#AcademicRunPlaylist - 7/9/25

I had meetings all around Tokyo today, and while building hopping between meetings to keep cool I listened to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was day 2 of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Development of the American Economy conference. I highly recommend the talks by Leander Heldring (the role of the industrial revolution in the breakdown of the English social hierarchy) and Yannis Kastis (the role of Jewish immigrant tailors in England in driving technology adoption) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAWLvLWmZ_s

Last was "Just Price in the Markets" by Charles Geisst. This book is an incredible dive into the history of the concept of a "fair" price, which until quite recently was radically different than the one we're used to today. Geiss traces that history - mostly in the West but with significant time devoted to price fairness in the Muslim world as well - starting at Aristotle and moving through the Enlightenment and eventually the modern world. The idea that the market should set a price on its own, or that arbitrage should be allowed to set a single price across different regions developed surprisingly late, and even recent decades have demonstrated that the combined moral/economic argument of price and interest fairness is by no means a settled issue. Highly recommend https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300268331/just-price-in-the-markets/