#AcademicRunPlaylist - 4/8/25

It was a bit nicer out today, so luckily I was able to get out for a bit and listen to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an excellent slate of talks by Daniel Schneider (schedule volatility in the service sector), Peter Ganong (monthly earnings volatility), Julie Cai (occupational/gender view of labor market volatility) at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chDEMyU9tcs

Next was an amazing talk by Joseph Kaboski on his work with Alejandro Estefan on the effects of Mexico's ban on worker outsourcing at CEPR - Centre for Economic Policy Research. The results of this policy are staggering, with higher profit shares going to workers but no increase in unemployment or total job numbers. Maybe we could try this instead of insane tariffs? Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQuqC37C1NQ

Speaking of tariffs, next was an informative discussion with Peter Harrell and Jennifer Hillman on the state of these tariffs, their legality, and the current and upcoming court challenges to them on The Lawfare Institute podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDAWjiAhMw

Next was a fantastic talk by Sanmi Koyejo on the need to move beyond benchmarks in AI at Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). Koyejo systematically deconstructs the myopic race towards benchmark scores, problems with claims based on performance, and then moves to ways forward for AI measurement. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkuoEJn6PlA

Next was "Organizations in Time," edited by Marcelo Bucheli and Dan Wadhwani. I love that there's an audiobook version of a book like this, which is an edited volume containing a number of articles on different aspects of doing research at the intersection of management studies and history. Most of the articles skew very sociological, both about the field and methods, and it almost certainly won't be interesting to you if you're not interested in academic organizational research. I found the last section on organizational historical data sources and methods to be the most interesting. https://academic.oup.com/book/4688

Last was "Extreme Economies" by Richard Davies. Davies provides an incredible view into a variety of different economies - prisons, disaster zones, refugee camps, and more - combining qualitative field research with quantitative analysis for a holistic picture. There's not a ton that unifies these different chapters beyond the fact that most of them will be unfamiliar to Global North readers and that they tend to be absent from most economic analyses. However these examples are insightful, demonstrating how different societal and economic models are possible and indeed necessary in many cases. The chapters about Estonia and rural Japan were frankly the least interesting, partly because they were extremely hype-driven (AI, robotics, etc.) but also because much of the claims in these chapters don't stand up to scrutiny. Still, this book is illuminating, and greatly helps one gain an understanding of economics and society. Highly recommend https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250170507/extremeeconomies/