In April this year some of the best European football clubs announced their plans to create a "Super League". Plans which were crushed unanimously by both players and fans alike only a couple of days later. In this episode we talk to Jan Eeckhout, Professor of Economics, about the Super League from an Economics perspective. We discuss which economic considerations may have influenced the idea to create a Super League, how the League could have impacted market power, and how these effects translate more generally to labour markets with dominant players like Amazon. Jan Eeckhout is Professor of Economics at UPF Barcelona with a research focus on labour markets and author of the book "The Profit Paradox. How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work" (https://www.theprofitparadox.com/).

From the prisoners’ dilemma to the Chicken Game: we all know the entertaining and powerful stories from game theory that help us to quickly identify the strategic core of a given situation. Today’s guest David McAdams explains to us that - while these simplified stories are very useful – they might lead to wrong predictions and recommendations when used in the wrong context. David also gives some practical examples from his work as a professor and consultant (e.g. on vaccine distribution in the current pandemic, and the fight against antibiotic resistance of so-called super-bugs), and we see that choosing the right underlying story and collecting the correct initial data are crucial prerequisites to the success of a game theoretic analysis. David McAdams is Professor of Economics and Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and author of the book “Game-Changer: Game Theory and the Art of Transforming Strategic Situations”. David mentions several interesting research topics in the outlook of the interview. Here are the links to the corresponding papers (some behind a paywall): o Learning through the grapevine: The Impact of Message Mutation, Transmission Failure, and Deliberate Bias: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3391403.3399521 o Social Networks and the Market for News: https://sites.duke.edu/rachelkranton/files/2020/04/Social-Networks-and-the-Market-for-News-Kranton-McAdams-April-2020.pdf o Viral Social Learning: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3299129 In addition, you can learn more about David’s current research activities on his homepage.

In this episode we are talking to Vitali Gretschko, professor of economics and market design. With him, we explore how moral behaviour affects decisions in market environments. We discuss a recent research project in which he jointly with colleagues designed an experiment to understand details on the relevance of social norms for market interactions. We also discuss how markets can be set up and designed to increase moral behaviour. Prof. Dr. Vitali Gretschko is head of the ZEW Research Department "Market Design", Professor of Market Design at the University of Mannheim, and a member of the Research Unit "Design and Behaviour" at the German Research Foundation (DFG). Vitali’s team published a working paper on the research project he mentions in the interview - you can download it at https://www.zew.de/publikationen/social-norms-and-market-behavior-evidence-from-a-large-population-sample

In this episode we are talking to Anouar El Haji, behavioral economist and the founder & CEO of Veylinx. With him, we explore how game theory can help to identify how customers truly value new products and services. We touch on why it is crucial for companies to obtain reliable insights before making major investment decisions and why so many companies struggle with this. The standard practice of conducting market research surveys is ineffective because participants don’t have skin in the game. But by taking a different approach using game theory, participants can be incentivized to reveal their true interest in services and products that might not even exist yet. Anouar El Haji is the founder and CEO of Veylinx (https://veylinx.com/). Before founding his company Anouar completed his PhD at the University of Amsterdam applying his knowledge in game theory and behavioural economics to the field of Marketing.

In this episode we are talking to Robert Idel, economist and expert in the energy sector. With him, we explore the effects of zero prices and how a market design approach can help tackle the challenging properties of the energy sector with limited storage capacities and lack of incentives to invest. Ironically, after recording this episode, the fragility and flaws in the current energy market that Robert describes became drastically apparent, when a winter storm led to long lasting and widespread power outages (find the corresponding article under https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/winterization-and-texas-blackout-fail-prepare-prepare-fail/). Robert Idel is an expert on the design of electricity markets and more generally regulation of the power sector. Robert is currently pursuing his PhD at the Baker Institute's Center for Energy Studies in Texas (https://www.bakerinstitute.org/experts/robert-idel/).

In this episode, Christina Gravert shares her personal experience from using online dating apps and how she applied game theoretic principles to maximise her chances for finding the perfect match. It turns out that the use of dating apps like tinder can be modelled as a game, leading to useful insights for your best “swiping strategy”. We also discuss the link between dating apps and game theoretic concepts like “cheap talk” or the “optimal stopping” problem. Christina Gravert is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Copenhagen and the cofounder of Impactually, a behavioral science consultancy. Her research is field is behavioural economics with focus on environmental sustainability, health and charitable giving. If you want to know more about her academic work, you can check out her homepage: https://www.christinagravert.com/ Our interview with Christina is based on her article at behavioralscientist.org, which also contains some interesting links on related articles.