Economics Detective Radio
155 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 61 ratingsEconomics Detective Radio is a podcast about markets, ideas, institutions, and all things related to the field of economics. Episodes consist of long-form interviews and are generally released on Fridays. Topics include economic theory, economic history, the history of thought, money, banking, finance, macroeconomics, public choice, business cycles, health care, education, international trade, and anything else of interest to economists, students, and serious amateurs interested in the science of human action. For additional content and links related to each episode, visit economicsdetective.com.
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Episodes
State Capacity and the Rise of the Modern Nation State with Mark Koyama
June 09, 2017 16:04 - 47 minutes - 54.3 MBMy guest for this episode is Mark Koyama of George Mason University. Our topic is a recent paper titled, "States and Economic Growth: Capacity and Constraints," which Mark coauthored with Noel Johnson. Just recorded at great podcast with @GarrettPetersen on my work on state capacity (with @ndjohnson). — Mark Koyama (@MarkKoyama) May 24, 2017 As stated in the paper, "state capacity describes the ability of a state to collect taxes, enforce law and order, and provide public goods." That sa...
Money, Trade, and Economic Growth in the Early Modern Period with Nuno Palma
June 02, 2017 20:19 - 44 minutes - 60.7 MBMy guest for this episode is Nuno Palma, he is an assistant professor of economics, econometrics, and finance at the University of Groningen. Our discussion begins with the monetary history of England. Nuno has authored a study that reconstructs England's money supply from 1270 to 1870. We discuss his methods and findings. We also discuss the influx of precious metals into European markets after the discovery of the New World. We discuss the impact of empire on economic development with ...
The Economic History of War and Conflict with Jari Eloranta
May 26, 2017 16:10 - 50 minutes - 70.3 MBMy guest for this episode is Jari Eloranta, he is a professor of comparative economic and business history at Appalachian State University. Jari's work focuses on the economic history of national defense. In this far-reaching conversation, we go all the way back to pre-modern societies' methods of financing their militaries, then trace the transitions up through the early modern period and into the 20th century. We discuss the way war has shaped modern states and institutions. Books mentio...
Rentberry, Digital Markets, and Affordable Housing with Alex Lubinsky
April 15, 2017 10:53 - 38 minutes - 53.5 MBMy guest today is Alex Lubinsky, co-founder of the Silicon Valley startup Rentberry. Rentberry is a platform that lets landlords post units for rent so that tenants can bid on them. Once a landlord posts a vacancy, different potential tenants can make offers and the landlord can select which one to rent to. Importantly, the landlord doesn't have to select the highest bidder. Potential tenants on Rentberry put in their personal characteristics up on the site, so landlords can select for t...
Rentberry, Digital Markets, and Affordable Housing with Alex Lubinsky
April 15, 2017 10:53My guest today is Alex Lubinsky, co-founder of the Silicon Valley startup Rentberry. Rentberry is a platform that lets landlords post units for rent so that tenants can bid on them. Once a landlord posts a vacancy, different potential tenants can make offers and the landlord can select which one to rent to. Importantly, the landlord doesn't have to select the highest bidder. Potential tenants on Rentberry put in their personal characteristics up on the site, so landlords can select for t...
50th Episode Special with Garrett Petersen and Ash Navabi
April 07, 2017 16:14 - 44 minutes - 62.1 MBHello and welcome to the fiftieth episode special of Economics Detective Radio! Today we have Ash Navabi back on the program, but we’re flipping the script: Ash will be interviewing me about the show and about all the things I’ve learned while making it. In this episode, I alienate the political right by discussing the importance of labour mobility and the desirability of open borders. I also alienate the political left by expressing a lukewarm position on climate change. I also discuss my...
Anthropometric History, Quebec, and the Antebellum Height Puzzle with Vincent Geloso
March 25, 2017 00:22 - 40 minutes - 55.5 MBReturning to the podcast is Vincent Geloso of Texas Tech University. Our topic for this episode is anthropometric history, the study of history by means of measuring humans. Doing serious historical research into the distant past is difficult work, because the further you look back in time, the less information you can access. For the 20th century we have wonderful thing like chain-weighted real GDP. Going back further, we have some statistics, lots of surviving physical evidence, and load...
