VoxTalk Vaults

Lawrence Katz interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 15 May 2009

Lawrence Katz of Harvard University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his book (co-authored with Claudia Goldin), The Race between Education and Technology, a history of US economic inequality and the roles of technological change and the pace of educational advance in affecting the wage structure. The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009.

Hal Varian interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 08 May 2009

Hal Varian, on leave from the University of California, Berkeley, talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the kinds of things he thinks about as chief economist at Google – using the tools of economics to analyse business opportunities, making money out of search and content, and forecasting (including Google’s flu forecasts). The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009.

John List interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 30 April 2009

John List of the University of Chicago talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the use of field experiments in economics, including his research on people’s motivation for charitable giving, gender differences in competitiveness, and discrimination in the labour market. The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009.

Orley Ashenfelter interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 24 April 2009

Orley Ashenfelter of Princeton University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his research comparing wage rates for workers in identical jobs across countries, for which he has collected data from branches of McDonald’s, the fast food restaurant chain, in North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe and the rising economies of Asia. The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009.

Michael Spence interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 17 April 2009

Nobel laureate Michael Spence of Stanford University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the work of the Commission on Growth and Development, the prospects for and the obstacles to achieving sustainable growth in developing countries, and the impact of the global financial and economic crisis on the growth agenda. The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009.

Richard Easterlin interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 10 April 2009

Richard Easterlin of the University of Southern California talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about the Easterlin paradox – his finding, first published in 1974, that although people with higher incomes are more likely to report being happy, rising incomes do not lead to increases in subjective wellbeing. The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009.

Benjamin Friedman interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 03 April 2009

Benjamin Friedman of Harvard University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his book, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, which explores how growth boosts such values as opportunity, tolerance, generosity and democracy. They discuss how growth relates to inequality, happiness and the environment – and the potential consequences of a period of economic stagnation. The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009

David Autor interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 27 March 2009

David Autor of MIT talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his research on the hollowing out of the occupational distribution in the US and Europe over the past 30 years: high- and low-wage occupations have been expanding rapidly and hiring younger workers, while routine middle-skill occupations have been shrinking and ‘getting old’. The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009.

Francis Diebold, Kamil Yilmaz interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 20 March 2009

Francis X. Diebold of the University of Pennsylvania and Kamil Yilmaz of Koc University talk to Romesh Vaitilingam about their measure of financial asset return and volatility spillovers across global equity markets, described in the January 2009 Economic Journal. They discuss potential use of the index in macroeconomic policy; and application of the methodology to measure business cycle interdependence. The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009.

Matthew Jackson interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam, 13 March 2009

Matt Jackson of Stanford University talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his new book, Social and Economic Networks. They discuss the impact of communication technologies like Facebook on social and professional relationships; how social connections interact with financial transactions in settings from western banks to rural India; and the potentially negative effects of networks on social fragmentation. The interview was recorded at the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco in January 2009.