Interview with Preston McAfee

Interesting throughout. He has served as chief economist at Yahoo and Microsoft. His views on antitrust as it relates to the big tech companies bear special attention as we consider calls by Elizabeth Warren and others to bust up FB, Google, etc. And this...

EF: What was the most surprising part of your transition from being an academic economist to being an economist in a high-tech corporate setting?

McAfee: There's a school of thought that government is inefficient because it can be, while firms, subject to markets, are forced to be efficient. The thing that shocked me the most was how inefficient large firms can be. Sure, there is government waste, but it is commensurate with size and clarity of mission. In one sense, I already knew that large firms could be inefficient — the failure of Kodak and Blockbuster are examples — but it is another thing to live through it.

Hat tip to Tim Taylor.