Doughnut Economics, Inequality, and the Future of Economic Growth with Kate Raworth
March 17, 2017 15:30 - 1 hour - 91.7 MBToday's guest is Kate Raworth, she is a senior visiting research associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, a Senior Associate at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and the author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. In this interesting and wide-ranging discussion, we discuss Kate's critiques of the standard models taught to economics undergraduates, as well as her views on development, economic growth, inequal...
Turkey's Coup D'état and Geospatial Data Analysis with Akin Unver
March 11, 2017 01:15 - 53 minutes - 73 MBToday's guest is Akin Unver of Kadir Has University. He uses geospatial data to study political events such as the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016. The coup was an attempt by certain rogue elements of the Turkish armed forces to oust President Erdogan. However, unlike past coups in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997, the Turkish people documented and coordinated their opposition to it on social media in real time, leaving a rich record of events as they unfolded. Akin's research, which was feat...
Innovation, Invention, and Britain's Industrial Revolution with Anton Howes
March 03, 2017 16:09 - 46 minutes - 63.4 MBThis episode features Anton Howes of Brown University. He is a historian of innovation, and in this conversation we discuss his work on the explosion of innovation that occurred in Britain between 1551 and 1851. You can check out his Medium blog for some of the articles we discuss. Anton has collected a data set of over 1,000 British innovators who worked during this period. He has documented their education, their experience, and their relationships with one another. Some of the interesti...
Regulation, Discretion, and Public Choice with Stephen M. Jones
February 24, 2017 21:16 - 58 minutes - 80.5 MBWhat follows is an edited partial transcript of my conversation with Stephen M. Jones. He is an economist for the US Coast Guard. However, we are discussing his own research, so nothing in this conversation should be taken to represent the official views of the US Coast Guard. Petersen: So Stephen, let's start just by defining regulatory discretion. What does that mean in this context? Jones: Sure. So, I think first off, we should probably define regulation because when Congress writes a ...
Canada's Cartel Problem with Maxime Bernier
February 17, 2017 21:07 - 26 minutes - 24.9 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Maxime Bernier. If you like his ideas, I encourage you to go to his website to learn more about them. Petersen: You're listening to Economics Detective Radio. Before we start let me give a quick disclaimer that although today's guest is a politician this show is nonpartisan and doesn't endorse any particular candidate for office. My guest and I are also Canadian so we'll be talking about some Canada-specific issues. I know I have ...
DonorSee and the Future of Charitable Giving with Gret Glyer
January 29, 2017 18:49 - 38 minutes - 35.8 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of the first part of my conversation with Gret Glyer, creator of DonorSee. For the full conversation, listen to the episode. Petersen: My guest today is Gret Glyer, he is the creator of a new app called DonorSee. Gret, welcome to Economics Detective Radio. Glyer: Thank you for having me, Garrett. How are you? Petersen: I am great! So, DonorSee is a charitable giving app with a very interesting twist which---we'll get to the app itself in a little bit...
Money, Markets, and Democracy with George Bragues
January 20, 2017 21:57 - 58 minutes - 66.8 MBWhat follows is an edited partial transcript of my conversation with George Bragues of the University of Guelph-Humber. We discussed his new book, Money, Markets, and Democracy: Politically Skewed Financial Markets and How to Fix Them. This is his second appearance on this show, you can hear the first one here. Petersen: So your book looks at the interaction between Democratic politics and financial markets. In your introduction, you quote the Greek Prime Minister Alexi Tsipras, who claime...
Medicine, Entrepreneurship, and Health Policy with Ray March
January 14, 2017 00:25 - 47 minutes - 44.4 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of my discussion with Ray March about the economics of medicine and health insurance. We had a fascinating and far-reaching discussion about health care policy, both in the United States and Canada, as well as some cases of entrepreneurship in the medical sector. This includes a slightly awkward discussion of the development of sexual pharmacology, the early experiments with nitrates and Viagra, and the, uhhh, "firmness" those drugs produce. Enjoy! Pet...
Early Modern London, Wages, and the Industrial Revolution with Judy Stephenson
December 23, 2016 20:20 - 42 minutes - 39.8 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Judy Stephenson. Petersen: You're listening to Economics Detective Radio. My guest today is Judy Stephenson of Oxford University's Wadham college. Judy, welcome to Economics Detective Radio. Stephenson: Thank you very much. It's nice to be here. Petersen: So, our topic for today is economic history. Specifically we’ll be looking at some interesting research Judy has done on wage rates in the early modern period in London. This...
