#AcademicRunPlaylist - 11/23/25

Author

Ben Waber
November 23, 2025

A selfie of me in a dimly lit home office with sea foam green walls. I’m a bald, middle-aged, white man with a red beard flecked with white. I’m wearing glasses with thick black rims and a maroon and white MIT sweatshirt.

I was under the weather this weekend, and while recuperating I read some books and listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a slate of talks and panels from the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI):

Panel on controlling shareholders - Stephen Fraidin, Jack B. Jacobs, Mark Lebovitch, Ann Lipton, and Daniel Slifkin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXO-bLdGXqg

Japanese boards and unsolicited takeovers - Marco Becht - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17_8vh835DE

Firm and institutional investor strategies for unsolicited bids - Marco Becht, 

Blurring lines between public and private ownership - Michelle Lowry - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_3M-CUbp4A

Next was “India After Ghandi” by Ramachandra Guha. This is an incredible history, with Guha setting the stage around India's independence and partition, then combining a wide variety of perspectives to study India in the decades since independence. Important historical figures and organizations are examined to reveal their role in shaping different policies and events, while more macro statistics and perspectives are brought in to give a sense of the effects of these policies and changes in regions over time. Guha repeatedly hammers home just how audacious the democratic experiment in India is when compared with other countries, notably the US, and even with the recent rise of authoritarianism there  refers back to other dark periods post-independence where a descent into fascism was predicted but never realized. Reading this book gives one profound hope about the future of what will arguably be the world's most important country moving forward and a deeper understanding of the chaotic decades immediately following independence and its emergence as a major global power. Highly recommend https://www.amazon.com/India-After-Gandhi-Revised-Updated-ebook/dp/B07QR79QXF/

Last was “Who Gets What and Why” by Alvin Roth. Roth provides an accessible introduction to matchmaking and markets more broadly, reviewing different match market classes, the problems that can occur with different approaches for making matches, and the real-world success of algorithms in this area. Roth doesn't spend much time on the limits of markets and the implications of different value functions, which while understandable is a decent gap here. However, overall this is still an insightful book on an important area of economics and society more broadly. Highly recommend https://www.harpercollins.com/products/who-gets-what-and-why-alvin-e-roth