Capitalisn't

In his new book, " Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity ", renowned MIT Professor of Economics Daron Acemoglu (with co-author Simon Johnson) argues that the benefits from technological progress are shaped by the distribution of power in society.  In this episode, Acemoglu joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss the key challenges of ensuring that this progress benef...

On this episode, our hosts Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales sit down with renowned MIT economist David Autor to discuss the impact of technology, labor markets, and immigration on wage inequality and the economy at large. Autor is best known for his work on the "China Shock," the impact of rising Chinese exports on manufacturing employment in the United States and Europe after China's accession t...

It is hard to think of an idea more central to capitalism than economics, particularly economic efficiency. Similarly, public policy is now — and has been for a while — conducted in the language of budgets, models, and cost-benefit analyses. But how accountable is this idea to the public? Elizabeth Popp Berman is a sociologist and historian of economic thought at the University of Michigan and the...

Several questions continue to swirl around the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and its larger implications. In this special episode, Chicago Booth’s Raghuram Rajan – former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and IMF Chief Economist – joins Bethany and Luigi to explore the risks in the financial system and possible solutions. Rajan discusses a paper he presented (with NYU Professor Viral Acharya...

Read ProMarket's ongoing coverage of the Twitter Files, including the research summary of the Twitter Files prepared by Stigler Center Research Professional Utsav Gandhi in preparation for this episode Read the Stigler Center's 2019 Report on Digital Platforms , addressing many of the underlying issues discussed in this episode: trust and transparency in social media, business models of journalism...

We had initially prepared an entirely different episode for today, but last week's Silicon Valley Bank collapse, the largest in U.S. history since 2008, meant a quick change of plans. What happened? What is unique about this bank run, and what isn't? How much should regulators be blamed, and how much should bank management be? Do social media and today's frantic digital environment mean this is th...

Revisit: When the Profit Motive Kills , with Anand Giridharadas, on Capitalisn't Why the US Government Buys Overpriced Services From McKinsey , by Matt Stoller in ProMarket Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Read the following articles in ProMarket : There Is a Direct Line from Milton Friedman to Donald Trump's Assault on Democracy , by Martin Wolf George Stigler and the Challenge of Democracy , by Anat Admati Corporations Are Not “We the People, ” by Geoffrey Stone eBook: Milton Friedman 50 Years Later, a Reevaluation Also, check out relevant past Capitalisn't episodes: Martin Wolf: Is Capitalism Kil...

Read the following articles in  ProMarket : There Is a Direct Line from Milton Friedman to Donald Trump's Assault on Democracy , by Martin Wolf George Stigler and the Challenge of Democracy , by Anat Admati Corporations Are Not “We the People, ” by Geoffrey Stone eBook: Milton Friedman 50 Years Later, a Reevaluation Also, check out relevant past Capitalisn't episodes: Why Capitalism Needs Democrac...

  In a Wall Street Journal article about Google’s Secret ‘Project Bernanke,’ Jeff Horwitz and Keach Hagey quoted Google Chief Economist Hal Varian's answer to a question he was asked during the Stigler Center's 2019 Antitrust and Competition Conference . Watch the video excerpt here. " Why Google Dominates Advertising Markets ," by Dina Srinivasan, Stanford Technology Law Review, December 2019 Rea...

Show notes: On February 9th, 2023, " China’s New Covid Strategy ," the next webinar in the Stigler Center's series on China's political economy, will feature Chang-Tai Hsieh, along with Schwarzman Scholars/Harvard Medical School's Joan Kaufman and the Financial Times ' Nian Liu (Stigler Center Journalist in Residence, 2021). Register here . Revisit previous webinars hosted by the Stigler Center on...

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Capitalisn't will be back in your feeds with a brand new episode on January 19. Don't forget to rate and review our podcast if you haven't already, and leave us a voicemail at https://www.speakpipe.com/Capitalisnt . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Read an excerpt from the book here: https://www.promarket.org/2022/10/03/why-streaming-doesnt-pay/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We're taking the holiday off to be with our families, but that doesn't stop the economic news. And there is no story bigger than the collapse of the crypto exchange, FTX. One aspect that attracted our attention was Sam Bankman-Fried, the young CEO of FTX, officially bought into a philosophy called Effective Altruism, where you make the most money to give it to the poor. However, in a text exchange...

[Show Notes: During the episode, Luigi mentions the paper of a Stigler Center Fellow. Here is a ProMarket piece describing this research in further detail: https://www.promarket.org/2022/11/10/the-economics-of-content-moderation-on-social-media/ ] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In June 2022, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said, "we [now] understand better how little we understand about inflation." So what do we actually know about inflation? In this episode, Luigi and Bethany explore the origins of inflation with John Cochrane, Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and author of the popular "Grumpy Economist" blog. They discuss Cochrane's new book, "The Fis...

French economist Thomas Piketty is one of the leading intellectuals documenting inequality, with his 2013 book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” becoming widely read and cited. His new book, "A Brief History of Equality," is more optimistic: In it, Piketty documents how our world has become relatively more equal since the end of the 18th century. In this unedited conversation, Piketty talks to...

Academics and policymakers alike draw a significant correlation between some of today's biggest problems - such as economic inequality - with rising corporate concentration and the ever-decreasing lack of antitrust enforcement. How did this narrative come to be? Is it necessarily correct, and how has it persisted over time? A new paper provides just this data, and it's co-authored by our very own...

Albert Wenger is Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures, which has invested in some of today's most exciting technology companies. In his new book, “The World After Capital", he argues that capitalism cannot allocate all resources efficiently in the digital age – where the new shortage isn't capital, but rather, human attention. While economically incentivized activities will not go away, he sa...

We’re taking a week off here at the end of the summer, but with Biden’s recent student loan announcement we couldn’t help but think back to our episode about student debt with Constatine Yannelis. Before he was elected, Biden had promised to remove 50K in debt from borrowers. His recent announcement doesn’t quite match that promise, but this episode still contains an incredible amount of vital inf...

Why have labor and productivity growth slowed? Software entrepreneur-turned-academic researcher, James Bessen, argues the problem isn't fewer productive startups, or M&A activity (which has actually slowed), but big corporations dominating by mastering "proprietary" software — the intersection of technology and data — which has had major negative societal consequences. He walks Luigi and Bethany t...

Richard B. Freeman is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University and has been studying the role of labor unions in our economy for over forty years. His seminal publication, "What Do Unions Do?" (1984), concluded that unions are on balance beneficial for the economy and society, and remains one of the most widely cited books in this area of research. Luigi and Bethany sit down with Freeman to...

With inflation unfettered, Luigi and Bethany sit down with economist Ricardo Reis to discuss the Federal Reserve’s role. Contrary to our hosts’ views, Reis argues that while the Fed has made mistakes, they are largely understandable. Together, they chart why it took so long to pivot policies, how central banks responded to supply and energy shocks, how much the Fed – or Chair Jay Powell – is to bl...