Wrongful Convictions, Exoneration, and Criminal Justice with Samuel Gross
December 16, 2016 19:43 - 36 minutes - 33.6 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Samuel Gross. Petersen: You're listening to Economics Detective Radio. My guest today is Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan Law School. Sam, welcome to Economics Detective Radio. Gross: Great to be here. Petersen: So our topic for today is criminal justice, in particular, we're going to be looking at the issue of wrongful conviction. Dr. Gross was part of the establishment of the National Registry of Exonerations which...
The Basic Income Guarantee, Freedom, and the Welfare State with Otto Lehto
December 09, 2016 21:55 - 36 minutes - 33.7 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Otto Lehto. Petersen: You're listening to Economics Detective Radio. My guest today is Otto Lehto of King's College London. He is formerly the chair of Finland's Basic Income Network. Otto, welcome to Economics Detective Radio. Lehto: Oh it's my pleasure to be here. Petersen: So our topic for today is the basic income guarantee. Otto, you approach this idea from the perspective of political philosophy, so let's start by discus...
Supersonic Flight, Technology, and the Overland Ban with Sam Hammond
November 25, 2016 21:08 - 51 minutes - 59 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Sam Hammond. Petersen: My guest today is Sam Hammond. He's a policy analyst at the Niskanen Center. Sam, welcome to Economics Detective Radio. Hammond: Hi! Petersen: Our topic today is supersonic air travel. Sam has written an article titled "Make America Boom Again" along with co-author Eli Dourado which revisits the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's ban on supersonic flight over the United States. So Sam let's start a...
The Second Ehrlich-Simon Wager with Joanna Szurmak
November 19, 2016 19:46 - 1 hour - 107 MBToday's interview features Joanna Szurmak of the University of Toronto. Our topic for today is the second proposed bet between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. Joanna has written a paper titled "Care to Wager Again? An Appraisal of Paul Ehrlich's Counter-Bet Offer to Julian Simon" along with coauthors Vincent Geloso and Pierre Desrochers, both former guests of this show. We mentioned the original Simon-Ehrlich bet briefly in my conversation with Steve Horwitz, but in this episode we talk about...
The Upside of Inequality with Ed Conard
November 12, 2016 16:53 - 54 minutes - 50.1 MBMy guest today is Ed Conard, here to discuss his recent book, The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class. He is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former managing director at Bain Capital. His 2012 book, Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong was a New York Times bestseller. Because his business partner Mitt Romney was running for President at the time, many people expected the book to be...
Space Debris, Governance, and the Economics of Space with Alex Salter
November 05, 2016 06:09 - 37 minutes - 34.6 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of my interview with Alex Salter about the economics of space. The first half deals primarily with the issue of space debris, while the second half deals with the possibility of private governance in space. There's something in this episode for everyone to enjoy, so I hope you'll listen, read, and share it with your friends. Petersen: My guest today is Alex Salter of Texas Tech University. Alex, welcome to Economics Detective Radio. Salter: Thanks very...
Re-thinking the U-Curve of Inequality with Vincent Geloso
November 01, 2016 15:08 - 49 minutes - 45.9 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Vincent Geloso. Petersen: My guest today is Vincent Geloso of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University. Vincent, welcome to Economics Detective Radio. Geloso: It's a pleasure to be here. Petersen: So the paper we'll be discussing today is titled "A U-curve of Inequality? Measuring Inequality in the Interwar Period" which Vincent has co-authored with John Moore and Phillips Schlosser. The paper casts doubt on the clai...
How Land Use Restrictions Make Housing Unaffordable with Emily Hamilton
October 21, 2016 18:02 - 32 minutes - 30.3 MBWhat follows is an edited transcript of my conversation with Emily Hamilton about land use regulations' effects on affordable housing. Petersen: My guest today is Emily Hamilton. She is a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Emily, thanks for being on Economics Detective Radio. Hamilton: Thanks a lot for having me. Petersen: So, Emily recently wrote a paper titled "How Land Use Regulation Undermines Affordable Housing" along with her co-author Sanford Ikeda. The...
Writing and Thinking Less Badly with Mike Munger
October 14, 2016 18:32 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBIn this episode, I discuss the process of writing and being successful with Mike Munger. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. Petersen: My guest today is Mike Munger of Duke University. Mike, welcome to Economics Detective Radio! Munger: It's a pleasure to be on your show! Petersen: So first I stole EconTalk's format and now I have stolen Mike Munger as well, so if Russ Roberts sends me a cease and desist letter, I'll completely understand why. Munger: Russ and I ...
