Lunchtime Social Science

Few things inspire as much passion as how the government raises its money, and this was as true for our ancestors as it is today. The hosts talk about the history of tax rebellions with Joel Slemrod on what lessons we have to learn from the social and political history of rulers who had to design tax systems, the subject of Professor Slemrod's co-authored book with Michael Keen on Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue.

Casey Mulligan was Chief Economist in the Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump Administration. He joins the hosts to discuss his experiences and observations documented in his book, You're Hired: Untold Successes and Failures of a Populist President. Professor Mulligan shares his political theory of Trump's tweets, what it was like to work in the administration, and argues that the administration was underrated for its regulatory successes. 

The hosts talk with David Skarbek, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University, about his new book The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World.  Skarbek investigates life in a wide array of prisons—in Brazil, Bolivia, Norway, a prisoner of war camp, England and Wales, women’s prisons in California, and a gay and transgender housing unit in the Los Angeles County Jail—to understand the hierarchy of life on the inside. Drawing on economics and a vast empirical literature on legal systems, Skarbek offers a framework to understand why life on the inside varies in such fascinating and novel ways, and also how social order evolves and takes root behind bars.

Towards the end of the conversation, they discuss the way different social science disciplines tend to rely on specific methods, and the subsequent challenges of trying to cross methods in academia. 

2020 was so wild that it was easy to overlook the news that the US military is taking the possibility of our being visited by advanced extraterrestrials very seriously.  Simultaneously, a prominent Harvard astrophysicist has released a new book arguing that an advanced alien object carried by a solar sail was observed passing through our solar system. This is a good time then to take stock of what the social science literature on interstellar civilizations tells us, and we are joined by the wonderfully creative Robin Hanson, professor of economics at George Mason University.  Professor Hanson has several papers in this area, and the hosts discuss with him how one makes advancements on a topic where so little about "society" can be known. They discuss his new model of "Grabby Aliens" to explain why the universe appears so empty, why Robin thinks "Dark Forest Theory" is extremely unlikely, what the recent sightings imply about  the prospects for Panspermia and alien religion. We also follow up with a discussion of how to use tenure to explore undervalued ideas in academia. 

Resources:

• Robin Hanson's work on interstellar civilizations:
  • "A Simple Model of Grabby Aliens." (with Daniel Martin, Calvin McCarter, and Jonathan Paulson). Blog posts summarizing paper here and here.
  • "Burning the Cosmic Commons: Evolutionary Strategies for Interstellar Colonization"
• Research article in Entropy  on the flight characteristics of the Unidentified Aerial Objects (the "tic tacs") that have been encountered by the military.
• New York Times coverage of "tic tacs" here and here.
• Coverage of the COVID-19 bill requirement for DoD disclosures on UAOs.
  • CIA data release in compliance with bill
• Avi Loeb's new book "Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth." Ungated coverage here.
• "Dark Forest Theory"
• "Panspermia"

Now that vaccinations are on the way, what is the best way to distribute them?

Kevin Brown, the Richard S. Melvin Professor of Law at Indiana University, speaks with the hosts about the history of using election law to suppress voter turnout among racial minorities. 

The hosts meet with Distinguished Professor George Krause to better understand exactly what "The Deep State" is that has animated so much political attention and what scholars know about it.

Resources

• David E. Lewis's SPSA Presidential Address "Deconstructing the Administrative State."
• "Experiential Learning and Management of the U.S. Federal Bureaucracy" by George Krause and Anne Joseph O'Connell (2016)
• "Human Resources and Public Administration" by J. Edward Kellough (2020).
• Marc Eisner's Antitrust and the Triumph of Economics.
• "Acting" by Anne Joseph O'Connell (2020)

In this episode the hosts discuss personal strategies for enjoying, or at least finding less painful, the 2020 election. 

2020 has been a year like no other. What movies capture the themes of 2020? Hosts Coady Wing, Denvil Duncan, and Justin Ross each discuss some of their choices on favorite movies that, with hindsight, inform the trials and tribulations of 2020. 

It is August 2020 and time to send children back to school. Or is it? The hosts, each with school age children, discuss their respective thinking processes and considerations as to whether to return their kids to school.