In this conversation with Mikayla Novak, I discuss entangled political economy, the limits of the market-versus-state framework, and why democratic politics should be studied as part of the same social order as economic life.

Martha Stewart’s story pulls me in because it represents a form of freedom so few women in history ever had: the freedom to build a self-defined life.

My article in the European Economic Review argues that regulation does not only change prices, incentives, or compliance costs. It can also change what innovators are able to try in the first place.

Stuart Kauffman’s idea of the adjacent possible helps explain why innovation is so hard to predict. New things do not merely solve existing problems; they create new possibilities. My regulatory twist is this: regulation can block not only known products, but unknown future recombinations. That is the problem of forgone innovation.