New York Urbanism with Stephen Smith
October 07, 2016 16:17 - 48 minutes - 45.9 MBToday's guest is Stephen Smith, he is an analyst for a New York real estate firm. Stephen did some research showing that at least 40 percent of the buildings in Manhattan could not be built under today's zoning regulations. In fact, the number is probably significantly higher. Classic landmarks like the Empire State Building, with its floor-area ratio of 30, wouldn't fly today. Watch this time-lapse of the New York City skyline, and pay close attention to the kind of changes that happen ...
Democracy Versus Epistocracy with Jason Brennan
September 30, 2016 17:00 - 36 minutes - 41.7 MBMy guest today is Jason Brennan of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He is the author of Against Democracy, which is our topic for this episode. The first chapter is available on the publisher's website. John Stuart Mill believed that getting more people involved in politics would make them smarter, more concerned for the common good, better educated, and nobler. In the intervening century and a half, we've gathered much more data on Mill's hypothesis, and the resul...
Urban Development, the Growth Ponzi Scheme, and Strong Towns with Chuck Marohn
September 23, 2016 17:20 - 53 minutes - 62.1 MBToday's guest on Economics Detective Radio is Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns. Strong Towns is a non-profit that seeks to reform America from the ground up, starting with its towns and cities. It aims to promote healthy local economies by improving local governance. The Growth Ponzi Scheme Chuck began recognizing the problems in America's towns and cities when he was working as a civil engineer. He recounts a story of working in a little city in central Minnesota in...
Population Growth, the Ethics of Having Children, and Climate Change with Steve Horwitz
September 16, 2016 13:00 - 34 minutes - 32.3 MBToday's guest is Steve Horwitz, he is the Charles A. Dana Professor and Chair of the economics department at St. Lawrence University. Steve recently wrote an article titled, "Make Babies, and Don't Let the Greens Guilt Trip You about It." This was a response to an argument made by the bioethicist Travis Rieder, who was recently profiled by NPR. Rieder argues that it is immoral to have children because of the burden additional humans place on the Earth, in particular because of the risk of ...
Marx, his Errors, and his Continuing Influence with Phil Magness
September 09, 2016 16:50 - 40 minutes - 37.3 MBThis week's episode of Economics Detective Radio deals with the economic thought and continuing popularity of Marx. No, not Groucho! The other Marx! My guest on the podcast is Phil Magness, a historian who teaches at George Mason University. Phil recently wrote a piece entitled, "Commie Chic and Quantifying Marx on the Syllabus." Recently, the Open Syllabus Project released a data set including thousands of college syllabi. To many people's surprise, Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto en...
Trailer Parks, Zoning, and Market Urbanism with Nolan Gray
September 02, 2016 13:00 - 51 minutes - 47.3 MBToday's guest on Economics Detective Radio is Nolan Gray. Nolan is a writer for Market Urbanism and the host of the recently launched Market Urbanism Podcast. Market urbanism is the synthesis of classical liberal economics and an appreciation for urban life. Market urbanists are interested in economic issues specific to cities, such as housing affordability and urban transportation. Nolan wrote an article titled "Reclaiming 'Redneck' Urbanism: What Urban Planners Can Learn From Trailer P...
Venezuela, El Caracazo, and Chavism with Francisco Toro
August 26, 2016 21:00 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBToday's guest is Francisco Toro, he is the blog editor at The Caracas Chronicles, a group blog about Venezuela. Venezuela has all the markings of a paradise. It has a lush, tropical climate and access to vast oil reserves. And yet, the Venezuelan government has run the country into the ground. As of now, all but the wealthiest Venezuelans struggle to eat. What went wrong? It might surprise you, given Venezuela's current state, that the country was for many years a model Latin American co...
Against Fossil Fuel Divestment with Pierre Desrochers
August 17, 2016 23:01 - 52 minutes - 24.2 MBPierre Desrochers returns to the podcast to discuss the fossil fuel divestment movement in higher education. He recently co-authored a paper titled "Blowing Hot Air on the Wrong Target? A Critique of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement in Higher Education" with Hiroko Shimizu. The fossil fuel divestment movement seeks to combat the environmental damage done by the fossil fuel industry by preventing university endowments from investing in fossil fuel stocks. More than 1,000 universities hav...
