Policy Punchline

In this interview, Prof. Tim Besley of LSE highlights issues in development economics and introduces a series of new concepts such as "fragile states" and "the Curse of Denmark" that provide much needed nuances in discussions about development.

As an introduction to this interview, we want to highlight one important point from Prof. Besley’s talk on state fragility in Princeton. He noted how the U.S., U.K., and stable states as such are all recent human contrivances. Humans have really only existed 73 seconds past midnight if we normalize the existence of Earth to 24 hours, and we’ve had stable political systems for merely 0.01 second.

How do we know whether our current systems are stable? “To say that we've transitioned to some new world that is inevitably stable and will never revert would be a very dangerous belief to have,” as Prof. Besley also commented during our interview. It’s dangerous to think that human progress will be linear, and we have to stay vigilant and humble as we continue to tackle the issues in our world.

Here are a few additional comments on normative economic frameworks by our host Tiger:

"On our way back to Prof. Besley’s office after our interview, I asked Prof. Besley about his research and how he sees the future of economic studies shaping up. Prof. Besley told me that when he thinks of a complicated question, he tends to break it down through a few frameworks. One of those frameworks particularly attracted my attention – a normative one that brings a values component into economic analysis. For example, a utilitarian framework or one about happiness could add a much different and helpful dimension to our understanding of certain socioeconomic issues.

"As little as I may know about this new normative approach, I do feel that such interdisciplinary discourse will be highly constructive for our exploration of economic issues. If someone’s knowledge in political theory or moral philosophy could somehow play a bigger role in economic research, that creates a much more exciting future than simply adding more variables into the model. As someone not well-versed in real analysis at all, I am quite excited to be part of that future if we ever come to it."

Investment banks undoubtedly serve an integral function in our financial markets. They help raise capital for companies through equity or debt offerings, provide corporate finance advice on mergers and acquisitions, aid in restructuring processes, and facilitate our economic activities among many other important tasks.

But what is the future for investment banking services as more junior-level number-crunching work is projected to be automated away by tech innovations? Where does the future lie for bulge bracket investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, as more boutique advisory firms prove to be more nimble in complex transactions and more knowledgeable in niche verticals?

Melville Mummert is the former Head of European Investment Banking at Raymond James. From a base in Munich, he led the strategic expansion of Raymond James into Frankfurt and London, and recruited and retained a team that grew from 22 to 75 professionals. His team provided advisory services on M&A, capital raising, and restructuring in all phases of transactions in five sectors: tech & services, industrials, healthcare, financial services, and consumer & retail.

Previously, he founded and managed his own international corporate finance advisory practice, Mummert & Co., which focused on technology-based companies in German-speaking countries and was ultimately acquired by Raymond James in 2016.

On their way back to Prof. Stefan Eich's office after the interview, Tiger told Prof. Eich that he had been considering pursuing a Ph.D. because he values intellectual curiosity and derives a lot of joy from constantly learning about new ideas. Prof. Eich chuckled and told Tiger that academia might be one of the most anti-intellectual places of all because people are so focused on their niche and don’t interact with other disciplines enough. We've heard this criticism not only from Prof. Eich – or many other guests like Prof. Reinhard Busse – but almost every academic we've interviewed.

People clearly recognize that the academia needs more people who can draw interdisciplinary connections. If one can bring financial economics, political theory, climate change, and many of the other fascinating debates together in a thoughtful way, this person is most likely a wonderful academic. And we believe that Prof. Eich is such an academic.

While we don’t have the ability to do so yet, we do hope to build Policy Punchline to be as similar to a think tank as possible and bring different voices together. As we strive for that goal, we're excited to present this episode to you.

Stefan Eich is Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University. Before arriving at Georgetown, he was Perkins-Cotsen Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Princeton University and received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. His research is in political theory and the history of political thought, in particular the political theory of money and financial capitalism.

