Dwarkesh Podcast

Alex Tabarrok - Prizes, Prices, and Public Goods

Oct 19, 2020

In this conversation, Alex Tabarrok, a professor of economics at George Mason University and co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog, dives into the innovative Grand Innovation Prize concept aimed at speeding up vaccine development. He explores the Baumol effect, which sheds light on rising prices in stagnant sectors like education. Tabarrok discusses the transformative potential of online learning and emphasizes the need for effective governance through dominant assurance contracts and even prediction markets to enhance democratic decision-making.

01:26:01

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Episode guests

Alex Tabarrok

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Episode notes

Intro

3min

Incentivizing Vaccine Innovation

6min

Reviving Innovation through Prizes

5min

Understanding the Bommel Effect

17min

The Future of Education: Embracing Online Learning

21min

Innovating Public Goods Governance

14min

Innovating Education and Governance

10min

Fostering an Innovation State

9min

Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University and with Tyler Cowen a founder of the online education platform http://MRU.org.

I ask Alex Tabarrok about the Grand Innovation Prize, the Baumol effect, and Dominant Assurance Contracts.

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Episode website here.
Follow Alex on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

Alex Tabarrok's and Tyler Cowen's excellent blog: https://marginalrevolution.com/

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Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro

(00:34) - Grand Innovation Prize

(08:45) - Prizes vs grants

(14:10) -Baumol effect

(27:50) - On Bryan Caplan's case against education

(31:35) - Scaling education online

(48:50) - Declining research productivity

(52:15) - Dominant Assurance Contracts

(58:40) - Future of governance

(1:04:05) - On Robin Hanson's Futarchy

(1:06:02) - Beating Adam Smith

(1:08:35) - Our Warfare-Welfare State

(1:19:30) - The Great Stagnation vs The Innovation Renaissance

(1:21:40) - Advice to 20 year olds

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