FIRE Podcast- Alex Tabarrok: Launching the innovation renaissance
[podcast]http://redesign.rstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/FIRE120611.mp3[/podcast]
Stagnant economic growth in the United States isn’t merely a function of the recession that kicked off four years ago. Its roots can be traced back decades, a period when many of the legal and social institutions that we historically have relied upon to promote innovation, such as patents and public schools, appear to have fallen short.
So says Alex Tabarrok, research director of the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. and co-founder of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. In his new e-book, Launching The Innovation Renaissance: A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast, the George Mason University economist offers a set of policy prescriptions that seek to lift those barriers to innovation and foment new ideas as a way to restore entrepreneurship and prosperity.
In this week’s edition of the FIRE Podcast, we talk with Tabarrok about alternative approaches to intellectual property, problems in higher education, the burden of excessive regulation and the pressures the United States could face if its lawmakers and citizens fail to reform their most sclerotic institutions.
