Alex Tabarrok - Prizes, Prices, and Public Goods

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

October 19, 2020

Duration

1h 26m

Channel

Dwarkesh Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Alex Tabarrok is a professor of economics at George Mason University and with Tyler Cowen a founder of the online education platform http://MRU.org. I ask Alex Tabarrok about the Grand Innovation Prize, the Baumol effect, and Dominant Assurance Contracts. Episode website: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/alex-tabarrok Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3TGYbIz Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3ADoIxq Follow me on Twitter to be notified of future content: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp Follow Alex Tabarrok: https://twitter.com/ATabarrok Alex Tabarrok's and Tyler Cowen's excellent blog: https://marginalrevolution.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:34 Grand Innovation Prize 08:45 Prizes vs grants 14:10 Baumol effect 27:50 On Bryan Caplan's case against education 31:35 Scaling education online 48:50 Declining research productivity 52:15 Dominant Assurance Contracts 58:40 Future of governance 1:04:05 On Robin Hanson's Futarchy 1:06:02 Beating Adam Smith 1:08:35 Our Warfare-Welfare State 1:19:30 The Great Stagnation vs The Innovation Renaissance 1:21:40 Advice to 20 year old

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Alex Tabarrok

  guest

• Dwarkesh Patel

  host

• Narrator

  other

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Dwarkesh Podcast, featuring Alex Tabarrok and Dwarkesh Patel, Alex Tabarrok - Prizes, Prices, and Public Goods explores alex Tabarrok on Prizes, Public Goods, Baumol, and Better Government Alex Tabarrok discusses how better incentive design—especially prizes, advance market commitments, and dominant assurance contracts—can dramatically improve innovation and the provision of public goods, with COVID-19 vaccines as a central case study.

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