John List on Scale, Uber, and the Voltage Effect

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2022

⏱️ 61 minutes

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Summary

Economist John List of the University of Chicago talks about his book, The Voltage Effect, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. He discusses what determines scalability and argues that the only good ideas that count are those that scale. Along the way, he draws on his experiences as chief economist of Uber and Lyft to peer inside the black box of ride sharing.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.8	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:12.7	Institution.
0:13.7	Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links down
0:18.6	the information related to today's conversation.
0:21.4	You'll also find our archives, but every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.3	We'd love to hear from you.
0:37.8	Today's June 23rd, 2022.
0:39.6	My guest is economist John List of the University of Chicago.
0:43.3	He is the former chief economist of first Uber and Lyft.
0:46.8	His latest book is The Voltage Effect.
0:48.9	How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale.
0:51.9	John, welcome to econtalk.
0:52.9	Hey, thanks for having me, Russ.
0:56.1	What is the voltage effect?
0:58.2	The voltage effect is a description that tells us what happens to a program's effects when
1:07.0	we go from the small to the large.
1:10.8	And in particular, the voltage effect is usually a voltage drop.
1:16.8	And what I mean by that is it looks great in the Petri dish and then we scaled it up and
1:23.2	it doesn't look so great.
1:27.5	And you talk about the different reasons that might be true.
	...

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