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Episodes

Nov. 9, 2022

Avi Goldfarb on AI and Predictive Analytics

Guest Avi Goldfarb discusses AI as prediction technology likely to transform our systems over a long period of time. Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair of Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and a Professor of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He's also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, a Faculty Affiliate at the Vector Institute and the Schwartzman Institute for Technology and Society, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of E...
Nov. 2, 2022

Jay Bhattacharya on Covid Policy Missteps

Jay Bhattacharya joins Two Think Minimum for a look at the responses of public health and economic experts to Covid-19. He asserts the need for a retrospective to learn from it, discussing his own criticisms of the professional communities. Jay is a professor of health policy at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He directs Stanford Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. He co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an o...
Oct. 20, 2022

Michael Smith on Video Streaming and Its Lessons for Higher Education

Michael Smith joins Two Think Minimum to discuss his work on video streaming, how traditional studios adapted to technological changes, and draws parallels to the future of higher education. He argues that technological change will disrupt the standard model of higher ed, which has barely changed in centuries. He says the current system is financially and morally unsustainable and that technology provides an opportunity to create a more inclusive and accessible system, which is the premise of hi...
Sept. 27, 2022

Mike Rosenbaum on Using AI to Avoid Hiring Biases and Find Overlooked Talent

Michael Rosenbaum is founder and executive chairman of Catalyte, a recognized leader in onshore agile application services working with clients onsite or from development centers in Baltimore, Md. and Portland, Ore., and CEO of Arena. Prior to starting Catalyte, Mike received an Irving R. Kaufman Fellowship to build the first version of what is now the company’s analytics engine for talent selection and team assembly. Prior to that, he was a John M. Olin Fellow at Harvard University where he res...
Aug. 29, 2022

Cathryn Ross on the Regulatory Horizons Council and Re-Imagining Regulation

Cathryn Ross is Strategy and Regulatory Affairs Director at Thames Water. She is responsible for shaping and embedding a strategy to ensure that Thames Water delivers for customers, communities and the environment. She is an experienced regulatory and competition economist and has worked across a number of different sectors advising on economic, regulatory and competition issues.
Aug. 2, 2022

Julie Owono on the Importance of Establishing a Democratic Agenda for Content Governance

Julie Owono is the Executive Director of Internet Sans Frontières (Internet Without Borders), an inaugural member of the Facebook Oversight Board, and the Executive Director of the Content Policy & Society Lab, a project of the Progam on Democracy and the Internet at Stanford University. At the intersection of Business and Human Rights, her work focuses on creating channels of collaboration between different set of actors of the Internet. She is particularly interested in finding policy and tech...
July 5, 2022

Howard Beales and Tim Muris on Antitrust and Consumer Protection Policies at the FTC

Tim Muris was chairman of the FTC from 2001 to 2004. He was director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection from 1981 to 1983 and of the Bureau of Competition from 1983 to 1985 and an assistant to the director of the Office of Policy Planning and Evaluation from 1974 to 1976. He currently is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, senior counsel at Sidley Austin and a visiting senior fellow at AEI [American Enterprise Institute]. Howard Beales was dire...
June 24, 2022

Joel Waldfogel on Privacy and Innovation

Joel Waldfogel is Associate Dean of MBA programs at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. He was previously the Ehrenkranz Family Professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where he served as department chair and associate vice dean. Prior to Wharton, he was an associate professor of economics at Yale University.
June 21, 2022

Jennifer Fauver on Antitrust Enforcement by State AGs

Jennifer Fauver joins Two Think Minimum to discuss her new research paper entitled, “Putting a Number on the Debate: An Empirical Assessment of the U.S. Federal Antitrust Enforcement by State Attorneys General.” The article focuses on the enduring debate regarding the appropriate role for State AGs in federal antitrust enforcement. She adds to the empirical legal studies literature with a novel dataset of antitrust enforcement by state attorneys general from the last twenty years. She provides a...
April 28, 2022

Evan Kwerel on the Origins of Spectrum Auctions

Today, we are delighted to have as our guest, Evan Kwerel, who is Senior Economic Advisor at the Federal Communications Commission. The impact of Evan's career at the FCC was recognized last year, when he was awarded the 2021 Paul Volcker Career Achievement Award for pioneering the use of spectrum auctions. To get an idea of what Evan has accomplished and to introduce the discussion, let me read the first couple of paragraphs from the citation. “During more than three decades as a Federal Commun...
Guest: Evan Kwerel
March 24, 2022

Stan Besen & Phil Verveer on a Coasian Approach to Section 230 Reform

Stan is a Senior Consultant with Charles River Associates. He's a nationally recognized expert in the economics of intellectual property rights, telecommunications policy, and telecommunications and computer standards. Stan has taught at Rice, Columbia, and the Georgetown University Law Center. And in government, he was a Brookings Economic Policy Fellow for the Office of Telecommunications Policy and the Executive Office of the President and Co-Director of the Network Inquiry Special Staff at t...
March 8, 2022

TPI’s Senior Fellows on Building the Ideal Broadband Map

As states ramp up their efforts to distribute broadband funding, policymakers will need data to help them identify the areas of their state that are in dire need of investment. On the latest edition of Two Think Minimum, Scott Wallsten, Sarah Oh, and Nathaniel Lovin discussed TPI’s broadband mapping initiative, which aims to put existing metrics into context and provide decision-makers with actionable intelligence. By harnessing the power of cloud computing, TPI’s broadband map allows users to s...
Feb. 23, 2022

