318 | Edward Miguel on the Developing Pr...

Evolution with natural selection involves an intricate mix of the random and the driven. Mutations are essentially random, while selection pressures work to prefer certain outcomes over others. There is tremendous divergence of species over time, but also repeated convergence to ... Show More

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," wrote W.B. Yeats. I don't know about the centre, but the tendency of things to fall apart is pretty universal, ultimately due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Anyone living in a society or involved with technology must therefore be ... Show More

At any given moment, an uncountable number of events are happening, but only some of them matter to us. What does it mean for something to matter, and more importantly, what does it mean for us to matter -- to ourselves as well as to others? The need to matter can be motivation t ... Show More

<p>Global development leader, professor and author Edward 'Ted' Miguel visits Google to discuss how open science is transforming poverty reduction and global development.</p> <p>What really works in the fight to empower the world's poorest people?  What's the science behind tradi ... Show More

John Taylor, the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, joins the podcast to discuss how he initial got interested in economics, his initial training in econometrics as a PhD student at Stanford which led ... Show More

Speaker(s): Jesse Norman MP | At a time when economics and politics are both increasingly polarized between left and right, this book, Adam Smith: What He Thought, and Why it Matters, which Jesse Norman will discuss at this event, returns to intellectual first principles to recre ... Show More

<p dir="ltr">We make a countless number of decisions every day – but unfortunately, we often choose unwisely. Behavioral economist Richard Thaler has dedicated his life's work to understanding why that is. In 2017, Thaler received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for ... Show More

<p><!-- wp:paragraph {"dropCap":true} --></p> <p class="has-drop-cap">Listening to the ongoing debate about artificial intelligence, one could be forgiven for assuming that the technology is either a bogeyman or a savior, with little ground in between. But that's not the stance o ... Show More

Why do some nations flourish while others remain trapped in poverty? This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics goes to three economists whose groundbreaking work explores this question. Join us as we dive into the theories and insights of Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Ro ... Show More

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with author and president of the Foundation for Progress in Chile, Axel Kaiser. They discuss the state of Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro, the opposition leader María Corina Machado, 21st-century socialism, the rise of the cartels, and how the etho ... Show More

This week's episode of Economic Update features updates on the economic risks and costs Europe faces from deporting or blocking immigrants as compared to Spain's prosperity through a pro-immigrant policy, the work of Michael Burawoy, a Marxist sociology professor at UC Berkeley, ... Show More

Since Daron Acemoglu just won the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences alongside MIT Sloan professor Simon Johnson and University of Chicago professor James Robinson, we’re revisiting  this powerful episode featuring Acemoglu’s insights from 2023. In his groundbreaking ... Show More

Protracted economic crises, accelerating inequalities, and increased resource scarcity present significant challenges for the majority of Africa's urban population. Limited state capacity and widespread infrastructure deficiencies common in cities across the continent often requi ... Show More