Season 8 - Episode 1 - Herbert Simon
Listen now
Description
One of the fundamental principles of orthodox economics the idea that all economic agents "maximise" - consumers aim to maximise utility (econ speak for happiness) and producers profit. Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert Simon challenged this assumption and in doing so coined a new verb, ‘to satisfice’ to show how consumers and producers in the ‘real world’ behave somewhat differently. This is the first episode of Season 8 of our award winning podcast, with the theme of the season being "the economists' economist'. In this episode, your friendly neighbourhood economists, Pete and Gav, enter the world of Ha-Joon Chang’s favourite economist - Herbert Simon. In the course of our journey of discovery we will meet a robot named after Herb, suggest the perfect past-time for long train journeys and discover Simon's surprising and unusual sartorial choices. As always there is a challenging quiz and lashings of bonhomie. Technical support comes from our muse Nic. PS You may hear background vocals from baby Henry during the course of the episode and we would correct the following errata which occurred during the course of enthusiastic discussions: Tom Swift was a character from American teen sci-fi books Mr Miyagi of Karate Kid fame was, in fact, Japanese
More Episodes
What makes firms grow? This appears to be an important question, particularly with governments looking for GDP growth to be driven by firms. The normal vehicle for exploring this in Economics would be to use the 'classical' Theory of the Firm but in terms of growth, it doesn’t really have any...
Published 11/04/24
Have you ever wanted to walk in the footsteps of the great economists? Do you want to breathe the same air they breathed? Do you want to be inspired by the ghosts of Economics past? Well now's your chance. Cambridge is rich with economic history and in this podcast special, recorded on the hoof,...
Published 09/27/24
Published 09/27/24