“How do we get new economic ideas? One of the fascinating questions that always bothers me, and many economists, right, is how do you get an Albert Einstein?” James Heckman posed this question to the late Robert Fogel in this discussion about Empirical Economics, originally recorded in 2001. The two Nobel prize winners talk about some of the history of economics and how changes in scientific knowledge embody the new technologies and the motor and engine of economic growth.
