We nearly hit freezing again 🙄, so I broke out my cold weather gear again and went out for a nice run and listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an excellent conversation with Arin Dube on the real causes of wage stagnation at the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBoaSQjeHDo

Next was "Dead Reckoning" by Diane Vaughan. This is possibly the best workplace ethnography I've ever read. Vaughan starts out with the history of the aviation industry (which is nearly a book in itself in length), then dives into the fascinating workplace of aviation controllers. This starts with their brutal screening and training process (since changed, probably for the worse), followed by a meticulous ethnographic dive into nearly every aspect of this critical, demanding work. Coincidentally this work sandwiches the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which the Boston facilities she studied were directly involved with. This allows Vaughan to gauge the effects of this shock on how controllers worked and thought about their role, which as you can probably imagine is both informative and heartbreaking. This book is a must read if you want to understand more about work or management, or of course if you're interested in aviation more broadly. Highly recommend https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo95833511.html

Last was "The Little Book of Valuation" by Aswath Damodaran. Damodaran delivers a rigorous but accessible introduction to standard approaches to corporate valuation and pricing, importantly highlighting some of the limitations of the standard methodology. And that methodology is highly flawed - while the models presented here are mathematically understandable and reasonable first assumptions, they are hilariously poor at doing what they're supposed to do. From this perspective, the book doesn't do a great job reflecting on this failure, but I would encourage people to read this book less as a reflection of how to value companies effectively and instead to understand how it's done today. This is analogous to a book detailing a geocentric model of the universe - not the most unreasonable approach, accurate over short time frames, and still a very poor representation about what actually happens in the universe. Still, understanding the state of the field is critical to making improvements. Highly recommend https://qa.store.wiley.com/en-us/shop/general-finance-investments/the-little-book-of-valuation-how-to-value-a-company-pick-a-stock-and-profit-updated-edition-p-9781394245062