Posts tagged podcast
Economics brain food

Glenn Loury is preparing to host a conference at the Hoover Institute, honouring the life and works of Thomal Sowell. To that end, he is hosting a number of conversations on his podcast. The first one with Emily Skarbek, associate economics professor at Brown University, and the second with Jason Riley, columnist for the WSJ, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. They’re great conversations even if you, like me, are not familiar with the works and life of Thomas Sowell. TS, still going strong in his 90s, writes and thinks about core principles of economic thought, social life, individual responsibility and rights, and it is great to hear Glenn and his guests flex their intellectual muscles on these topics. I’d add to these two a recent Econtalk episode in which Russ Roberts sits down with his friend, and long-time guest on Econtalk, Mike Munger to discuss the question of what capitalism is.

We could all use a space online to unplug once in a while, especially in our current moment. For that purpose, you could do a lot worse than listening to the conversations above.

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Is it time to stop caring about politics?

In this show I argue that paying less attention to Mr. Trump and the White House probably won't do you any harm. It might even do you good. I also respond to the idea that no credible alternatives are currently being offered to the surge in new populism and its policy suggestions. I offer three concrete proposals. Finally, I try to make an impossible transition to a brief discussion about financial markets. I will put up some charts in the next few days, but I am not sure that much has changed. The queue of bears at the abattoir is long as ever. 

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The Battle for the soul of macroeconomics, part 2 (Wonkish)

Sometimes projects are best left unfinished. I hope this is not the case here, but I concede that it has been way too long since the first part of my attempt to tell the story of microfoundations in macroeconomics. I have been stuck doing this for almost six months, and I still feel that I have only scratched the surface. In any case, this show gets to the meat of the discussion, and tries to get to grips with the origins of microfoundations in macroeconomics. 

So, why would you want to listen to this? I can think of two reasons.  You might be a graduate/PhD student in macroeconomics who is confused about where the models you’re teacher is stuffing down your throat comes from. Alternatively, you might work with macroeconomics either as a journalist, investor, or analyst and you’re struggling to reconcile what you see when you read a piece of academic research with what you see in the real world.

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