Ep. 101: John List on Insights From Uber, Paying Bonuses and Scaling Ideas
- By Bilal Hafeez
- 1 min read
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John is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. His new book is The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale. He has worked with firms such as Lyft, Uber, Citadel and several non-profits. His academic research includes more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and several published books. John was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and a fellow of the Econometric Society in 2015. He is a current editor of the Journal of Political Economy. In this podcast we discuss:
- Why field experiments are important in economics
- Why understanding scaling is important
- What John learned at Uber
- The optimal way to get tips
- What makes a good business idea
- How to avoid false positives and knowing your audience/market
- Whether it is the leader or the team that matters. Chef or the ingredients?
- How to think about spillovers and network effects
- Avoiding the cost trap
- How to incentivize scaling
- Why clawback bonuses work better than year-end bonuses
- Thinking on the margin and quitting early
- How to scale culture
- Books that influenced John: Wealth of Nations (Smith), The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith), Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), Principles of Economics (Marshall), Economics (Samuelson) , Elementary Principles of Economics (Fisher).
You can get John’s new book, The Voltage Effect, here. You can follow John on Twitter here.
You can read the transcript for this podcast here.
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(The commentary contained in the above article does not constitute an offer or a solicitation, or a recommendation to implement or liquidate an investment or to carry out any other transaction. It should not be used as a basis for any investment decision or other decision. Any investment decision should be based on appropriate professional advice specific to your needs.)