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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
“I loved the intricacy of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré, the subtlety of the emotions and the manipulation of the emotions in this spy story.”
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Paul Romer
Published podcast speaker
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What Paul said.
8 transcript-backed records
01 / evaluation
If I have a criticism of macro in economics, it’s like the criticism in epidemiology — we may have biased things a little bit too much towards the models, and we’re not giving enough weight to just the facts themselves. And I think that’s because it’s actually easier to do models than to look at data, so we need to have a little bit of collective pressure to, “Yeah, yeah, that’s what your theory says, but let’s look at the numbers.
“If I have a criticism of macro in economics, it’s like the criticism in epidemiology — we may have biased things a little bit too much towards the models, and we’re not giving enough weight to just the facts themselves. And I think that’s because it’s actually easier to do models than to look at data, so we need to have a little bit of collective pressure to, “Yeah, yeah, that’s what your theory says, but let’s look at the numbers.”
- Speaker
- Paul Romer
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
02 / evaluation
Yeah. But the origins of that article were that I read some books that said economists got a lot more influence and things got worse in the United States, and this was a really troubling argument for me because it’s not easy to dismiss.
“Yeah. But the origins of that article were that I read some books that said economists got a lot more influence and things got worse in the United States, and this was a really troubling argument for me because it’s not easy to dismiss.”
- Speaker
- Paul Romer
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
03 / evaluation
The upshot is, is that I think because of technical economics and the arguments of economists, antitrust is much more tolerant now of dominant firms, and if we believe that competition’s good in a whole bunch of ways, this could actually be very, very harmful.
“The upshot is, is that I think because of technical economics and the arguments of economists, antitrust is much more tolerant now of dominant firms, and if we believe that competition’s good in a whole bunch of ways, this could actually be very, very harmful.”
- Speaker
- Paul Romer
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
04 / evaluation
” I’m really opposed to these long-list policy exercises because it tends to become this political thing.
“” I’m really opposed to these long-list policy exercises because it tends to become this political thing.”
- Speaker
- Paul Romer
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
05 / evaluation
I think that the problem in higher ed is that the institutional incentives don’t provide the kind of training that would maximize the opportunities for the students or, for that matter, maximize outcomes for the nation.
“I think that the problem in higher ed is that the institutional incentives don’t provide the kind of training that would maximize the opportunities for the students or, for that matter, maximize outcomes for the nation.”
- Speaker
- Paul Romer
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
06 / evaluation
We’ll need more than one dimension to really characterize different economies. But all of that said, I found, at least when I started to think about problems — which is really the best test of a theory — that I needed a different theoretical apparatus to think about, say, the challenge in Tanzania than the challenge in Germany.
“We’ll need more than one dimension to really characterize different economies. But all of that said, I found, at least when I started to think about problems — which is really the best test of a theory — that I needed a different theoretical apparatus to think about, say, the challenge in Tanzania than the challenge in Germany.”
- Speaker
- Paul Romer
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
07 / evaluation
He was very thoughtful about that and had a much more sophisticated sense about how science proceeds than the positivist sort of machine that people describe. But one of the joys of reading — that’s not a novel — but one of the joys of reading, and to me slightly frightening thing, is that there’s so much out there, and that a hundred years later, you can discover somebody who has so many things to say that can be helpful for somebody like me trying to understand, how do we use abstraction?
“He was very thoughtful about that and had a much more sophisticated sense about how science proceeds than the positivist sort of machine that people describe. But one of the joys of reading — that’s not a novel — but one of the joys of reading, and to me slightly frightening thing, is that there’s so much out there, and that a hundred years later, you can discover somebody who has so many things to say that can be helpful for somebody like me trying to understand, how do we use abstraction?”
- Speaker
- Paul Romer
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
08 / evaluation
” Because of the norms that evolve in these conditions of inequality, I think that is going to prove to be a very damaging approach for both the migrants who arrive and the people in the existing society.
“” Because of the norms that evolve in these conditions of inequality, I think that is going to prove to be a very damaging approach for both the migrants who arrive and the people in the existing society.”
- Speaker
- Paul Romer
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler