Economic Rockstar

Connecting Brilliant Minds in Economics and Finance

079: Bryan Caplan on Parenting, the Case Against Education and the Rational Voter

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079: Bryan Caplan on Parenting, the Case Against Education and the Rational Voter

Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center.Bryan Caplan Economic Rockstar

Bryan is the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, named “the best political book of the year” by the New York Times, and Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. He also blogs at EconLog.

Bryan has published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the American Economic Review, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, and has appeared on 20/20, FoxNews, and C-SPAN. He is now working on a new book, The Case Against Education.

His webpage, bcaplan.com, features both his academic research and his numerous other interests, including the online Museum of Communism.

Bryan has a B.A. in Economics from University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.

Economists and Influencers:

In this episode, Bryan mentions: Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, Daniel Kahneman and Tyler Cowen.

Economics:

In this episode, Bryan mentions: the signaling effect, behavioral genetics, fertility rates, immigration, open borders, productivity and democracy.

Where to Find Bryan Caplan:

Books:

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067: Leigh Caldwell on Cognitive Economics and the Mathematics of Behavioral Economics

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067: Leigh Caldwell on Cognitive Economics and the Mathematics of Behavioral Economics

leigh caldwellLeigh Caldwell is a behavioural economist based in London.

Leigh, together with Elina Halonen, runs the Irrational Agency, which takes the latest scientific discoveries in psychology and behavioural economics, blends it with their hands-on experience of marketing and business, and turns them into powerful, incisive market research techniques.

In 2012, Leigh condensed his experience in pricing and the marketing of several of his businesses into a new book The Psychology of Price: How to use price to increase demand, profit and customer satisfaction.

Leigh is co-founder of the London Behavioural Economics Network, writes for the Pricing Revolution and the Knowing and Making blogs, and regularly features as an economics commentator on BBC News, Radio 4, Research Magazine and other media.

My own background is all about intellectual challenge. I went to university early as a teenager. I studied maths and physics. I was always into pushing myself intellectually and finding the next challenge to take on – Leigh Caldwell

Economists: 

In this interview, Leigh mentions: Elina Halonen, Dan Ariely and George Lowenstein.

Economics:

In this interview, Leigh mentions: Behavioral economics, experimental economics, lab experiments, demand curve, equilibrium, utility, mathematics, rationality, nudge, choice architecture, cognitive economics, reference pricing model, anchoring, hyperbolic discounting, heuristics, neuroeconomics, Nudge Unit, organ donation, tax collection, productivity, GDP and unemployment.

In this episode you will learn:

  • why Leigh help co-found the London Behavioural Economics Network (LBEN).
  • the importance of academics and practitioners working together to further the discipline of economics.
  • why finding the sweet-spot between controlled experiments and realism is difficult yet important.
  • what cognitive economics is and how different it is the behavioral economics.
  • whether big data could influence an individuals consumption behaviors.
  • about the need to use the mathematics of computer science in behavioral economics.
  • why we shouldn’t use the current maths of economics to explain human behavior.
  • why a lack of mathematics is holding back the discipline of behavioral economics.
  • why mathematics is essential for theorising and modelling economics, especially behavioural economics.
  • about the paradox of self-awareness in cognitive economics when faced with choices.
  • how a consumers relationship with a material object is a unique experience and how putting a price on the good can ruin this experience.
  • why charging a higher price for your product or service would generate higher profits in a perceived perfectly competitive market.
  • whether the 99p or 99 cent pricing strategy works.
  • about the reference pricing model and why charging $39 for a product is better than charging $34 for the same product.
  • about the importance of setting prices when considering how numbers are spoken, i.e. numbers with more syllables are received to be more expensive than those with fewer syllables. 
  • how Leigh uses the findings in academic papers to make money for his business.
  • how Leigh uses economic conferences to network, to find out about the latest research and to discover the new academic societies that have been established.
  • about Leigh’s goal for 2016 to start a Cognitive Economics Society.
  • about the advice Leigh would give the UK government to apply cognitive and behavioral economics to deal with some aspects of social life.
  • how the UK government changed people’s behaviour about paying their taxes on time.
  • about the productivity challenge the UK government is facing today and what can be done about it.
  • about the current research Leigh is undertaking regarding where our preferences come from.