Adam Kovacevich on Big Tech Through a Progressive Lens

Adam Kovacevich is the founder and CEO of the Chamber of Progress, a new, center-left tech industry policy coalition promoting technology's progressive future. The organization works to ensure that all Americans benefit from technological leaps and that the tech industry operates responsibly and fairly. Adam is a veteran Democratic tech industry leader who has had a front-row seat for more than 20 years in the tech industry's political maturation.
Feb. 15, 2022

2021's Top Tech Policy Stories in Review with Jonathan Make

Jonathan Make is the former Executive Editor at Warren Communications, which includes Comms Daily, where he's also a journalist. He joined the Warren Communications staff in 2005 after covering the industry at Bloomberg, and after moving to Washington in 2003 to research the FCC as part of a master's degree in Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. In his next role, Jonathan will be joining the Cheyenne Wyoming Daily Metropolitan Newspaper as an editor.
Guest: Jonathan Make
Feb. 7, 2022

John List on How to Make Good Ideas Great & Great Ideas Scale

John List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on questions in microeconomics, with a particular emphasis on using field experiments to address both positive and normative issues. For decades his field experimental research has focused on issues related to the inner-workings of markets, the effects of various incentives schemes on market equilibria and allocations, how behavioral economics can augment the standa...
Guest: John List
Jan. 27, 2022

Bruce Mehlman on Policy Risks to Watch in 2022

Bruce Mehlman is the founding partner of Mehlman, Castagnetti, Rosen & Thomas, one of Washington's premier lobbying and government relations firms. Bruce has over two decades of experience in public policy, business, and the law, helping leaders in organizations understand, anticipate, and navigate political risk. He is a highly sought-after speaker on policy and political trends. His slide decks analyzing major issues and trends are consistently picked up by national news media and eagerly cons...
Guest: Bruce Mehlman
Jan. 18, 2022

Blair Levin & Gregory Rosston on Broadband Subsidies

Blair Levin is the Policy Advisor to New Street Research and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Project at the Brookings Institution. He also served as Chief of Staff to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, directed the writing of the United States National Broadband Plan, where I worked for him, and was a Policy Analyst for the Equity Research Teams at Legg Mason and Stifel Nicolaus, in addition to many other activities. Gregory Rosston is the Gordon Cain Senior Fellow at the Stanford ...
Jan. 4, 2022

Diane Coyle on How Economics Can Evolve with a Changing World

Professor Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Professor Coyle co-directs the Bennett Institute where she heads research under the themes of progress and productivity. She is also a Director of the Productivity Institute, a Fellow of the Office for National Statistics, an expert adviser to the National Infrastructure Commission, and Senior Independent Member of the ESRC Council. She has served in public service roles including as Vice Chair of the...
Guest: Diane Coyle
Dec. 23, 2021

Catherine Tucker on Algorithmic Bias

Catherine Tucker is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management Science, Professor of Marketing, Chair of the MIT Sloan Ph.D. Program, a co-founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, which studies the applications of blockchain, and also a co-organizer of the Economics of Artificial Intelligence Initiatives sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Her research interests lie in how technology allows firms to use digital data and machine learning to improve performance, and in the challenges ...
Dec. 14, 2021

Adam White on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Adam White is the Co-Executive Director of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Adam is also a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a Public Member of the Administrative Conference of the United States. Adam has served on the Leadership Councils for the Administrative Law Sections of both the ABA and the Federalist Society. After clerking for Judge David B. Sentelle of the Court of Ap...
Guest: Adam White
Dec. 9, 2021

Larry White on Antitrust & Market Delineation of Monopolization Cases

Dr. Larry White is the Robert Kavesh Professor of Economics at the NYU Stern School. He's also General Editor of the Review of Industrial Organization and the author of numerous articles and books on industrial organization, antitrust, general regulation, and financial & bank regulation. He has also held a number of senior government positions: Senior Staff Member of the Council of Economic Advisors, Member of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and Chief Economist at the Antitrust Division at the...
Guest: Larry White
Nov. 2, 2021

Clifford Winston on Markets Helping Government

Dr. Clifford Winston is a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution's Economic Studies Program. He joined TPI Distinguished Senior Fellow Bob Hahn to discuss his book, "Gaining Ground: Markets Helping Government," which was published earlier this year by Brookings. This podcast is part of our special series on evidence-based policy.
Oct. 26, 2021

Xiaomeng Lu on China's Tech Crackdown

Xiaomeng Lu is a Director in the Eurasia Group’s Geotechnology Practice, where she focuses on the interactions of emerging technologies with geopolitics, market dynamics, and regulatory norms. Before joining the Eurasia Group, she was the China Practice Lead at the consulting firm, Access Partnership, where she helped top US financial and cloud service providers enter China's market.
Guest: Xiaomeng Lu
Oct. 5, 2021

Mark Jamison on Regulatory Humility & Antitrust: Two Think Minimum

Dr. Mark Jamison is the Director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on how technology affects the economy and on telecommunications and federal communications issues. He's written three books, contributed to several edited volumes, and published in academic and policy journals, as well as the popular press
Guest: Mark Jamison