Here is audio, video and transcription. Here is the summary of the episode:
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz joined Tyler for a discussion that traces Joe’s career and major contributions, including what he learned giving an eight-hour lecture in Japan, how being a debater influenced his intellectual development, why he tried to abolish fraternities. at Amherst, how his studies of sharecropping in Kenya led to one of his most influential articles, what he thinks today about Georgism and the YIMBY movement, why he was too right-wing for Cambridge, why he left Gary, Indiana, his current views on high trade. volumes and liquidity, the biggest difference between him and Paul Krugman, what his work in Washington, DC taught him about hierarchies, what he’ll do next, and much more.
Here is an excerpt:
COWEN: You were a debater, and when you were at Amherstyou were also the head of the student government, right?
STIGLITZ: That’s right.
COW : You voted for the abolition of fraternities. Isn’t there good evidence that fraternities raise salaries?
STIGLITZ: (laughs) It was trade unions increase wages. Fraternities — I was opposed to fraternities because Amherst was a small college, a thousand boys, men, and they had the effect of divide the community. The philosophy that I The idea was that we should be one community. Fraternities tended to oppose this. Fraternity students always sat at the same tables as their fellow fraternity members. Fraternities had class aspects.
I thought they were simply a source of contention in a small community, and it turned out that my point of view ultimately prevailed. A few years later, Amherst abolished fraternities. This is an important lesson for me in my political life. Sometimes you start a campaign knowing that the next year, two years — when you’re actually there — you might not be successful, but sowing the seeds of a discussion, of a debate, maybe in 5, sometimes 10, sometimes 15, 20 years, things take part and you end up winning the debate.
And that:
COWEN: Are you in favor of power deregulation? YIMBY movement – allow for much more construction?
STIGLITZ: No. It actually goes to one of the themes of my book. One of the themes of my book is that one person’s freedom is another person’s unfreedom. That means that what I can do . . . I talk about freedom as what someone can do, what opportunities they have, what choices they can make. And when one person exerts an externality on another by exercising their freedom, they are restrictive the freedom of others.
If you have an unfettered building — for example, you don’t have zoning — you can have a building as tall as you want. The problem is that your tall building is depriving another building of light. There may be noise. You don’t want your children to be exposed to, for example, a brothel created next door. In the book, I actually talk about an example. Houston is a city with relatively little zoning, and I have a few quotes from people who live there, describing some of the challenges that result.
And that;
COWEN: Your 1984 play with Carl Shapiro on the theory of efficiency wages – looking back on it today, 40 years later, do you see it mainly as a contribution to the understanding of organizations, an explanation of unemployment, a statement about rigid wages? Or how do you frame this article? Because in the play itself, the salary is actually flexible, at least the real salary is.
Recommended, interesting everywhere.