The Costs of Ethnic Diversity with Garett Jones
July 22, 2016 23:18 - 55 minutes - 25.5 MBGarett Jones returns to the podcast to discuss the issue of ethnic diversity. There is a wide body of research showing that ethnic diversity can reduce the productivity of teams, firms, and even whole countries. Williams and O'Reilly (1996) review dozens of studies showing that ethnic diversity has a negative impact on group performance. In the two decades since, more research has reinforced that result. Alesina and La Ferrara (2005) find that increasing ethnic diversity from 0 (only one ...
Brexit, The European Union, and the European Economic Area with Sam Bowman
June 26, 2016 01:52 - 44 minutes - 20.6 MBTwo days ago, Britain voted to leave the European Union (EU). The "leave" option won with 52 percent of the vote, leaving elites and the media frustrated with voters for choosing what they perceive to be the "wrong" option. My guest today to discuss Brexit is Sam Bowman, Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute. The EU can be thought of as three things: A trade union known as the European Economic Area (or EEA), a currency union (the Euro) which Britain was never a part of, and a c...
The Age of Em, Whole Brain Emulation, and Humanity's Future with Robin Hanson
June 14, 2016 22:15 - 1 hour - 30.3 MBWhen I think of emulation, I think of retro gaming. My Android phone can easily emulate a Super Nintendo, a gaming console from the 1990s, and it can do that because the phone is much more powerful than the Super Nintendo and because we know exactly how a Super Nintendo works. My guest for this episode, Robin Hanson, argues that we may one day be able to emulate human brains. His book, The Age of Em, provides a detailed analysis of what a society made largely of emulated humans would be lik...
Drugs, Prohibition, and the Suburban Overdose Crisis with Mark Thornton
April 20, 2016 18:23 - 1 hour - 28.2 MBMark Thornton is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute. He is the author of many books, including The Economics of Prohibition (which you can access for free here), which is also the topic of this episode. 1. Does drug prohibition help stop poverty and homelessness? The conventional wisdom on drugs is simple: you see drugs and drug abuse mixed with poverty and homelessness and it makes intuitive sense that drugs play a role in causing poverty. It seems to follow that by criminalizing drug...
Rome's Economic Suicide with Lawrence Reed and Marc Hyden
February 14, 2016 21:53 - 52 minutes - 24.2 MBAncient Rome went from a thriving civilization to a dystopia before its eventual collapse. My guests today explain how that happened. Lawrence Reed and Marc Hyden co-authored "The Slow-Motion Financial Suicide of the Roman Empire." Lawrence is the President of the Foundation for Economic Education, and Marc is a political activist and amateur Roman historian. Many accounts of the fall of Rome focus on military problems and the barbarian invasions. However, the Empire was in decline long bef...
Hive Mind, IQ, and the Wealth of Nations with Garett Jones
December 11, 2015 15:00 - 21 MBGarett Jones is Associate Professor of Economics and BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center, George Mason University. His book, Hive Mind: How Your Nation's IQ Matters so Much More than Your Own is the subject of this episode. The book deals with an empirical puzzle: IQ is a weak predictor for earnings. We all know high-IQ people who live paycheque to paycheque, and lower IQ people who succeed brilliantly. And yet, when we look at the relationship between nations...
Icelandic Sovereign Money with Ash Navabi
October 30, 2015 16:00 - 22.6 MBAsh Navabi returns to the podcast to discuss his essay, "Will Iceland's Sovereign Money Proposal End Economic Crises?" In April of 2015, Frosti Sigurjonsson, Member of the Parliament of Iceland and Chairman of the Committee for Economic Affairs and Trade, made a bold proposal to end fractional reserve banking and replace it with a system he calls "sovereign money." Fractional reserve banking is the system under which banks create money by lending out a portion of depositors' money, keeping...
Violence, Lynchings, Civil War, and Witch Trials with Cornelius Christian
October 16, 2015 17:00 - 19.2 MBCornelius Christian is an Assistant Professor of Economics at St. Francis Xavier University. His research concerns development economics, economic history, and the economics of conflict and violence, which is the topic of this episode of Economics Detective Radio. Cornelius' paper "Lynchings, Labour, and Cotton in the US South" deals with violence against black people in the post-reconstruction South. Historians have hypothesized that there was an economic motive to lynchings, noting that m...
