Bretton Goods

Bretton Goods

By Pradyumna PrasadScienceSocial Sciences
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Bretton Goods episodes

  • Ep 37: Australia: A Mine with a Parliament?

    I spoke to Steven Hamilton professor of Economics at George Washington University about Australian economic policy, and their upcoming elections. We talk about

    • Why was Australian COVID policy so strict?
    • Australia as a nation of prison guards
    • Economic issues of the Australian election
    • “Australia is a mine with a parliament”
    • Dutch disease in Australia
    • Swimming, intermittent fasting and other personal habits
      • 58 min
    • Ep 36: Labour Economics Versus the World

      What is the labour market like? What are the largest barriers in the labour market? Nathan Young and I spoke to economist Bryan Caplan about his new book Labor Econ Versus The World. We also talk about

      • Censorship and dictatorships
      • Bets he is willing to take
      • Malengo and international migration
      • DALLE-2 and writing graphic novels
      • The literature on education
      • Why he is not an experimental economist
      • The effect of AI on jobs

        • Bets Bryan is willing to take

        • No important disruption to the politics of countries where Ukrainian refugees immigrate
        • Poland will gain over 3x of the GDP Ukraine loses with regards to immigration
        • Less than 20% chance of humanity ending by 2100
        • Less than 60% chance that he will consider misaligned AI to be a problem in 20 years
        • If >5% of people immigrate to a developed nation there will be no civil wars
        • Upper bounds on religious fundamentalism in the EU
        • What are the odds that mainstream psychiatry accepts his view of mental illness?
          • Papers referenced in the podcast
          • Mankiw, Romer and Weil
          • Where has all the Education gone?
          • Eric Hanusheck on test scores and GDP
            • 1 hr 14 min
          • Working on Existential Risks with David Manheim

            I spoke to David Manehim who works on reducing existential threats to humanity at the Technion. We talked about

            • The biggest threats to humanity
            • Preventing all future pandemics
            • Is working on X-risk even tractable?
            • How you can work on reducing existential risk

              • Very fun on an underrated topic!

              40 min
            • Ep 34: Long Run Growth with Trevor Chow

              I spoke to the very very talented Trevor Chow about the history of long run growth. Topics include

              • Wishlist of economic history topics
              • Getting over vetocracy
              • Qualities of the best economic blogs
              • Why more economics graduates should join a VC firm!
              • Meme theory of money

                • Highly highly recommended

                1 hr 10 min
              • The Indian Economy
                I talked to Puja Mehra, a journalist and author of the book The Lost Decade about India's economic history of the years 2008-2018. We talked about
                The reasons for India's jobs crisis
                Should the Finance Ministry be split into two?
                The farming crisis
                Has India's Big Government really receded?
                47 min
              • Chinese Tech Antitrust
                I spoke to Michael Norris, a commentator on Chinese technology industries and research manager at AgencyChina. We talked about
                Understanding the motivations of Chinese antitrust enforcement
                The 'low hanging fruit' of antitrust 
                The false dilemma of hard tech and software
                Chinese tech companies he is bullish on
                English language news sources for China tech
                1 hr
              • Ep 30: Finance and scams with Jamie Powell

                I talked to Jamie Powell who is a financial journalist at the Financial Times. We had lots of fun talking about:


                • The economics of short selling
                • Can bubbles be good for the economy?
                • Issues with Web3
                • The story around tesla

                  • Highly recommended!

                  51 min
                • Ep 29: Financing Science and Innovation

                  I talked to Ben Reinhardt about new models for funding science and innovation. Ben's pieces on DARPA and his proposal for a private DARPA-like research funding organization are foundational pieces in the field and should be read by anyone who wants to understand them. We talked about:


                  • The Big Man Theory of History
                  • What makes good DARPA program managers?
                  • Why you need to be less responsible to innovate
                  • Does science have an introspection problem?
                  • Will the US maintain its leading position in science

                    • Highly recommended! 



                    1 hr 32 min
                  • Ep 28: Finding and Funding Entrepreneurs with Matt Clifford

                    I spoke with Matt Clifford, the co-founder and CEO of Entrepreneur First a pre-idea investing firm. We talked about some very exciting topics! They are:


                    • Personality types of successful founders
                    • Founders with high agency
                    • The race between politics and technology
                    • The most underrated impactful historical event

                      •  

                      51 min

                    About Bretton Goods

                    From the publisher's feed

                    I talk to the most interesting people about economic growth