This Is What Happened to the Price of Nails Over the Last 330 Years
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2022
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're in a period of elevated inflation right now. But at least there's some good news: The price of nails is lower than it was in 1695. But how do we know what the price of nails was back then? And what can such a long-term look tell us about innovation in such a seemingly simple product? To learn more, we spoke with Dan Sichel, an economist at Wellesley College, who has recently published a paper on exactly this topic. We discussed how he did it and his overall approach to the project.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Odlots is brought to you by Apollo. When it comes to building and financing stronger businesses, |
| 0:05.1 | Apollo does the heavy lifting by providing customized capital solutions. Apollo, investing in |
| 0:10.2 | tomorrow, today, learn more at Apollo.com. No one just watches a movie anymore. They play the video |
| 0:16.2 | game, stream the soundtrack, and binge the companion podcast. Boundaries between Hollywood and Silicon |
| 0:21.4 | Valley have blurred, and everyone is scrambling for one thing, screen time. Join me, Lucas Shaw, |
| 0:26.9 | for Bloomberg Screen Time. Our new LA event that will connect entertainment's brightest minds, |
| 0:31.7 | with guests like Ted Serandos of Netflix, insecure creator Issa Rae, and podcast King Bill Simmons. |
| 0:37.6 | Catch it on October 11th and 12th and find out more at bloomberglive.com slash screen time. |
| 0:43.0 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odlots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. |
| 0:59.7 | And I'm Joe, why isn't all? So, Joe, we have been recording a lot of supply chain episodes, |
| 1:07.2 | and I know we kind of joke about this about going as granular as possible into the supply chain. |
| 1:15.2 | But I think I finally found basically as micro as we might possibly go. |
| 1:22.2 | This is what I love. There's always more micro every little part has a subpart or a subfactor, |
| 1:28.4 | but yes, I believe our conversation today is going to get very micro. But is it like a supply chain |
| 1:36.0 | episode for real? Yeah, I think it kind of is. I mean, this is a component that feeds into lots |
| 1:41.0 | of different things. And also, you say that things can always get more micro, and there must be a |
| 1:45.2 | limit somewhere, unless we get into like subatomic particles or something like that. I really feel like |
| 1:51.7 | in terms of components that feed into a lot of other things. This is maybe as micro as we're |
| 1:59.2 | going to get. We are going to be talking about nails today, like nails that you hammer and |
| 2:05.9 | that go into things like housing and construction. There's no sub, a nail is a contained one part. |
| 2:13.4 | There's no like, you know, obviously there are elements to build, you know, there's the raw |
| 2:18.0 | metal and the labor. But yeah, a nail is about as simple as a part you can get. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.