- Economics
- Political Philosophy
- Education
- Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies
- Reforming Education
- Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance
Can a phone be a cow? It could in 1990s Bangladesh. This was the insight of a small number of mobile phone market pioneers who helped catalyze the spread of the greatest technological revolution in human history. Listen as George Mason University economist Philip Auerswald speaks to EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about how the extension of connectivity to traditionally excluded populations led to wide-scale transformations in productivity. They discuss the role of little-known entrepreneurs such as Iqbal Quadir and innovators like Claude Shannon in bringing the mobile phone to the entire world. Other topics include William Nordhaus’s paper on the cost of illumination as a powerful metric of human progress, Schumpeter’s notion of innovation as new combinations, and what Auerswald calls the most important question the field of economics can ask: How much of human progress is inevitable, and how much depends on the determination of remarkable individuals?
Listen to the episode here.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Philip Auerswald is a professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government. His work is about entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation in a global context. He is the author of most recently, A Phone Is a Cow: How Pioneers of the Mobile Revolution Helped Millions Lift Themselves Out of Poverty (2025). He currently serves as the cochair and executive director of the Global Entrepreneurship Research Network, an initiative of the Kauffman Foundation. He is also the cofounder and coeditor of Innovations, a quarterly journal about entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges published by MIT Press. In June 2013, he led the launch of the National Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, an organization dedicated to using the National Mall in Washington, DC., as a platform to celebrate and support entrepreneurship and innovation.
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