Show notes: http://ide.mit.edu/news-events-media/podcasts/ef3-marketplace-design-and-strategy-w-greg-lewis

This podcast is about economic issues related to online marketplaces and platforms. We are joined by Greg Lewis, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, who is one of the leading experts in this new and growing field. Why have companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and eBay been hiring a lot of economists? We discuss the unique perspective that industrial organization economists have in using data to make strategic and market design decisions. We then discuss how the search ranking algorithm and other platform policies can be used as strategic tools to incentivize platform participants. Next, we talk about why it's difficult to measure the effects of changes to a platform even when experiments are possible. We then move on to a conversation about platform fees and the chicken and egg problem in platforms. Lastly, we discuss emerging issues such as competition in cloud computing.

Show notes: http://ide.mit.edu/news-events-media/podcasts/ef2-economic-importance-good-management

John Van Reenen, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, joins us to discuss the economics of management, productivity, and information technology. Listen to this episode if you want to learn about how economists think about measuring management quality. We discuss the latest evidence the causal effects of "modern" management on productivity and worker satisfaction. We then move onto to the big picture questions regarding whether management explains cross-country differences in outcomes. Furthermore, we talk about interesting differences between how American and European firms have adopted to information technology and why this matters. We also touch upon how economics research has changed over time and whether the increasing access of managers to information will make the world a better place.

Show notes: http://ide.mit.edu/news-events-media/podcasts/ef1-economics-networks-w-ben-golub

We discuss the intersection of economics and networks. Does the structure of networks matter? How do beliefs and behaviors spread? Can we use the knowledge of a network to more efficiently achieve our objectives? Ben Golub, assistant professor of economics at Harvard, joins us to discuss his research and thoughts on these issues. We touch on issues regarding identifying "central" individuals, privacy, online trust, and whether beliefs spread through a network eventually converge to the truth.