Human Centered

In his first visit since to CASBS since his 1996-97 fellowship, UC Berkeley economist David Card lifts the veil behind the innovative empirical work on the labor market effects of immigration, minimum wages, and education that earned him the Nobel Prize in 2021. In conversation with 2024-25 CASBS fellow Dylan Connor, Card also explores issues and questions involving the relationships among geography, social and labor mobility, and wealth inequalities.

DAVID CARD: UC Berkeley page | Berkeley economics page | Wikipedia page | Nobel Prize page | Google Scholar page | Berkeley Nobel Prize article | 

DYLAN CONNOR: ASU page | Google Scholar page | 

Work emerging from David Card's CASBS year

"Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration," Journal of Labor Economics (2001)
"Would Financial Incentives for Leaving Welfare Lead Some People to Stay on Welfare Longer?" NBER Working Paper (1997)
"Adapting to Circumstances: The Evolution of Work, School, and Living Arrangements among North American Youth," in Youth Employment and Joblessness in Advanced Countries (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000)
"School Finance Reform, the Distribution of School Spending, and the Distribution of Student Test Scores," Journal of Public Economics (2002)
"The More Things Change: Immigrants and the Children of Immigrants in the 1940s, the 1970s, and the 1990s," in Issues in the Economics of Immigration (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000)

Other CASBS fellows mentioned in this episode

Orley Ashenfelter (1989-90)

Alan B. Krueger (1999-2000)

Roberto M. Fernandez (1996-97)

Robert D. Putnam (1974-75, 1988-89)

Min Zhou (2005-06)

 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University
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Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel |

Philosophers Michael Brownstein (CASBS fellow 2019-20) and Dan Kelly (2018-19), two of the coauthors of "Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Create Social Change," discuss their book's framing and key concepts with Damon Centola (2014-15), an expert in social network dynamics. The book offers a pragmatic guide for connecting individuals to their role as change agents, illuminating the social feedback processes through which structures, individuals, and social movements interact, unlocking the potential for systemic change.
The book is Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change (MIT Press, 2025)

Explore the book's website, containing related research, media, more about the authors, and an appendix that provides "A Deeper Dive into Individuals, Structures, and Other Key Concepts"
Michael Brownstein: CUNY Graduate Center webpage | personal webpage | Google Scholar page | CASBS page |
Dan Kelly: Purdue Univ. webpage | personal webpage | Google Scholar page | CASBS page |
Damon Centola: Penn webpage | Network Dynamics Group webpage | Wikipedia page | Google Scholar page | CASBS page |

Other works referenced in this episode:

Alex Madva, Daniel Kelly, Michael Brownstein, "Change the People or Change the Policy? On the Moral Education of Antiracists," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (2023)
Michael Brownstein, Daniel Kelly, Alex Madva, "Individualism, Structuralism, and Climate Change," Environmental Communication (2021)
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956) (Wikipedia)

James S. Coleman, Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966), known as The Coleman Report (Wikipedia)

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979 [1984]) (Wikipedia)

Other 2018-19 CASBS fellows who Dan Kelly mentions in this episode: Christopher Bryan, Jennifer Freyd, Ying-hi Hong, Elizabeth Lonsdorf, Ruth Milkman

 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University
Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast |latest newsletter | signup | outreach​
Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel |

Economist Paul Milgrom is celebrated for his Nobel Prize-winning work on auction theory and design. But he has published a wide range of other innovative, influential research throughout his career – including a book and articles emerging from his 1991-92 CASBS fellowship. Gani Aldashev (CASBS fellow, 2024-25) engages Milgrom on highlights of this often-collaborative or cross-disciplinary work on organizational behavior, the institutional roots of trust and cooperation, social choice for environmental policy, and more.
PAUL MILGROM: Stanford faculty page | Personal website | Nobel Prize page | Nobel bio | Wikipedia page| CASBS page |
Gani Aldashev: Georgetown faculty page | CASBS page | Google Scholar page |

PAUL MILGROM WORKS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:
Economics, Organization, and Management (Prentice Hall, 1992), coauthored with John Roberts (CASBS fellow, 1991-92)
"Multitask Principal-Agent Analyses: Incentive Contracts, Asset Ownership, and Job Design," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization (1991), coauthored with Bengt Holmstrom
"Complementarities and Fit Strategy, Structure, and Organizational Change in Manufacturing," Journal of Accounting and Economics (1995), coauthored with John Roberts
"Complementarities, Momentum, and the Evolution of Modern Manufacturing," The American Economic Review (1991), coauthored with Yingyi Qian, John Roberts
"Complementarities and Systems: Understanding Japanese Economic Organization," Estudios Economicos (1994), coauthored with John Roberts

"The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private Judges, and the Champagne Fairs," Economics & Politics (1990), coauthored with Douglass North (CASBS fellow, 1987-88) and Barry Weingast (CASBS fellow, 1993-94)
Learn about the Champagne Fairs on Wikipedia

"Coordination, Commitment and Enforcement: The Case of the Merchant Guild," Journal of Political Economy (1994), coauthored with Avner Greif (CASBS fellow, 1993-94), Barry Weingast

"Is Sympathy an Economic Value? Philosophy, Economics, and the Contingent Valuation Method," in Contingent Valuation: A Critical Assessment, J.A. Hausman, ed. (Elsevier, 1993)

"Kenneth Arrow's Last Theorem," Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design (2024)
Other works referenced in this episode:

Oliver Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting (Mcmillan, 1985). Much of this book was written at CASBS during Williamson's 1977-78 CASBS fellowship.

