I’m finally back in Tokyo, but it looks like the hot weather followed me! But while doing quick conbini runs I listened to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was the NBER economic fluctuations and growth symposium. The whole event was fantastic, and I especially liked the talks by Yueran Ma (using Wikipedia data to study long run innovation), Hugo Reichardt (why firms prefer the US over the EU), Christina Patterson (earnings instability), and Chris Tonetti (process weak links’ role in economic growth). Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcDkiTVmqbs

Last was “The Nature and Dynamics of Collaboration,” edited by Paul F. M. J. Verschure. It's not a good sign when, after a good first chapter on the evolutionary roots of human collaboration, a volume ostensibly devoted to the topic devotes the next two chapters to how indigenous populations "collaborated" with colonizers and different Jewish groups that "collaborated" with Nazis. We don't actually get to human collaboration until much later, and then it's pretty scattershot until the chapter on collaborative architectures. These last bunch of chapters are good, and should be read in isolation to earlier ones if you're interested in the topic https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5895/The-Nature-and-Dynamics-of-Collaboration