Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Today is August 24, 2020. My guest is a conmost Lisa Cook of Michigan State University.

She has written widely on the role of race in American economic history.

I want to thank Plantronics for providing today's guests with the Black wire 5220 headset.

And to one of the let-listers know that today's conversation may include topics that are disturbing to young children.

Lisa, welcome to Econ Talk.

The pleasure is a little mine. Thank you for having me.

Our topic for today is the research you've done on innovation and racism along with some of your other work.

On the role of racism and affecting entrepreneurship.

I also hope we get to the present moment as well.

I want to start with your work on violence and economic growth.

You were interested in how violence, particularly lynching and race riots affected patenting and innovation.

So describe that research.

So I'd like to start with the motivation for the research.

I was working on the Russian economy, the post-soviet economy.

I was writing my dissertation on Russian banking in Moscow.

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