Alex Tabarrok - Prizes, Prices, and Public Goods

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.

Watch on YouTube, or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast platform.

Episode website here.
Follow Alex on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

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 olds