Conferences:

Books:

  • The Psychology of Price: How to use price to increase demand, profit and customer satisfaction by Leigh Caldwell.
  • Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
  • Basic Instinct by Pete Luhn
  • Nudge by Richard Thaler
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman and Tversky

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060: Manu Saadia on Trekonomics – The Economics of Star Trek: Scarcity, Productivity and Public Goods

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060: Manu Saadia on Trekonomics – The Economics of Star Trek: Scarcity, Productivity and Public Goods

Manu Saadia fell into science fiction and Star Trek fandom at the age of eight, back in Paris, France, where he was born and raised.Manu Saadia

Manu  studied history of science and economic history in Paris and Chicago. After many happy years in the Ivory Tower, he yielded to his childhood passion for the future.

Manu embarked on his continuing mission to explore strange new worlds by boldly going where many have gone before: Los Angeles, CA, where he advise and (occasionally) builds tech companies.

Manu received the 2005 Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Teaching at the University of Chicago.

His book, Trekonomics, is currently available for pre-order at www.inkshares.com and will be released in 2016.

Star Trek offers much more detail about its own world and the way its economics actually works – like the plumbing so to speak. So that’s what I wanted to do. Go into the plumbing of Star Trek. – Manu Saadia

Economics:

In this interview, Manu mentions:  trekonomics, crowd funding, labor, economic history, trade, robots, capitalism, comparative advantage, currency, money, Gold-Pressed Latinum, public goods, conspicuous consumption, scarcity, peak oil, productivity and opportunity costs.

Economists:

In this interview, Manu mentions: Brad DeLong, Felix Salmon, Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Hubbert, Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, Romer, Larry Summers, John Maynard Keynes and Angus Deaton,

In this episode you will learn:

  • why Manu Saadia wrote Trekonomics.
  • about the Star Trek Economics panel at Comic Con.
  • why economists love Star Trek.
  • about inkshares and how it can help authors publish their book.
  • how traditional media rather than social media boosted pre-order sales of Trekonomics – an ironic outcome.
  • when Manu’s interested in economics and Star Trek collided.
  • about the work of Isaac Asimov and how his stories are a discourse on economics.
  • how the stories of robots and the future by Asimov influenced and shaped the storyline in Star Trek.
  • about the replicators in Star Trek and how they solve the problem of economic scarcity.
  • about the Ferengi’s and how they represent capitalism and trade.
  • why The Federation or the humans in Star Trek do not use money but have a foreign account to trade with the Ferengi’s.
  • about the Ferengi’s currency, Gold-Pressed Latinum, which cannot be replicable.
  • why owning a replicator is a ‘pain in the ass’.
  • how things that cannot be replicated has value but those that can be replicated has no value.
  • if Keynes’ The Economic Possibilities of Our Grand Children is a rebuttal of the writings of H. G. Wells.
  • about GPS being a public good and the benefits it has brought to the public.
  • why making GPS a public good in 1983 was one of the best decisions Ronald Reagan made as US President.
  • Manu’s favourite Star Trek episode is Lower Decks (The Next Generation).

Quotes by Manu Saadia in Episode 60 of the Economic Rockstar Podcast:

Trekonomics got a lot of support and very nice feedback from a lot of economists – Manu Saadia

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“It always baffles me when you have these very famous and serious economic thinkers were in fact  total Star Trek nerds. I was on a panel at New York Comic Con with Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman and Annalen Newitz from i09. There was Chris Black as well and Felix Salmon.” – Manu Saadia

Brad DeLong came to the panel with a Star Trek hoodie. – Manu Saadia

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On Isaac Asimov: “All of his work is a long meditation on economics, either foundation where there is this science called psychohistory which is in fact a fictional mathematical modelling of human behaviours on the scale of societies on a galactic scale.” – Manu Saadia

“One of the reasons why I wanted to study economics was that I was fascinated by and really wanted to understand the transformation of humanity’s relation to its own labor. This is one of the great questions of political economy because it determines a lot of things when it comes to the shape society and the role of the state and how behaviors are determined and constructed over time. But it’s also the key to understanding where we’re going”. – Manu Saadia

“I would say the replicators are more of a metaphor. If you look at their status in the series, they do not help move the narratives forward. They’re just there to signify that there’s no need to work. They’re a little bit like robots in Asimov. They have the same narrative function, which is to show and demonstrate that post-scarcity does exist and is based on automation and artificial intelligence.” – Manu Saadia

The Ferengi’s are the capitalist, merchant traders of the galaxy – Manu Saadia

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Most of the stuff in Star Trek is basically a public good – Manu Saadia

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I think Star Trek is very much what Keynes described in The Economic Possibilities of Our Grand Children – Manu Saadia

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Books:

  • Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by Annalen Newitz 
  • Isaac Asimov
  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
  • The Economic Possibilities of Our Grand Children by John Maynard Keynes

