Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen Dovner has lost his voice this week and his home sick.

So, we bring you this re-broadcast from Marketplace. Enjoy!

From APM, American Public Media, and WNYC...

This is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace.

Here's the host of Marketplace, Kyra's Doll.

Time now for a little bit of Freakonomics Radio that moment in the broadcast every couple of weeks

where we talk to Stephen Dovner, the co-author of the books in the block.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm fighting through it.

Okay, folks in the blog of the same name, it is of course the hidden side of everything.

Ah, let me find the button, Kyra. I got it.

Apologies. So, what are you doing?

I'm sorry, we just put a burglar alarm in the studio here. It goes off like every five minutes.

One would think you'd be able to turn it off when you're on the radio, dude.

You would, but you know, it's not just me, Kyra. Do you have any idea what the false alarm rate is for burglar alarms in this country?

Well, I'm just gonna guess you're trying to make a point here. So I would say hi, yes.

The data show that false alarms account for 94 to 99% of all alarm calls.

Wow, okay. I mean, that's great that they're false alarms, but it's bad that they're false alarms, right?

Well, you know who hates it even more than the homeowners are the police.

Yeah, of course. Listen to Craig Stecler, he's the police chief of Fremont, California.

When he realized that 98% of the alarm calls to his department were false alarms, he started to figure out what this was actually costing him.

The officer's time, we figured it was around $67.

And for each officer to respond to officers per call, then the dispatch time was around $12 for every dispatch call.

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