In the most recent podcast at EconTalk, Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and I talk about what makes dictators and democratically elected leaders tick. According to Bruce’s worldview, every leader, no matter what the system, tries to stay in office and prosper. The relentless application of this simple idea turns out to have very interesting implications for foreign aid, the relief of poverty around the world and about a thousand other things. Bruce has a big brain with a lot of interesting things to say. It’s a very long podcast (about an hour and a half) and it opens with a fairly intense discussion of the theories in Bruce’s book. From there he talks about a wide range of applications.
The next podcast at EconTalk will be August 28th with Milton Friedman.
Podcast RSS Feed
Full EconTalk Text
{ 4 comments }
A strong, strong podcast. It was very informative and thought provoking… It also, unfortunately makes a lot of sense.
Isaac
Thank you for the opportunity to tune in.
At an hour and a half I doubt that I'm going to listen to this podcast. I'm sure that I'll miss something valuable, but I believe I can find something(s) marginally better for the time requirement.
I look forward to the day when, as a matter of course, podcast providers also play the podcasts to dictation software and then provide a cleaned-up transcript. Searchable, skimmable, and cut-and-pastable!
Wow. He had a good theory, and a good grasp of history, which makes for a very interesting story. I bought the book (new versions used are $10 cheaper!).
well,it really very informative and did make a lot of point of view in it.