In Worcester, Ohio, do you think the value of Facebook and Google relative to per capita income is higher or lower than in Samid down Manhattan? Well, we have actually done a little research into this question. And I will tell you, if you live in a farm in the Midwest, you love online shopping. So those rural residents really like the internet for just that reason,. Do our intuitions about antitrust in any way need to change? The laws themselves haven't changed, but obviously court decisions evolve.
Before he became the Adam Smith of Googlenomics, Hal Varian spent decades as an academic economist, writing influential papers, a popular book about the information economy, and several textbooks that are still taught today. So how has his nearly twenty years in the business world affected what he’d write and teach now? Is learning Shephard’s lemma really that important anymore?
Tyler asks Hal these questions and more: why aren’t there more second-priced auctions — or prediction markets? How have the economics of sales changed with the internet? In what ways did his hiring criteria change between academia and business? What could we learn from the sack of Rome? When should economists avoid looking at the literature? How are we always eking out victory in the war on spam? And what are people least likely to understand about Google? Fear not — Hal has an answer for it all.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Recorded May 10th, 2019 Other ways to connect