The Policy Prof

In a series of posts, we developed a new method for ranking college football teams. The method evolved a little over time, but it currently has three basic steps. First, all applicable teams are listed in a table in the same order down the rows and across the columns from left to right. Second, one entry is made in the table for each game; that entry can simply be a 1 to indicate a victory by the row team over…

Following up on our posts last year on a new approach to ranking college football teams, we provide our first rankings this season for the 138 FBS teams. We again considered only games played between FBS teams and not games against FCS teams. And we made one small adjustment to our methodology. In our final rankings last season, we weighted cells below the diagonal by the distance below the diagonal divided by the number of teams, we gave equal weight…

It is not easy to determine what constitutes a limited series. They typically have stories that span more than one episode, as compared with a single-episode special or movie or as compared with an anthology series with a different story and characters for each episode. But the stories in a limited series are typically fully resolved within one season, as compared with a continuing series. It is more difficult to classify programs when another story starts from the prior conclusion…

Social scientists have long noted the excessive consumerism in the United States. Consumerism can be defined as a society’s preoccupation with acquiring consumer goods. According to United Nations data, the United States ranks third behind only Bermuda and Switzerland, with household consumption expenditures per capita of $43,959. As the table below shows, those expenditures far exceed the expenditures for households in almost all other “First World” countries. Source: Households and NPISHs Final consumption expenditure per capita (constant 2015 US$) |…

Following up on our earlier post discussing the need for a small, simple set of policy principles that every new policy must meet, our second proposed principle relates to economic inequality: No policy shall be adopted that increases income inequality or wealth inequality. Measuring economic inequality In discussing economic inequality, one must always be clear about both the type of inequality and the measure of that inequality. Common types of economic inequality include pre-tax income inequality, post-tax income inequality, wealth…

Following up on our post discussing the need for Americans to drive smaller cars, we provide a list of the most popular U.S. passenger vehicles in 2025 ranked from least to most considerate, based on vehicle size and fuel efficiency. We ranked all 94 passenger vehicles with more than 50,000 reported U.S. sales in 2025. Manufacturers report only aggregate sales for all configurations of each vehicle. We tried to consider the most popular configuration for each vehicle, while also trying…

We updated our rankings of the 136 FBS football teams through the end of the 2025-26 season. Unfortunately, the bowl games are not as competitive as they used to be, as many of the best players sit out those games to avoid getting injured before the NFL draft. Nevertheless, we considered the results of all bowl games. They are very helpful for our model to compare teams across conferences, as there are relatively few regular season games between the best…

As compared with movies, there is not nearly as much or as reliable information regarding the best TV shows of all time. There are not nearly as many rankings from individual critics and are no reliable sources that aggregate rankings across many critics. Similarly, there are no reliable sources that aggregate rankings across many individuals. Also, there is no longer a single comparable index like box office receipts for movies to indicate the popularity of TV shows. Historically, the Nielsen…

Following up on our earlier post discussing the need for a small, simple set of policy principles that every new policy must meet, our first proposed principle relates to government debt: Except to address an emergency, no policy shall be adopted that increases the ratio of the national debt held by the public (which we refer to as “public debt”) to GDP. Causes of the current debt In 2001, the federal government had a budget surplus of $127 billion, had…

Since the 1960s, policy professionals have used policy analysis criteria to analyze proposed public policies. Those criteria have evolved over time and there is still not a universally agreed list. Kraft and Furlong provide a fairly typical list of the following eight criteria: effectiveness, efficiency, equity, liberty/freedom, political feasibility, social acceptability, administrative feasibility, and technical feasibility. It has become increasingly apparent that these criteria, while helpful, are not sufficient to protect us from bad policies. In particular, there is no…