Income and Wealth Inequality with David R. Henderson
July 07, 2015 21:53 - 21.2 MB…or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Inequality. David R. Henderson (http://www.davidrhenderson.com) is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a professor of economics at the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century (http://amzn.to/1LT9jLG) managed to do something unprecedented among equation-dense economic tomes, it became the #1 selling book on Amazon....
Civil Asset Forfeiture with Don Boudreaux
March 21, 2015 02:02 - 17.8 MBDon Boudreaux is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He blogs at Café Hayek. I invited him to discuss civil asset forfeiture on the podcast because of a conversation we had about it at a recent Mercatus Center colloquium. Civil asset forfeiture is the practice of the state taking someone’s property on suspicion that the property has been used for wrongdoing, without having to charge the owner with a crime. Civil asset forfeiture had its origins in British maritime law. The...
Experimental Economics, Norms, and Prosocial Behaviour with Erik Kimbrough
February 27, 2015 21:14 - 23.3 MBErik Kimbrough, assistant professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, is an experimental economist. In this episode, we discuss his paper, "Norms Make Preferences Social" which he coauthored with Alexander Vostroknutov. Experimental economics began with Vernon Smith's double auction experiments in the 1950s. Smith wanted to test whether market participants could converge to the equilibrium prices and quantities predicted under neoclassical theory. He found that, indeed, the students ...
The Bubble Films with Jimmy Morrison
February 06, 2015 12:11 - 44 minutes - 20.5 MBJimmy Morrison is an independent filmmaker who is currently directing two films: The Housing Bubble and The Bigger Bubble. The Housing Bubble deals with the history of business cycles in America, spanning from the First World War to the 2008 crash. The Bigger Bubble deals with the aftermath of the 2008 crash. These films began as a single project, but Jimmy chose to split it into two films in order to tell the full story. The films’ website provides a synopsis: The Bubble is coming out at ...
Finance and the Austrian School with George Bragues
December 27, 2014 15:00 - 53 minutes - 25 MBThis episode of Economics Detective Radio features George Bragues, professor of business at the University of Guelph-Humber, discussing his work developing a distinctly Austrian theory of finance. While there have been forays into finance by Austrians such as Mark Skousen and Peter Boettke, Austrians have not yet fully developed a complete and distinctly Austrian theory of finance. George names five pillars of modern finance theory: (1) The capital asset pricing model (CAPM), (2) the Black-...
Jane Jacobs as Spontaneous Order Theorist with Pierre Desrochers
November 21, 2014 15:00 - 1 hour - 28.3 MBThis episode of Economics Detective Radio features Pierre Desrochers discussing the life and work of Jane Jacobs. Jacobs, born Jane Butzner, was a thinker and activist who wrote about cities. She spent her early career as a business journalist. When she started writing about urban renewal, she recognized the policy for the disaster it was. Jacobs became a voice for the general dissatisfaction with a policy that would bulldoze whole neighbourhoods, relocating the inhabitants into new building...
TruthCoin, Prediction Markets, and Anarchy with Zack Hess
October 10, 2014 14:00 - 36 minutes - 17.2 MBThis episode of Economics Detective Radio features Zack Hess. Zack is working on a project called “TruthCoin,” a decentralized prediction market based on the technology behind bitcoin. Prediction markets are a highly effective way to bring together dispersed information and insight into prices that reflect the likelihood of any future event. However, recent attempts to create centralized prediction markets have been thwarted by governments under antiquarian anti-gambling laws. Enter TruthC...
Vampires, Zombies, and the Dismal Science with Glen Whitman
September 27, 2014 14:00 - 43 minutes - 20.2 MBIn this episode, Glen Whitman discusses Economics of the Undead: Vampires, Zombies, and the Dismal Science, a book he co-edited with James Dow. Glen is an economics professor at California State University and, unlike most academic economists, he moonlights as a TV writer. He first wrote for the TV show Fringe and now writes for the soccer spy drama, Matador. The book’s website provides the following description: “Whether preparing us for economic recovery after the zombie apocalypse, anal...
Migration and Open Borders with Nathan Smith
September 19, 2014 14:00 - 1 hour - 30.1 MBIn this episode, Nathan Smith discusses the economics and history of migration and migration restrictions. Nathan is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration: Finance and Economics at Fresno Pacific University and regular blogger at Open Borders: The Case. We start the episode by discussing the economic impacts of Nathan’s own migration to Fresno. Students gain, as he adds to the supply of economics professors, other economists might lose from his competition in labour markets, peo...