Recent Posts

• April 19, 2022Episode, Extra

  Episode 8: Pavel Kireyev

  In this episode, I talk to Pavel Kireyev (INSEAD) about two of his recent papers. In one paper, he studies what drives willingness-to-pay in the CryptoKitties market, and also analyzes how valuing items based on observed prices may be biased. In another paper, he studies how differences in bidding costs between marketplaces can lead to different price outcomes.

• March 18, 2022Episode

  Episode 7: Sam Rosen and Anthony Zhang

  In Episode 7, I talk to Sam Rosen (Temple University) and Anthony Zhang (University of Chicago) about their new paper, in which they document how experienced investors outperform inexperienced ones in the NFT market. 

• November 22, 2021Episode

  Episode 6: Stoyan Sgourev

  In Episode 6, I talk to Stoyan Sgourev (ESSEC) about his recent research. Stoyan argues that musicians, just like many other individuals and organizations, use color as a "positioning device"—to build an identity. He tests his hypothesis by measuring time trends in the colorfulness and contrast of the images on Norwegian black metal bands' album covers. 

• November 2, 2021Episode

  Episode 5: Jozefien Vanherpe

  In Episode 5, I talk to Jozefien Vanherpe (KU Leuven), who just finished writing her PhD on the (un)fairness of contracts in the music streaming industry. We discuss how streaming revenues are split between different parties, the importance of the "30-second rule" and playlists, the low bargaining power of musicians relative to major record labels, and whether the blockchain will transform royalty payments.

• October 21, 2021Episode

  Episode 4: Mitali Banerjee

  I talk to Mitali Banerjee, who is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Business Policy at HEC Paris, about her research on the relation between artistic differentiation and fame. She uses machine learning to measure how different artists are from their peers, and proxies fame through Google Ngram counts. Her findings suggest that the most transformative ideas may not always get the attention they deserve. 

• October 3, 2021Episode

  Episode 3: Joshua Fairfield

  In Episode 3, I talk to Joshua Fairfield, Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University, about digital property and NFTs. We discuss the problems with (the lack of) property rights in the context of virtual worlds, e-books and digital music; how the blockchain can support people's urge to collect; and what are some of the issues with the contracts associated with NFTs.

• September 24, 2021Extra

  Episode 2: Readings and Links

  In the second episode of this podcast, Noah explained how he measures the novelty of pop songs. In 2017, he published a first paper on this topic in the American […]

• September 22, 2021Episode

  Episode 2: Noah Askin

  In this episode, I talk to Noah Askin, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, about creativity in pop music. We discuss how to construct machine-based measures of sonic novelty, whether (teams with) female artists are more creative, and what is the optimal level of novelty for a pop song. 

• September 8, 2021Extra

  Episode 1: Readings

  In Episode 1, Amy talked about her research (with Roman Kräussl) on fractional ownership, which was published in Management Science and can be found here (ungated pre-print here). In 2019, […]

• September 8, 2021Episode

  Episode 1: Amy Whitaker

  In this first episode, I talk to Amy Whitaker, Assistant Professor in Visual Arts Administration at New York University (NYU) about applications of blockchain in the art market. We discuss blockchain-based systems of artwork ownership registration, the idea of artists retaining equity in their own work, and whether the blockchain can itself be considered a work of art.