Economics Explored

Big economic issues for the 2020s

Episode Summary

Economics Explained host Gene Tunny presents his views on some of the big economic issues we face in the 2020s: secular stagnation, digital disruption and surveillance capitalism, and climate change.

Episode Notes

Use these timestamps to jump right into the episode:

• 2:15 – Larry Summers’s secular stagnation hypothesis (see his Peterson Institute talk);
• 4:10 – discussion of Tyler Cowen’s and Robert Gordon’s views (see Cowen’s lecture on Inequality, productivity stagnation and Moore’s Law and check out Robert Gordon’s book The Rise and Fall of American Growth);
• 5:45 – On Stiglitz’s attack on Summers and secular stagnation (see Stiglitz’s article The myth of secular stagnation);
• 7:30 – reference to “Dr Doom” Nouriel Roubini’s “perfect storm in 2020” interview from 2018;
• 9:00 – discussion of Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh’s new book Innovation + Equality; 
• 11:10 – reference to the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism;
• 13:30 – Financial Times editorial on GDPR;
• 14:08 – Verge article on new California data privacy law; and
• 15:27 – IMF blog post on climate change.