Works emerging from Milgrom's CASBS fellowships
Milgrom's collaborations with, intellectual interactions with, or responses to other Nobel Prize winners in this episode:
Oliver Williamson (CASBS fellow 1977-78, Nobel Prize 2009)
Bengt Holmstrom (Nobel Prize 2016)
Robert Wilson (CASBS fellow 1977-78, Nobel Prize 2020)
Ronald Coase (CASBS fellow 1958-59, Nobel Prize 1991)
Douglass North (CASBS fellow 1987-88, Nobel Prize 1993)
Kenneth Arrow (CASBS fellow 1956-57, Nobel Prize 1972)

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University
Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast |latest newsletter | signup | outreach​
Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel |

Edward Said famously wrote most of "Orientalism" during his 1975-76 CASBS fellowship. The book criticized Western worldviews and representations of the East (or 'Orient') and their perpetuation of romanticized or colonial mindsets. A half-century later, "Orientalism" continues to shape scholarship, frame debates, and resonate in disparate regions and contexts. Four 2024-25 CASBS fellows representing different disciplines – A. Shane Dillingham, Thomas Blom Hansen, Camilla Hawthorne, and Shirin Sinnar – discuss the enduring influence and impact of Said and his landmark book.
EDWARD SAID WORKS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE
Orientalism (Pantheon, 1978)
"The One State Solution," New York Times, 10 January 1999
Representations of the Intellectual (Penguin Random House, 1996)

Other works emerging from Edward Said's CASBS fellowship

EPISODE GUESTS
A. Shane Dillingham: ASU faculty page | Personal website | CASBS page
Camilla Hawthorne: UCSC faculty page | Personal website | CASBS page
Thomas Blom Hansen: Stanford faculty page | CASBS page
Shirin Sinnar: Stanford faculty page | CASBS page

Edward Said on CASBS
In evaluating his CASBS fellowship in 1976, Edward Said noted that "...the Center does not pay enough attention (in its selection of Fellows) to revisionist and/or radical scholars in the humanities and social sciences. There are a great many intellectual developments taking place, many of them because of thinkers whose work departs from (if does not explicitly reject) the conventions of Establishment scholarship."

In addition to this constructive criticism, Said remarked in general that "...the quiet and the absence of immediate pressures were, for me, a very welcome change from past years, when deadlines, a thousand daily commitments, and the mad pressures of teaching in a large university (in a large city) made continuity of work and reflection almost impossible." Said further reported that Orientialism was "exactly four-fifths complete." In accounting for his "extremely valuable and productive year," he wrote: "I do not think I could have done this sort of work anywhere else...the working conditions are...comfortable in the best way for a scholar..."

Of his work on Orientalism, Said further noted: "The other more or less special advantage to this year was to have time to change directions in my work, to move from a highly theoretical kind of speculation to a very concrete historical investigation. Many of my ideas about such matters as the history of traditions, the growth of scientific and disciplinary knowledge, the ideology of scholarship, the relationship between “knowledge” and the imagination took new, concrete forms. Without such a year – and it is impossible to say where else I could have had such a year – I would still be making statements without being sure as their historical and concrete validity. Moreover, I found that I had the time to pursue leads only to prove that they were the wrong ones; the important thing was to have the time to let my work take me where it would, and not be afraid.”
Excerpted from Edward Said, "Evaluation of fellowship year 1975-76," letter to CASBS director Gardner Lindzey, August 19, 1976 (CASBS files)
 
Other works referenced in this episode
Timothy Brennan, Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Stuart Hall, "The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power," in Essential Essays, Vol. 2 (Duke Univ. Press, 2018 [1992])
Camilla Hawthorne, "Mapping Black Geographies," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2024)
Sophia Azeb, "The 'No-State Solution'," The Funambulist (2017)
Sophia Azeb, "Who Will We Be When We are Free?" The Funambulist (2019)

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University
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Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel |

An absorbing conversation featuring Colin Camerer (CASBS fellow, 1997-98), among the world's most accomplished scholars in both behavioral economics and neuroeconomics, with economist Stephanie Wang (2024-25). Camerer discusses his groundbreaking work on the neuroeconomics of self-control and habit formation; offers insights on generating ideas for, building, then scaling behavioral models; and explains why neuroscience remains a wide-open field awaiting the contributions of so-far mostly reluctant economists and other social scientists.

COLIN CAMERER: Caltech faculty page | Camerer research group | on Google Scholar | Wikipedia page | bio at the Decision Lab | bio at MacArthur Foundation | 
STEPHANIE WANG: Pitt faculty page | Personal website | on Google Scholar | CASBS bio |

Works discussed or mentioned in this episode:

C. Camerer, Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction. Princeton University Press, 2003.

C. Camerer, "Can Asset Markets Be Manipulated? A Field Experiment with Racetrack Betting," Journal of Political Economy, 1998.

C. Camerer, et al., "The Golden Age of Social Science," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021.

C. Camerer, et al., "A Neural Autopilot Theory of Habit: Evidence from Consumer Purchases and Social Media Use," Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2024.

S. Wang, C. Camerer, et al., "Looming Large or Seeming Small? Attitudes Toward Losses in a Representative Sample," Review of Economic Studies, 2025.

F. Ramsey, "Truth and Probability" (1926), published in F. Ramsey, The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays (1931)

U. Malmendier, S. Nagel, "Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect Risk Taking?" Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2011.

M. Cobb, The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience, Basic Books, 2020.

M. Gaetani, "CASBS in the History of Behavioral Economics," CASBS website, 2018.

Also of interest:

S. Wang, et al., eds., "Mindful Economics: A Special Issue in Honor of Colin Camerer," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, forthcoming.

 

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University
Explore CASBS: website | Bluesky | X | YouTube |LinkedIn | podcast |latest newsletter | signup | outreach​
Human Centered
Producer: Mike Gaetani | Audio engineer & co-producer: Joe Monzel |