Keen On | 7 January 2021 | 0h 41m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Tom Bergin about his book Free Lunch Thinking: How Economics Ruins the Economy. Challenges economic orthodoxy, arguing that humans are less responsive to incentives than assumed by supply and demand modelling – and that consequently economic ideas hurt living standards and drive inequality. Covers tobacco taxes, CEO pay, minimum wages, and whether regulation hurts growth.
If economists have misled the world by presenting theoretical models as truth to be applied, this conversation returns the favour by misleading the listener about what the models say even in theory.
For instance, the arguments about executive compensation around 1980 or so were not “Let us pay CEOs more so that they’ll work harder”; the real argument was “Let us pay CEOs in stocks and options (rather than pensions and perks) to align their incentives with the interest of shareholders.”