Working From Home Is a Good Idea

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productivity growth rates have been declining since the fifties and don't seem to have picked up much anyway, with computers. Why is that? I think it's just social norms and firm organizational practices fer slow to change. So i think something holding back the pact of icy tears firms and society doesn't change that rapidly. It isn't until the pandemic that we actually massively embraced working from home....

What might the electrification of factories teach us about how quickly we’ll adapt to remote work? What gives American companies an edge over their competitors on the international stage? What value do management consultants really provide? Stanford professor Nick Bloom’s research studies how management practices, productivity techniques, and uncertainty shape outcomes across companies and countries.

He joined Tyler for a conversation about which areas of science are making progress, the factors that have made research more expensive, why government should invest more in R&D, how lean management transformed manufacturing, how India’s congested legal system inhibits economic development, the effects of technology on Scottish football hooliganism, why firms thrive in China, how weak legal systems incentivize nepotism, why he’s not worried about the effects of remote work on American productivity (in the short-term), the drawbacks of elite graduate programs, how his first “academic love” shapes his work today, the benefits of working with co-authors, why he prefers periodicals and podcasts to reading books, and more.

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Recorded July 13th, 2020 Other ways to connect

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