Nicholas Bloom: preference

Transcript context

…What do you think will be the next different thing that you do? It’s not just an extension of current work. Geez, that’s hard to say. My best guess is — as you said, the other thing that’s really helpful for me is working with coauthors — will be some bright, sparky coauthor, grad student who will suggest, “We should look at X.” Maybe they’re not that interested in it. I say, “Oh, that’s a great idea.” Maybe at some point it turns into a collaboration. Often, I’m giving a seminar. A lot of great ideas come from . . . For those who don’t go on the academic seminar, the way that academic seminars work is — because at GMU, not long ago — you go and give a talk, and then normally you get meetings in the morning and the afternoon. A classic day will be, you turn up at 10:00 AM. You have half-hour meetings and then lunch, and there’s a talk in the afternoon and then dinner. What I really like is those one-on-one meetings because you’re talking to lots of people for half an hour. I find them fundamentally really tiring because you’re fully on. Actually, whenever I meet people, I go to their website, look them up for half an hour, 20 minutes beforehand, and really try and learn about what they work on. It takes a lot of time, but I find it really valuable. That’s the great source of ideas. I’m personally also suffering in the sense of productivity — as I mentioned, I think the US economy is — from working at home full time because those one-on-one meetings have stopped. My own production function, in some ways, of continuing current projects is fine. I can do that. But I do feel that if this carries on for another year, the US economy is going to suffer a little bit in terms of struggling to come up with new ideas because there’s not so much one-on-one discussion. I’m not randomly meeting people. I can easily Zoom current people I know, but it’s much harder to come up with random people at seminars you would’ve gone to, but clearly aren’t. Nick Bloom, thank you very much.…

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