My best interview with Joseph Stiglitz

Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is a summary of the episode:

Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz joins Tyler in a discussion about Joe’s career and key contributions, including what he learned when he gave an 8-hour lecture in Japan, how being controversial affected his intellectual development, and why he tried to end the relationship. in Amherst, how studying the Kenyan collaboration led to one of his most influential papers, what he thinks today about Georgism and the YIMBY movement, why he was so good at Cambridge, why he left Gary, Indiana, his current views on high commerce. volumes and liquidity, the big difference between him and Paul Krugman, what working in Washington, DC taught him about categories, what he will do next, and more.

Here is one episode:

COWEN: You used to debate, and when you were at Amherst, you were the head of the student government, right?

STIGLITZ: That’s right.

COWEN: He voted to abolish unions. Isn’t there good evidence that fraternities increase salaries?

STIGLITZ: [laughs] It was unions raise wages. Fraternities – I was against fraternities because Amherst was a small college, a thousand boys, men, and they had the effect of dividing the community. The philosophy is that I it was that we should be one community. The fraternities liked to interfere with that. Sophomores always sat at dinner at the same tables as their fraternity members. There were class aspects of the fraternity.

They were just, I thought, very divisive in a small community, and it turned out that my idea was successful. A few years later, Amherst abolished fraternities. It is an important lesson for me in my political life. Sometimes you start a campaign knowing that in the next year, two years – while you’re at it – you might not succeed, but sowing the seeds of discussion, debate, maybe for 5, sometimes 10, sometimes 15, 20 years, things. come out and end up winning the debate.

And this:

COWEN: Do you like the cancellation of YIMBY’s current movement – allowing for more construction?

STIGLITZ: No. That goes to one of the themes of my book. One of the themes in my book is, one person’s freedom is another person’s discomfort. That means what I can do. . . I am talking about freedom as what a person can do, his opportunity is set, his decisions can be made. And when one person takes advantage of another by using his freedom, he is to force the freedom of others.

If you have an unencumbered property – for example, you don’t own a property – you can have a property as high as you want. The problem is that your tall building is depriving the other building of light. It may be noisy. You don’t want your children to be exposed to, say, a shopping mall built next door. In the book, I actually talk about one example. Houston is a relatively small city, and I have some words from people who live there, explaining some of the challenges that arise.

And this;

COWEN: Your 1984 piece with Carl Shapiro about efficiency wage theory – when you look back on that now, 40 years later, do you think of that mainly as a contribution to the understanding of organizations, the explanation of unemployment, the claim about sticky wages? Or how do you enter that title? Because in the episode itself, the salary is actually variable, at least the actual salary.

Recommended, interesting throughout.


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