Is There Consumer Harm in on Line Advertising?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I would much rather have competition. I think what benefits consumers is coices, lower prices, more a pricesear. But if you take face book, is there consumer harm? So tha, what's that page? It's totally clean and pure. There are no ads on it because it's part of face book, the bigger company. The right question is the counter factual of, what would the price of on line advertising be if there were five online advertisers in companies instead of two online advertising companies? I think it would be lower. We also pay separate from that, of course, in, you know, the form of privacy,. And then in all sorts of ways of less innovation...

Note: This conversation was recorded in January 2020.

Tyler credits Jason Furman’s intellectual breadth, real-world experience, and emphasis on policy for making him the best economist in the world. Furman, despite not initially being interested in public policy, ultimately served as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama thanks to a call from Joe Stiglitz while still in grad school. His perspective is as idiosyncratic as his career trajectory, seeing the world of economic policy as a series of complex tradeoffs rather than something reducible to oversimplified political slogans.

Jason joined Tyler for a wide-ranging conversation on how monopolies affect investment patterns, his top three recommendations to improve American productivity, why he’s skeptical of place-based development policies, what some pro-immigration arguments get wrong, why he’s more concerned about companies like Facebook and Google than he is Walmart and Amazon, the merits of a human rights approach to privacy, whether the EU treats tech companies fairly, having Matt Damon as a college roommate, the future of fintech, his highest objective when teaching economics, what he learned from coauthoring a paper with someone who disagrees with him, why he’s a prolific Goodreads reviewer, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded January 16th, 2020 Other ways to connect

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram
Follow Tyler on Twitter
Follow Jason on Twitter
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.