George Stigler

Regulation will stop- ... knew their competitors from even getting into the market.

Um, this was described by the Nobel Prize-winning economist George Stigler.

Um, he won the Nobel Prize for this, you know, 30 years ago.

W- do we have to keep relearning this? Um, what they're trying to do is drive their m- market price up.

So it's not in Daly's pocket, but it's in all these other guys' pockets.

Now, as George Stigler used to say, if there actually was a serious auction, a serious bid process, where everybody got their 10%, 15%, 20% profit, whatever it happens to be in that particular industry, when that phone call happens, the guy goes, what are you talking about? You paid fair price.

There's nothing there.

There's no VIG.

Other social scientists should do that, um, which amounts to the same thing in some sense.

Um, so there's an old paper by, uh, Gary Becker and George Stigler, uh, well-known economists, who say explicitly economists should simply assume that preferences are stable, and they're kinda similar across people.

'Cause what we really want to do is to predict changes in and variations in behavior in terms of the constraints that people face, their prices, their wage rate, the regulations surrounding the markets in which they operate.

And that view is not so extreme now, um, but I think we're still hanging on to a field that's called welfare economics, which is our framework for assessing the impacts of policies.

Other social scientists should do that, um, which amounts to the same thing in some sense.

Um, so there's an old paper by, uh, Gary Becker and George Stigler, uh, well-known economists, who say explicitly economists should simply assume that preferences are stable and they're kinda similar across people.

'Cause what we really want to do is to predict changes in and variations in behavior in terms of the constraints that people face, their prices, their wage rate, the regulations surrounding the markets in which they operate.

And that view is not so extreme now, um, but I think we're still hanging on to a field that's called welfare economics, which is our framework for assessing the impacts of policies.

Which amounts to the same thing in some sense.

So there's an old paper by Gary Becker and George Stigler, well-known economists, who say explicitly economists should simply assume that preferences are stable and they're kind of similar across people.

Because what we really want to do is to predict changes in and variations in behavior in terms of the constraints that people face, their prices, their wage rate, the regulations surrounding the markets in which they operate.

And that view is not so extreme now, but I think we're still hanging on to a field that's called welfare economics, which is our framework for assessing the impacts of policies.

Other social scientists should do that, um, which amounts to the same thing in some sense.

Um, so there's an old paper by, uh- Gary Becker and George Stigler, uh, well-known economists who say explicitly economists should simply assume that preferences are stable and they're kinda similar across people.

'Cause what we really want to do is to predict changes in and variations in behavior in terms of the constraints that people face, their prices, their wage rate, the regulations surrounding the markets in which they operate.

And that view is not so extreme now, um, but I think we're still hanging on to a field that's called welfare economics, which is our framework for assessing the impacts of policies.