#AcademicRunPlaylist - 4/11/25

Author

Ben Waber
April 11, 2025

The bronze statue in the lobby of Philadelphia's 30th Street station, seen from below with construction steel scaffolding and Doric columns in the background. The statue is of an angel, wings folded behind him and pointed towards the sky, holding a dead man with his head slumped to the right. Below is the inscription: In memory of the men and women of the Pennsylvania Railroad who laid down their lives for our country 1941 - 1945.

After I reflected on this statue commemorating our fight against right wing fascism, I took the train back to Boston and listened to some relevant talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist

First was an interesting conversation with Kendrick Kay on collecting and analyzing large-scale fMRI datasets on the Stanford Psychology podcast https://www.stanfordpsychologypodcast.com/episodes/episode/7dc372ee/150-kendrick-kay-large-scale-fmri-datasets-and-what-to-consider

Next was an intriguing talk by Lillian Ratliff on building robustness into control algorithms at the GRASP Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyqJyQWc4yc

Next was the National Bureau of Economic Research organizational economics symposium. I highly recommend the whole event (although the audio is terrible for most of it), and I particularly liked the talks by Nicola Bianchi (young workers' outcomes and the declining gender pay gap) and Claudine Gartenberg (internal and market pay references in firms)

Last was the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State's 2025 antitrust and competition conference. This is heavily focused on the intersection of antitrust and democratic backsliding in the US, but for all of the rhetoric when an administration member gave a speech there were virtually no direct challenges, and Chicago is once again showing a lack of leadership.

That being said, I highly recommend the panel with Sarah Ellison, Stephen Bates, Alexandra Geese, Richard R. John, and Paul Starr on the history of media concentration and regulation and the panel with Rana Foroohar, Cristina Caffarra, Nolan McCarty, Nicolas Petit, and Randy Picker reflecting on developments since 2019 in digital platforms, antitrust, and power