His book project, "The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes" (under contract with Princeton University Press), recovers debates about money as a constitutive political institution by studying six moments of monetary crisis and their imprint in the history of political thought. Besides its analysis of the conceptual and historical roots of the political theory of money the book offers an account of the modern politics of monetary depoliticization and places this history in conversation with the contested future of money. He is co-editor of a book series on "Currencies: New Thinking for Financial Times" with Melinda Cooper and Martijn Konings at Stanford University Press.

Jeff Kreisler is just a typical Princeton educated lawyer turned author, speaker, pundit, comedian and advocate for behavioral science. He uses humor & research to understand, explain and change the world.

In this interview, Jeff explains the urgent issues of financial literacy that America currently faces, and he brings in perspectives from behavioral science and economics to shine a new light on the problem. As a continuation to Mr. Pete Colhoun's interview and our efforts to promote awareness for financial literacy, this interview combines intellectual depth and humor and should be a really enjoyable episode for our listeners.

Jeff specializes in politics, money and other human encounters. Winner of the Bill Hicks Spirit Award for Thought Provoking Comedy, Jeff also runs PeopleScience.com, writes for TV, politicians & CEOs, shares witty insight on CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC & SiriusXM and tours most of this planet.

For more information on Jeff's work, please visit: http://jeffkreisler.com/

44% of Americans do not have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency. In 2016, the average college student graduated with $37,000 in debt. 44% of Americans said they would rather discuss death, religion, or politics rather than talking about personal finance with a loved one.

Financial literacy is clearly a huge problem in our society today, and we are very glad that Princeton is hosting a financial literacy day to bring awareness to the issue. We’re glad to have a very prominent voice in advocacy for financial literacy joining us for this interview and discussing the issue of financial literacy.

Mr. Pete Colhoun spent 20 years at global asset management firm T. Rowe Price Group and over that time was Director of Investment Research, Director of Mutual Funds, and President and Portfolio Manager of the New Era Fund. Today, he serves on nine boards, for both profit and non-profit companies, and is a senior investment advisor to the Gates Family Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic organizations in Colorado.

We recorded this interview with Trade Talks host Chad Bown back in February. That was a time when we were still uncertain whether a deal would be reached on March 1 between China and the U.S. on whether the 10% tariffs would rise to 25% for the $200 billion Chinese imports to the U.S.

Things have really evolved in the past few months with both good and bad times. The 25% tariffs became a reality, and on August 1, President Trump announced that additional 10% tariff will be levied on another $300 billion of Chinese imports. On August 5, the U.S. officially declared China as a Currency Manipulator, and we saw a huge stock market crash following that announcement.

We’ve saved this interview waiting for the big moment to release it, and I think now is truly a critical moment in U.S-China relations and also an appropriate time for us to release this interview with Chad on the trade war. A few months have passed by, but we truly believe that our listeners can still learn so much from Chad’s insights.

What is the history of American healthcare reforms through the past four administrations? Americans seem to value choice and freedom a lot, so does it mean that a single-payer health system would never work because of such a cultural factor? How should we approach the quintessential problem of balancing storytelling and the day-to-day politics when rolling out long-lasting policies?...

In this episode, Prof. Sherry Glied, former Assistant Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services under President Obama, explains the cultural and political reasons of the current American healthcare gridlock.

In 2013, Sherry Glied was named Dean of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. From 1989-2013, she was Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She was Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management from 1998-2009. On June 22, 2010, Glied was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, and served in that capacity from July 2010 through August 2012. She had previously served as Senior Economist for health care and labor market policy on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1992-1993, under Presidents Bush and Clinton, and participated in the Clinton Health Care Task Force. She has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and served as a member of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking.

Glied’s principal areas of research are in health policy reform and mental health care policy. Her book on healthcare reform, "Chronic Condition," was published by Harvard University Press in January 1998. Her book with Richard Frank, "Better But Not Well: Mental Health Policy in the U.S. since 1950," was published by The Johns Hopkins University Press in 2006. She is co-editor, with Peter C. Smith, of "The Oxford Handbook of Health Economics," which was published by the Oxford University Press in 2011.

