Economics Detective Radio

Michael Heller joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives. This book explores the implicit social rules governing ownership. In brief, these rules are as follows: We discuss these six rules with reference to many examples of how they play out in the modern world, from conflicts over airline seats to the rise and fall of Soviet communism.

On today's episode, I discuss Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations with Sarah Skwire. Sarah is part of the team tweeting through the book @AdamSmithWorks. We discuss the project and talk through the first few chapters of the Wealth of Nations.

Today's guest is Michael McCullough of the University of California, San Diego. We are discussing his book The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code.

Today's guest is Nina Roussille of UC Berkeley and we discuss her working paper, The central role of the ask gap in gender pay inequality. Related links: During the conversation, Nina mentions Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Among other things, encourages women to negotiate higher salaries, a strategy Nina's research would support.

Anton Howes returns to the podcast to discuss his new book, Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation.

Today's guest is Stuart Ritchie, psychologist and author of Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth.

Today's guests are Sylvain Catherine and Natasha Sarin of the University of Pennsylvania. They discuss their research on wealth inequality, specifically with respect to social security's impact on calculated wealth inequality. When you account for the value of all future payroll taxes into Social Security and all future benefit payments from Social Security, the present value of that stream of payments accounts for a large fraction of the wealth held by the bottom 90% of households.

This bonus episode features an interview from The Passion Economy, created by Adam Davidson of NPR's Planet Money. The clip features an interview with Coss Marte, an enterprising entrepreneur in an unorthodox business.

Today's episode features my conversation with Mark Blyth, co-author (with Eric Lonergan) of Angrynomics. In the course of our conversation, Mark mentioned a talk he gave called The Mustang and the Volvo describing the different economies of America and Europe.

Ilya Somin of George Mason University joins the podcast to discuss his book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.

Historian Kyle Harper joins the show to discuss his book The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire. We discuss the fall of the Roman empire and the new scientific discoveries that have shed more light on its nature and causes. Kyle's work looks at the epidemics and climatic changes that hit the empire, contributing to its disintegration.

Today's guest is Scott Beyer, a columnist who writes about urban issues. He is the creator of the Market Urbanism Report. Our discussion addresses some common concerns about housing markets. For instance, why do new luxury homes sometimes sit empty? What's the deal with Houston's land-use laws? And what can we do about the urban housing crisis?

Today's guest is Robert H. Frank of Cornell University. Our topic is his latest book, Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work. Psychologists have long understood that social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. But social influence is a two-way street—our environments are themselves products of our behavior. Under the Influence explains how to unlock the latent power of social context. It reveals how our environments encourage smoking, bullying, tax cheating, sexual predation, problem drinking, and wasteful energy use. We are building bigger houses, driving heavier cars, and engaging in a host of other activities that threaten the planet—mainly because that’s what friends and neighbors do. In the wake of the hottest years on record, only robust measures to curb greenhouse gases promise relief from more frequent and intense storms, droughts, flooding, wildfires, and famines. Robert Frank describes how the strongest predictor of our willingness to support climate-friendly policies, install solar panels, or buy an electric car is the number of people we know who have already done so. In the face of stakes that could not be higher, the book explains how we could redirect trillions of dollars annually in support of carbon-free energy sources, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. Most of us would agree that we need to take responsibility for our own choices, but with more supportive social environments, each of us is more likely to make choices that benefit everyone. Under the Influence shows how.

Garett Jones returns to the podcast to discuss his book, 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less.

Today's guest is Simon Bowmaker. The topic is his book, When the President Calls: Conversations with Economic Policymakers. The book features 35 interviews with economists who worked for the President of the United States.

Today, Josh Hendrickson joins the show to discuss his paper, "U.S. Maritime Policy and Economic Efficiency." The paper discusses the controversial Jones Act, and how it (and similar policies) were designed to maintain a sovereign merchant marine for use in times of war. Te abstract reads as follows:

Today's episode features Gilles Duranton and Diego Puga on their new working paper, "Urban Growth and its Aggregate Implications." This paper builds a detailed theoretical model that includes urbanization, agglomeration economies, inter-city migration, congestion externalities, and land-use restrictions.

Today's guest is Leah Boustan of Princeton University. Our discussion centers around her recent working paper, "The Effects of Immigration on the Economy: Lessons from the 1920s Border Closure." We also discuss her broader body of work on the age of mass migration. At the peak of this era, the United States had a foreign-born population of 15%. Today, after a century of restricted immigration, the United States foreign-born population has only just returned to 15%. It's a fascinating discussion with special relevance to today's debates about immigration.

Today on Economics Detective Radio, I discuss health economics with Hannes Schwandt of Northwestern University. Hannes is the co-author, along with Diane Alexander, of "The Impact of Car Pollution on Infant and Child Health: Evidence from Emissions Cheating." We also discuss his work on the health impacts of the 9/11 dust cloud.

Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith both return to the podcast to discuss their new, non-fiction graphic novel, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. American policy-makers have long been locked in a heated battle over whether, how many, and what kind of immigrants to allow to live and work in the country. Those in favor of welcoming more immigrants often cite humanitarian reasons, while those in favor of more restrictive laws argue the need to protect native citizens. But economist Bryan Caplan adds a new, compelling perspective to the immigration debate: He argues that opening all borders could eliminate absolute poverty worldwide and usher in a booming worldwide economy—greatly benefiting humanity. With a clear and conversational tone, exhaustive research, and vibrant illustrations by Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders makes the case for unrestricted immigration easy to follow and hard to deny. Related episodes: Emerging technologies with Zach and Kelly Weinersmith The case against education with Bryan Caplan Refugee waves, mass immigration, and Jordan with Alex Nowrasteh and Andrew Forrester Social media, elections, and gender with Fabio Rojas Sociology and social science with Fabio Rojas