Society of Professional Economists - Econ Thoughts

Filippo Gaddo , Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, speaks with Jesús Fernández-Villaverde , Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, Research Associate at the NBER and one of the leading voices on macroeconomics, demographics and geoeconomics. The conversation begins with one of the most profound but often overlooke...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Professor Tim Congdon CBE about money, inflation and the lessons of the post-Covid monetary policy episode. http://timcongdon.com/ The discussion centred on Professor Congdon’s latest book, Money and Inflation at the Time of Covid , in which he argues that the inflation su...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Alejandro Chafuen, Distinguished Executive Fellow at the Acton Institute and former President and CEO of the Atlas Network (see https://www.chafuen.com/ ), about the rediscovery of the School of Salamanca and its relevance for both the history of economic thought and conte...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Abby Hall , Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Tampa, and author together with Christopher Coyne of Austrian Economics: An Introduction, available here about Austrian economics, its evolution, and how its insights can still be applied to current economic...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Felix Salmon, senior writer on Bloomberg’s Ideas and Culture desk and author of The Phoenix Economy , about how COVID reshaped the global economy and what it means to live in a world of persistent uncertainty. https://www.felixsalmon.com/ Salmon argues that the pandemic ma...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Eric Leeper, Paul Goodloe McIntire Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia, about the fiscal theory of the price level, fiscal dominance and the future of monetary policy in a high-debt world. In the conversation, Eric explains the core intuition behind the fi...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the EconThoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Brad Setser, the Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former senior official at the US Treasury and the Office of the US Trade Representative, about China’s growth model, global trade imbalances, and the evolving responses in the US, Euro...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Eamonn Butler, co-founder and long-time director of the Adam Smith Institute , in a wide-ranging conversation marking the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations. Eamonn and Filippo reflected on the enduring legacy of Adam Smith, arguing that Smith’s core insight—that p...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Mark Blyth, William R. Rhodes Professor of International Economics at Brown University and author of numerous books on the topics of inflation, austerity and growth. The last twenty years have seen two major shocks to the global and national economies, with profound politica...

In this episode of EconThoughts, A&M Managing Director and host Filippo Gaddo speaks with Financial Times economists Chris Giles and Joel Suss, winners of this year’s Rybczynski Prize for their paper The Text-as-Data Revolution and the Value of Financial News . Their work sits within a broader methodological shift made possible by large-scale digitisation and advances in machine learning — a s...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Dr Anne Bradley, who is George and Sally Mayer Fellow for Economic Education and the Academic Director at the Fund for American Studies. In the conversation, Anne reflects on how economics helps us understand not only markets but the deeper conditions that allow individuals...

In this episode, Filippo Gaddo speaks with Joe Mayes, Bloomberg journalist and author of Can You Run the Economy?, as he discusses his innovative new book — a rare blend of play and policy that turns the reader into the Chancellor for a year - here . Beginning as a simple online simulation, the project evolved into an immersive “choose-your-own-adventure” for economics, challenging readers to bala...

In this episode of Econ Thought, Filippo Gaddo speaks with César Hidalgo, Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics and Director of the Center for Collective Learning at TSE and Corvinus University of Budapest, about his latest book The Infinite Alphabet: The Laws of Knowledge. See his bio and website here . Cesar traces his intellectual path from network science and the Atlas of Economic Comp...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Tyler Cowen, Holbert L. Harris Chair in Economics at George Mason University and Chairman of the Mercatus Center. See his website here . He is also a prolific author, blogger and podcaster and co-founder with Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution, the influential economics bl...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Federico Sturzenegger, Minister of Deregulation and State Transformation of the Argentine Republic under President Javier Milei, and Professor at the University of San Andrés in Buenos Aires (UdeSA). See his bio here In this conversation, Filippo and Federico discuss the Mil...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, spoke with Ricardo Hausmann, founder and director of Harvard’s Growth Lab and Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School. The conversation explored the origins of the Growth Lab, Hausmann’s influential work on economic comple...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, interviewed David McWilliams, economist, author and broadcaster, who most recently wrote Money: A Story of Humanity. In their wide-ranging conversation, David and Filippo explored the core ideas behind McWilliams’ latest book, Money: A Story of Humanity . David explained that money is...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at Alvarez and Marsal, SPE Councillor and host of the Econ Thoughts SPE Podcast, interviewed Johan Norberg , Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. and the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels, and renowned author of Open: The Story Of Human Progress , and The Capitalist Manifesto; why the Global Free Market Will Save the...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at A&M and SPE Councillor, interviewed Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, and author of: Defending Globalization: Facts and Myths about the Global Economy and Its Fundamental Humanity. In the interview, Scott and Filippo discuss recent trends in trade policy and comment on the ups...

Leath Al Obaidi, SPE member and economist, interviewed Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times and author of The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Leath opens with a story of a friend who, after reading the first part of the book, immediately placed a bet on Trump winning the next US election. For him, this captured the book’s argument, that the rise of populism is not a sur...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at A&M and SPE Councillor, interviewed Jon Moynihan, business and venture capitalist and author of a two-volume book  Return to Growth  . Filippo speaks with Jon about his recent book  Return to Growth,  where he explores the decline of economic dynamism in the UK and other Western nations, identifying three major obstacles—termed the “three devils”: excessive...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at A&M and SPE Councillor, interviewed Philippe Aghion, Professor at the College de France, INSEAD and at the London School of Economics, and author of the book ' The Power of Creative Destruction: Economic Upheaval and the Wealth of Nations' .  In this engaging interview, Filippo and Philippe delve into the crucial role of innovation in driving long-term econo...

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future By Ed Conway , 2024, Penguin Books, 512 pages, ISBN 9780753559178 Reviewer: Arno Hantzsche In our daily lives, how often do we contemplate the materials that the world around us is made of: gadgets, buildings, infrastructure? As economists, how much attention do we pay to raw materials and their extraction? The answer is often very little...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at A&M and SPE Councillor, interviewed Russel Napier, author of The Solid Ground investment report for institutional investors and most recently author of ' The Asian Financial Crisis 1995-1998: Birth of the Age of Debt '. Filippo and Russell discuss the current state of the international monetary system and whether it is fit for purpose - does it work...

Filippo Gaddo, Managing Director at A&M and SPE Councillor, interviewed Edward Chancellor a financial historian, journalist and author most recently of The Price of Time . In the interview, Filippo and Edward discuss the history of the concept of 'interest rates' and how it has evolved over time, from Mesopotamian time until the 20th century when it became the subject of much study and began t...