052: Alex Tabarrok on Globalisation, Bounty Hunters and Leveraging Online Education

Alex Tabarrok is Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University and co-founder (with Tyler Cowen) of Marginal Revolution University, an online platform for learning economics.

Alex is Senior Fellow and former Research Director for The Independent Institute, Assistant Editor of The Independent Review, Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and Director of the Center for Study of Public Choice.

Alex is the author or editor of a number of books including the introductory economics textbooks, Modern Principles, The Voluntary City and Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime.

Alex is a TED speaker with over 640,000 views of his TED talk, How Ideas Trump Crises.

Alex received his Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University, and he has taught at the University of Virginia and Ball State University.

“I hope to be teaching long after I’m dead” – Alex Tabarrok

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In this episode, you will learn:

• how to ensure that criminals turn up of trial and to reduce the possibility of them becoming a fugitive.

• how bounty hunters are more successful than the police in catching criminals.

• why bounty hunters and bail bondsmen are the most best for the taxpayer.

• why bounty hunters invited Alex Tabarrok to join them in a bounty hunting.

• why a mother’s signature on a bail bond is the most effective way of making sure a criminal repays its  due.

• how effective are the police in deterring crime.

• how a police strike in Montreal in 1967 resulted in an spike in crime.

• how the terror alert level results in an increase in police presence and results in a decrease in local crime.

• whether we should reward the police for reducing crime and the problems that could arise from this reward system.

• about the use of value-added tests for identifying teacher quality.

• whether the best teachers have a positive impact on the future earnings of their students.

• if a country can have a welfare state and open borders.

• how the next generation of immigrants revert to the average of their adopted country including crime.

• why immigrants to the United States are the most entrepreneurial.

• why Alex co-founded Marginal Revolution University.

• what Marginal Revolution University is about and who it’s for.

• how to leverage the best teachers and leverage their experience.

• how teaching will evolve into a format that’s similar to how plays evolved into movies with leading actors being paid millions of dollars and the production being created just once.

• how artificial intelligence and computer adaptive learning programmes will be the next wave of teaching and learning.

• what is the ideal length for a recorded educational video.

• why universities will have to adapt to online technologies.

• why parents and politicians want colleges to use online technologies.

Immigrants have lower crime rates, but the children of immigrants have about average crime rates. It’s unfortunate that the immigrants adopt our ways. They assimilate to American crime rates – Alex Tabarrok

Personal Habits:

I love doing what I do and that removes a lot of barriers. It gets you up in the mornings – Alex Tabarrok

Takeaway:

“Economics is fun. Economics brings in these world histories, things about climate, geography and history” – Alex Tabarrok

Economics:

In this interview, Alex mentions: crime, incentives, causality, elasticity, Baumol’s Cost Disease, rewards, redistribution, welfare, taxes, entrepreneurship, human capital, globalisation, public goods, free trade, structural unemployment and trade.

Economists:

In this interview, Alex mentions: Tyler Cowen, Greg Mankiw, Paul Krugman, Eric Callan, John Click, Milton Freidamn, John Nash, Bryan Caplan, Robin Hanson, Joseph Schumpeter, Adam Smith, David Hume and Richard Cantillon.

Ted:

• How Ideas Trump Crises by Alex Tabarrok
• Comment: Solving Crises Through Innovation and Ideas or Creating Problems Through Marginalisation and Displacement by Frank Conway

My TED talk is 75% of my entire teaching. So that 15 minute talk has been seen by so many people that that’s the majority – the big majority of all my teaching in my life. – Alex Tabarrok

Podcasts:

• EconPop

Books:

• Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
• The Armchair Economist by Stephen Lansberg
• Freakonomics by Steven  D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubnar
• An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies by Tyler Cowen
• The Undercover Economist by Tim Hartford
• The Undercover Economist Strikes Back by Tim Hartford
• The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan (coming soon)
• The Age of Em by Robin Hanson 
• Trekonomics by Manu Saadia

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