comparison to the bumps from appearing on other shows. And I wish their methodology wasn’t so pedestrian. Did they try to control for anything?

But make sure to check out the paper they reference: Internet Exchanges for Used Books: An Empirical Analysis of Product Cannibalization and Welfare Impact

Hand-wringing About American Culture

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge, and if so, who will read her book? oh yeah, unless it doesn’t contain any essential knowledge