Political Economy with Jim Pethokoukis The AEI Podcast Channel

Why has the American political scene seemed to be so irrational in the past several years? Economist and author Bryan Caplan says it all comes down to social desirability bias, the observation that people prefer what sounds good to what's true. In this episode, Bryan returns to Political Economy to explain why free markets are so unpopular, what people really mean when they complain about Big Tech and privacy, and much more.
Bryan is a best-selling author and Professor of Economics at George Mason University. His latest books are https://www.amazon.com/Labor-Econ-Versus-World-Greatest/dp/B09QF44HHG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PU0WAW25FC7Uandkeywords=labor+econ+vs+the+worldandqid=1659714073andsprefix=labor+econ+vs+the+world%2Caps%2C57andsr=8-1 (Labor Econ Versus the World )and https://www.amazon.com/How-Evil-Are-Politicians-Demagoguery-ebook/dp/B09YPNFGHC/ref=sr_1_3?crid=PU0WAW25FC7Uandkeywords=labor+econ+vs+the+worldandqid=1659714073andsprefix=labor+econ+vs+the+world%2Caps%2C57andsr=8-3 (How Evil Are Politicians?), the first two volumes of an eight-volume collection of his best essays.

Poverty was the norm for most of human history. Then, starting in Britain in the 18th century, economic growth took off. So what happened? Economists have theories about the origins of the Industrial Revolution, from geography to culture to institutions. In a new book, Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin assemble the literature to give readers a big-picture view of how the world went from poverty to widespread prosperity.
Mark is an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and Jared is a Professor of Economics at Chapman University. They are the authors of https://www.amazon.com/How-World-Became-Rich-Historical/dp/1509540237 (How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth).

When you think of the future of clean energy, wind and solar might be the first things that come to mind. But when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, the need for alternative sources of power becomes apparent. From advanced geothermal to nuclear fusion, up-and-coming advancements may deliver a future of abundant, clean energy. One of the most ambitious ideas is space-based solar: orbiting solar panels that can beam energy to the Earth from space. Is this a viable energy solution ... or a sci-fi pipe dream? To find out more, I'm joined by Ali Hajimiri.
Ali is the Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, as well as Co-Director of the Space-Based Solar Power Project at Caltech.

When the topic of productivity growth comes up, a common retort is that productivity and pay have delinked, meaning all the gains of productivity growth go to the top while workers' wages remain stagnant. So how well do productivity gains translate into higher wages? It's an important question with implications for public policies designed to boost productivity growth. Today, I'm joined by Anna Stansbury, whose work on productivity and pay offers some answers.
Anna is an Assistant Professor in Work and Organization Studies at MIT Sloan and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She and Larry Summers authored "https://www.nber.org/papers/w24165 (Productivity and Pay: Is the Link Broken?)" and "https://www.nber.org/papers/w27193 (The Declining Worker Power Hypothesis)."

The Federal Reserve recently announced a 75-basis-point rate hike — the largest since 1994 — in an attempt to curb inflation. The Fed's aim is to thread the needle by cooling the economy just enough to rein in rising prices without inducing a recession. But will the Fed succeed, or is a recession on the horizon? And if an economic downturn is coming, how severe will it be? To answer those questions and get a sense of where the US economy is heading, I've brought my AEI colleague Michael Strain back on Political Economy.
Mike is the director of Economic Policy Studies and the Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He's also the author of the 2020 book, https://www.amazon.com/American-Dream-Not-Dead-Populism-ebook/dp/B0846QHK7K/ (The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It)).

Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years, has fueled rapid computing gains since the mid-20th century. But will this law last forever? Today's guest, Neil Thompson, thinks its end is near. I've invited Neil on the podcast to explain why Moore's Law may be coming to an end and what that means for productivity growth and continued innovation.
Neil is an innovation scholar in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a research scientist at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and an associate member of the Broad Institute.