What makes a design artful? The realm of design expands from fine arts to technological innovations, from concrete objects to abstract ideas, and this question about the artfulness of design thus not only relates to the aesthetics, but also to a wide range of topics such as ethics and moral philosophy. What are some of the issues we should keep in mind when designing a tech product? How does art relate to and influence the evolution of technology? How do we want to live with the tech innovations and public policies that we designed?

In this episode co-hosted by Tiger and Arjun Mani (Princeton Class of 2021, computer science major with a strong passion for Indian classical music and AI research), Prof. Ge Wang from Stanford will discuss those issues and present his unique vision for the future of our tech and society.

Prof. Ge Wang is an Associate Professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He specializes in the art of computer music design — researching programming languages and interactive software design for music, interaction design, expressive mobile music, new performance ensembles (laptop orchestra and mobile phone orchestra), human-computer interaction, visualization (sndpeek), music game design, aesthetics of technology-mediated design, and methodologies for education at the intersection of art, engineering, and design.

Ge is the author and chief architect of the ChucK music programming language, and the founding director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk), and co-founder director of the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). Ge is also the Co-founder of Smule, a startup company exploring music-making via mobile devices (reaching over 200 million users). Ge is the designer of Ocarina, and Magic Piano for the iPhone and iPad. These expressive musical things (are they toys? instruments?) enable people to play and share music with one another around the world. Overall, Ge aims to explore the art of design with technology for music.

Ge is recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship; he is the author of "Artful Design: Technology in Search of the Sublime" (a MusiComic Manifesto) — published by Stanford University Press.

Jacques Bughin is a senior partner at McKinsey and a director of the McKinsey Global Institute, the firm’s business and economics research arm, and one of its three global co-leaders. He is also a leader in McKinsey’s Media and Entertainment, Corporate Finance, and Strategy Practices and co-leads the Digital Economy Initiative, a recently launched McKinsey knowledge program.

Since joining the firm in 1992, he has been based in Amsterdam, London, Montreal, New York, and Toronto, working primarily with media, telecom, online services, health care, fintech, travel and logistics companies on a variety of issues, including marketing and sales, digital strategy, productivity, business technology, leadership, and organization.

He has coauthored numerous publications, including McKinsey Global Institute reports on globalization, Internet of Things, Big Data, and social technologies and numerous articles in the McKinsey Quarterly as well as academic journals on industrial economics, organization, digitization of firms, and corporate finance. His research has been published in leading international media.

Jacques is a frequent speaker at conferences and universities worldwide on a range of economic and technology trends. He is a fellow at the Aspen Institute, ECORE, a think tank on economic policy in Belgium, and at KUL University. He co-leads the McKinsey Advisory Board on media management at INSEAD.

What causes enduring unemployment? What are the impacts of housing booms and manufacturing decline on employment growth? How can we come up with potential solutions for rising healthcare costs? How should we reconcile normative judgments and empirical analysis in debates about issues like unemployment and healthcare?  

An applied microeconomist, Prof. Matthew Notowidigdo studies a broad set of topics in labor and health economics using a variety of empirical approaches. In labor economics, his research has focused on understanding the causes and consequences of unemployment duration dependence (state dependence in unemployment), the incidence of local labor demand shocks, and the economic effects of unemployment insurance over the business cycle. One theme across all of these topics is using variation in local labor market conditions to inform economic theories and learn new facts about the labor market. Prof. Notowidigdo’s research in health economics focuses on the effects of public health insurance on labor supply, the effects of health on the marginal utility of consumption, and the effects of income on health spending. An important motivation for this line of research is to inform the design of public health insurance programs.

Notowidigdo is a co-editor at the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, an associate editor at the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER). His co-authored paper that was published in the Journal of the European Economic Association, “What Good is Wealth without Health? The Effect of Health on the Marginal Utility of Consumption," won the association's 2014 Hicks-Tinbergen Medal, awarded to the most outstanding article published in the last two years. Before coming to Northwestern, Notowidigdo was the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.