How to Scale a Development Economics Program

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In development economics, in the broader field of economics, we also do a lot of a b testing. In employing those best puts, i'm effectively doing an efficacy test. So that efficacy test is important in an a b comparison, but it's not very important when it comes to scaling. When you scale, you're not going to be able to oy the best possible imports. That's where we fail as social scientists. We tend to do what steve levitt wanted to do. And then we get our academic publication, we forget to tell everyone else it was an efficacy test and they don't believe us. I didn't really understand until i started to dig into the science of

Economist John List of the University of Chicago talks about his book, The Voltage Effect, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. He discusses what determines scalability and argues that the only good ideas that count are those that scale. Along the way, he draws on his experiences as chief economist of Uber and Lyft to peer inside the black box of ride sharing.