Caleb Watney is the director of innovation policy at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and he joins Macro Musings to talk about his recent piece, Cracks in the Great Stagnation and the reasons why we should all be techno-optimists. Specifically, David and Caleb discuss greater skilled immigration, further government R&D spending, innovative energy solutions, and more as ways to help repair an economy plagued by secular stagnation.

Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings

Caleb’s Twitter: @calebwatney

Caleb’s PPI profile: https://www.progressivepolicy.org/people/caleb-watney/

Related Links:

Cracks in the Great Stagnation Caleb Watney

https://www.agglomerations.tech/cracks-in-the-great-stagnation/

The Egghead Gap by Caleb Watney

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-egghead-gap

Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find? by Nicholas Bloom, Charles Jones, John Van Reenen, and Michael Webb

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20180338

Is the Rate of Scientific Progress Slowing Down? by Tyler Cowen and Ben Southwood

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cEBsj18Y4NnVx5Qdu43cKEHMaVBODTTyfHBa8GIRSec/edit

The Productivity J-Curve: How Intangibles Complement General Purpose Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson, Daniel Rock, and Chad Syverson

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25148/w25148.pdf

David’s blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com
David’s Twitter: @DavidBeckworth