Papers:

  • Romer (1990) Productivity Gains

Links:

Manu’s Favorite Star Trek Epsiodes:

  • City on the Edge of Forever
  • Arena

Where to Find Manu:

Music:

  • Star Trek Episode Amok Time

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042: Parviz Parvizi on Clammr, Coffee, Coase and the Economy of Iran

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042: Parviz Parvizi on Clammr, Coffee, Coase and the Economy of Iran

Parviz Parvizi is co-founder of Clammr, a mobile app and platform making audio more social and viral. Users areParviz Parvizi on the Economic Rockstar podcast calling Clammr, which features snack-sized audio clips of 18 seconds or less, the “Instagram of Audio” and “Audio Twitter”.

Previously, Parviz worked at McKinsey & Company, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Communications Commission, and O’Melveny & Myers.

He has advised top 5 global media companies and mobile carriers on strategy and growth. He was a founder of McKinsey’s iConsumer research initiative on digital consumer behavior, authoring 3 of the firm’s 10 most-downloaded media sector knowledge documents.

Parviz was a Olin Law & Economics Fellow at Yale Law School. At Cornell he majored in economics and served as President of the Cornell Economics Society while an undergraduate.

Parviz holds a JD from Yale Law School and AB from Cornell.

Economics:

In this interview, Parviz mentions and discusses: development economics, poverty, transitional economies, microeconomics, exports, auction markets, transaction costs, fair trade, taxes, theory of specialisation, Coase theorem, theory of the firm, property rights, bargaining power, market prices, transaction costs, fair trade, economic growth, consumption, productivity, autarky,

Economists

In this interview, Parviz mentions and discusses: Friedrich Hayek, Adam Smith,David Ricardo, Ronald Coase and Steven Dubnar, 

Favorite Economists:

  • Adam Smith and Ronald Coase

Clammr as featured on Economic Rockstar

Find Out:

  • about Clammr, the amazingly new app that shares an 18-second audio clip just like an audio tweet.
  • about Parviz Parvizi’s journey from Iran to the US.
  • how Parviz Parvizi got his name.
  • how there are 4 hours of audio-only time each day for people and how Clammr can accommodate your needs.
  • about the motivation behind the creation of Clammr and how Parviz and his co-founder solved a problem.
  • how Clammr was built up from the beginning at zero cost.
  • what Clammr found out about podcasting.
  • the difficulties of growing and monetising a podcast and how Clammr is helping podcasters to solve these challenges.
  • about the social aspect of Clammr and how you can share audio snippets to your friends, colleagues and audience.
  • if Clammr will adopt a monetization model similar to YouTube.
  • how Clammr’s ‘Hear More’ button can potentially lead to a paid transaction for users.
  • about the opportunities that exist for users of Clammr in the education sector.
  • how teachers can use Clammr in assessments and how students can collaborate to give their audio response in a mashup-like answer.
  • how Clammr could be the new route for a musician to become known, just like the way Justin Bieber made it using YouTube.
  • how being an early adopter of a new platform can lead to a large following.
  • about the sensation that is PewDiePie on YouTube and his degree in Industrial Economics.
  • about Parviz’s work in the Tanzania and Ethiopia coffee trade market.
  • about the challenges faced by African coffee growers and how Parviz solved this problem.
  • Parviz’s views on the recent US-Iran deal.
  • how the US-Iran deal may have economic limitations due to Iran’s economy being 70% state-dominated.
  • about the benefits of an export-oriented market economy.
  • about the benefits of a knowledge economy.
  • how democracy and economic growth could improve if marginalised groups in society are helped.

Quotes by Parviz in Episode 042 of the Economic Rockstar Podcast:

  • You build a more sustainable business if the way you get paid is a way in which all parties involved actually get value – Parviz Parvizi

Advice:

  • Don’t sell yourself short in terms of where you’re aiming and don’t think that your starting point has to define your ending point – Parviz Parvizi

  • Even if you’re aren’t getting access to the very best schools, it doesn’t actually take that much time to catch up with hard work – Parviz Parvizi

  • Aim high and exposing yourself to people, institutions and places of incredibly high standards is a great way to push yourself even if initially you’re kind of a failure”– Parviz Parvizi

Recommended Books:

The Next Decade of Podcasting:

Where to Find Parviz Parvizi:

Links for the Clammr App:

  • Download Clammr for iPhone/iPad in the App Store or by visiting Clammr.
  • For Android use the web-based publisher to upload files and for a basic listening experience.
  • Workshop and update videos.

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