Planet Money

Take a bunch of 3 year olds from poor families. Randomly divide them into two groups, and give one group free access to preschool. Then follow both groups for 40 years. This is what the researchers in the Perry Preschool Program did, starting in the early 1960s. The results were astonishing. Kids from the preschool group were less likely to be arrested and more likely to have a job. Among those with jobs, those who went to preschool made more money than those who did not. Other studies show similar results. On today's today's Planet Money, we talk with James Heckman, a University of Chicago economist. Based on the data from these studies, he argues that using public funds to pay for poor kids to go to preschool actually saves the government money in the long run.

There's a lot of hand waving in economics. People make big-picture arguments and throw around equations, but often there's not much good evidence to work with.MIT economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo do experiments to try to figure out how to improve the lot of the world's poor. Their goal isn't so much to make big, sweeping statements as to find clear answers to specific questions.On today's Planet Money, we talk to Banerjee and Duflo about their new book, Poor Economics.

On today's Planet Money, we hit the streets of Manhattan with economist Tim Harford. In his new book, Adapt, Harford argues that success always starts with failure. Harford takes us on a failure tour of New York. Highlights include a Gutenberg Bible (turns out the Bible business wasn't so good to Gutenberg) and the Woolworth Building (Woolworth's had some great innovations in its day, but eventually got beat by big-box stores). And perhaps inevitably, we wind up on Wall Street.

For hundreds of years, Europe and the U.S. had what Fareed Zakaria calls "the secret sauce" — a powerful combination of capitalism, the rule of law, individual rights, science, technology and education. Today, the secret sauce has spread around the world. And it's driving rapid economic growth in scores of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. On today's Planet Money, we talk to Zakaria, author of The Post-American World, about what the rise of the developing world means for the U.S.

Every political candidate promises to create jobs. But when Scott Walker was campaigning to be the governor of Wisconsin, he put a finer point on it. He promised to create 250,000 jobs during his first term. His strategy for doing that is a familiar one: tax breaks for businesses that make new hires, and for companies that relocate to Wisconsin. We recently traveled to Wisconsin to talk to Scott Walker and businesses around the state. Turns out, it's very hard to figure out which jobs were created because of Walker's programs, and which would have been created anyway.

On today's Planet Money, we take a look at the International Monetary Fund. What does the IMF actually do? Does the world need the IMF? And what do the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn mean for the future of the institution?

Jonathan Coulton is a rock star for geeks. He used to work as a computer programmer. But now he writes songs about white-collar zombies and lovesick programmers. He doesn't have a record label, but he makes about $500,000 a year from his music. He tours, licenses his music, and sells songs and merch from his bare-bones website. On today's Planet Money, we talk to Coulton about his work. Jacob Ganz and Frannie Kelley from NPR Music are our special-guest co-hosts. The core question: Is Coulton a fluke, or is he a new model of how to make a living as a musician?

Last fall, we embarked on our latest adventure in investment journalism: We bought a gold coin. On today's show, we sell that coin, and find out whether we made or lost money (the question is more complicated than it sounds). And we try to figure out whether we're in the middle of a gold bubble.

On today's Planet Money: The legend of the national debt. Where the debt came from, what happened the one time we paid it all off, and why Congress created the debt ceiling in the first place.

On today's Planet Money, we talk to Ali Tarhouni. He fled Libya 40 years ago after speaking out against Moammar Gadhafi. "I was given a choice to leave the country or go to jail," he says. His name wound up on a Gadhafi hit list in the 1980s. His life settled down over the years, though, and he landed a job teaching microeconomics at the University of Washington. But when the civil war started in Libya, Tarhouni returned home and quickly became the finance minister for the anti-Gadhafi forces. His job, among other things, is to figure out how to get money for the rebels.

On today's Planet Money: The economics of the Middle Ages. Knights are extortionists. Guilds knock down your house if you don't play by their rules. And you have to wait until the black death kills a third of Europe before anything changes. Tough times.

There was a brief moment — post-Friendster, pre-Facebook — when MySpace was a big deal. How did that happen? And why was the moment so brief? The answer involves porn, spyware, and total ignorance. On today's podcast we talk to Julia Angwin, author of Stealing Myspace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America. Note: The interview originally aired in a podcast in August of '09.

It's called "Iceland" for a reason. Polar bears sometimes wind up there floating by on chunks of ice. In the winter, there are only a few hours of daylight each day. Reykjavik feels like you took a European city — coffee shops, fancy cars, orderly streets — and put it on the moon. Which raises a question: How did a barren, icy island become a thriving, modern economy? The short answer: Fish, energy and books.

Remember that school we visited in Haiti last year? The one without a schoolhouse? After we did a story on the school, listeners donated $3,000. The principal thought it was enough to build a schoolhouse. But, as we reported last fall, that money was only enough for a foundation and some concrete blocks. We thought that would be the end of the story. Then we got an email from a listener named Tim Myers. On today's show, we talk to Tim about what he learned on a recent trip to Haiti — and we hear how much he thinks it will cost to build the school. Also on the podcast, a very special Planet Money Indicator: A decade of U.S. home prices, sung as opera. For more on that project, read our post from earlier this afternoon.

The very rich have planes and helicopters and yachts. They can go wherever they want, whenever they want. On today's Planet Money, we pose a question being debated in state capitals around the country: Do the rich flee high-tax states?