Season 8 - Episode 1 - Herbert Simon

About this episode

<p>One of the fundamental principles of orthodox economics the idea that all economic agents &quot;maximise&quot; - consumers aim to maximise utility (econ speak for happiness) and producers profit. Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert Simon challenged this assumption and in doing so coined a new verb, ‘to satisfice’ to show how consumers and producers in the ‘real world’ behave somewhat differently. This is the first episode of Season 8 of our award winning podcast, with the theme of the season being &quot;the economists&#39; economist&#39;. In this episode, your friendly neighbourhood economists, Pete and Gav, enter the world of Ha-Joon Chang’s favourite economist - Herbert Simon. In the course of our journey of discovery we will meet a robot named after Herb, suggest the perfect past-time for long train journeys and discover Simon&#39;s surprising and unusual sartorial choices. As always there is a challenging quiz and lashings of bonhomie. Technical support comes from our muse Nic.</p> <p>PS You may hear background vocals from baby Henry during the course of the episode and we would correct the following errata which occurred during the course of enthusiastic discussions:</p> <p>Tom Swift was a character from American teen sci-fi books</p> <p>Mr Miyagi of Karate Kid fame was, in fact, Japanese </p>