February 14, 2023 #AcademicRunPlaylist

I had an early meeting downtown, which gave me plenty of time to run home in cool Boston weather and listen to great talks on my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a nice panel on the benefits and challenges of using NLP for economic analysis at Monash Business School with Simon Angus , Steven Hansen , and Arianna Ornaghi . Given the problems with benchmarks in ML I'm not as bullish on them for economics as the panelists, but the discussion overall was quite interesting.

Next was an excellent discussion with Ricardo Hausmann and Doyne Farmer on complexity and political economy at the Santa Fe Institute . The increasingly important lens of economic complexity is examined here, as is its intersection with society and politics more broadly. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOGMNqTWhqo&t=4s

Next was an intriguing conversation with Jie Bai studying the impact of China's forced joint venture approach in the auto industry on the VoxDev podcast. I want to dig into the paper more, but it appears that the benefits to domestic industry were fairly modest

Next was a fantastic talk by Vili Lehdonvirta on his new book Cloud Empires - how platforms have become de facto trans-national states and potential remedies - at the Oxford Martin School . The analysis here is extremely sharp, and has implications for everyone working in and thinking about tech. Highly recommend

Next was a fascinating conversation on curbing predatory lending on African digital platforms with Hilda Moraa , Dayo Odulate-Ademola , and Emmanuel Edet at TechCabal . How these companies are building their platforms was extremely informative, and how Branch International algorithmically and informally audits their debt collectors was impressive. Highly recommend

Next was an incredible talk by Ethan Rouen on the evolution of modern capitalism and the rise of ESG investing at 美国哈佛大学 . The perspective on how large asset managers and investors more broadly are starting to look beyond solely financial metrics was spot on, although the people metrics companies are reporting out are still shockingly poor (more from me on this soon). Highly recommend

Next was an ingenious talk by Ting Ye on bounding difference in differences analyses at the 美国华盛顿大学 . These analyses are used frequently for studying policy interventions, but Ye explores the problems with this approach in many cases and proposes an elegant solution. Highly recommend

Next was a fiery discussion on the antitrust case against 谷歌 's ad business with Dina Hilal Srinivasan , Luigi Zingales , and Bethany McLean at the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State . The intricacies of the case are damning and juicy, and the conversation provides tons of insight into how to think about antitrust cases like this. Highly recommend

Last was a nice Academy of Management podcast with Tyler Burns Sabey on coworker reactions to inheriting a legacy. There's shockingly little work on this topic in the management literature, but the theoretical framework discussed here should offer a good base for researchers to build on moving forward