Scaling Theory

About Scaling Theory

Scaling Theory is a podcast dedicated to the power laws behind the growth of companies, technologies, legal and living systems. The host, Dr. Thibault Schrepel, has a PhD in antitrust law and looks at the regulation of digital ecosystems through the lens of complexity theory. The podcast is hosted by the Network Law Review. It features scholarly discussions with select guests and deep dives into the academic literature.

Publisher

Thibault Schrepel

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

16 Mar 2024

Latest episode

28 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

34 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   28 Sept 2026

   Xavier Gabaix on The Shape of Big Things

   Cities, firms, market crashes and CEO pay all follow the same statistical shape. Xavier Gabaix has spent his career working out why. He is the Pershing Square Professor of Economics and Finance at Harvard, a mathematician by training from the École Normale Supérieure, and a winner of the Fischer Black Prize. We talk about what that shared shape means for anyone who treats big companies as a problem to be corrected. We get into how a few very large firms can move a whole national economy, and why the standard objection, that individual shocks cancel out, fails. We finish on the cost of thinking, which he has measured, and what becomes of that cost once the thinking can be handed to a machine. ** Mentioned in this episode Xavier Gabaix, “Zipf’s Law for Cities: An Explanation” (QJE, 1999): https://doi.org/10.1162/003355399556133 (https://doi.org/10.1162/003355399556133) Xavier Gabaix, “Power Laws in Economics and Finance” (Annual Review of Economics, 2009): https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.economics.050708.142940 (https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.economics.050708.142940) Xavier Gabaix, “Power Laws in Economics: An Introduction” (JEP, 2016): https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.30.1.185 (https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.30.1.185) Xavier Gabaix and Augustin Landier, “Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much?” (QJE, 2008): https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2008.123.1.49 (https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2008.123.1.49) Xavier Gabaix, “The Granular Origins of Aggregate Fluctuations” (Econometrica, 2011): https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA8769 (https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA8769) Xavier Gabaix and Ralph Koijen, “Granular Instrumental Variables” (JPE, 2024): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/728743 (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/728743) Xavier Gabaix and Thomas Graeber, “The Complexity of Economic Decisions” (NBER, 2024): https://www.nber.org/papers/w33109 (https://www.nber.org/papers/w33109) Xavier Gabaix, “A Theory of Complexity Aversion” (working paper, 2025): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5185671 (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5185671) Xavier Gabaix’s publications: https://xgabaix.scholars.harvard.edu/publications (https://xgabaix.scholars.harvard.edu/publications) Scaling Theory is a podcast by Thibault Schrepel on the laws that govern how things grow, from companies and cities to AI and law. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7o5GqRfTOzyCRABkvs6RpM (https://open.spotify.com/show/7o5GqRfTOzyCRABkvs6RpM) Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-theory/id1736309658 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-theory/id1736309658)

2. 

   31 Aug 2026

   John H. Cochrane on Empty Skies

   John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He spent thirty years as a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He writes The Grumpy Economist (over 34,000 subscribers). Cochrane is a pilot, and the empty skies are his example of what permission costs when it compounds for fifty years. We cover three things. Why compound growth dwarfs everything else on the policy agenda and still moves almost no voters. What happens to the scaling of an economy when the default answer is that you must ask permission. And what has become of universities and peer review, where Cochrane says nobody reads the papers and the profession rewards where you published rather than whether you convinced anyone. I hope you enjoy the conversation. ** Mentioned in this episode John Cochrane, "Economic Growth" (2016), in John Norton Moore (ed.), The Presidential Debates, Carolina Academic Press, pp. 65-90. A shorter version appeared as "The Election's Most Important Issue": https://www.hoover.org/research/elections-most-important-issue (https://www.hoover.org/research/elections-most-important-issue) John Cochrane, "Finance: Function Matters, Not Size," Journal of Economic Perspectives 27(2), 2013: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.2.29 (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.2.29) John Cochrane, "The Rule of Law in the Regulatory State" (2015), prepared for the Hoover Institution Magna Carta conference: https://www.johnhcochrane.com/news-op-eds-all/rule-of-law-regulation (https://www.johnhcochrane.com/news-op-eds-all/rule-of-law-regulation) John Cochrane, "Refine," The Grumpy Economist: https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/refine (https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/refine) John Cochrane, "Writing Tips for PhD Students": https://www.johnhcochrane.com/writing-group (https://www.johnhcochrane.com/writing-group) John Cochrane, "Conti on the Future of Universities," The Grumpy Economist: https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/conti-on-the-future-of-universities (https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/conti-on-the-future-of-universities) Gregory Conti, "The Rise of the Sectarian University," Compact: https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-rise-of-the-sectarian-university/ (https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-rise-of-the-sectarian-university/) The Grumpy Economist, John Cochrane's Substack: https://www.grumpy-economist.com/ (https://www.grumpy-economist.com/) Thibault Schrepel, "The Matthew Effect at Scale: Attention Scarcity and the AI Output Explosion," Network Law Review: https://www.networklawreview.org/matthew-effect/ (https://www.networklawreview.org/matthew-effect/) Robert E. Lucas Jr., "Expectations and the Neutrality of Money," Journal of Economic Theory 4(2), 1972, pp. 103-124.

3. 

   27 Jul 2026

   Peter Howitt on Creative Destruction in the Age of AI

   Peter Howitt won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. The award was for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction. He and Philippe Aghion gave that theory a mathematical form in 1992. Competition and innovation do not move together in a straight line. What decides the direction is where a firm sits relative to the technological frontier. Peter also draws the line between a merger that buys innovation and one that removes it, and he describes the route by which an incumbent turns market power into political power. We then turn to agent-based modeling. He is candid about why a method he still defends took thirty years to find readers. Follow me on X (https://x.com/profschrepel (https://x.com/profschrepel)) and BlueSky (@ProfSchrepel (https://bsky.app/profile/profschrepel.bsky.social)). *** References: "A Model of Growth Through Creative Destruction" (with Aghion), Econometrica 60(2), March 1992, 323–351. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2951599 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2951599). Endogenous Growth Theory (with Aghion), MIT Press, 1998. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262528467/endogenous-growth-theory/ (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262528467/endogenous-growth-theory/) "Competition and Innovation: An Inverted-U Relationship" (with Aghion, Bloom, Blundell, Griffith), Quarterly Journal of Economics 120(2), May 2005, 701–728. https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/120/2/701/1933966 (https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/120/2/701/1933966). "The Effects of Entry on Incumbent Innovation and Productivity" (with Aghion, Blundell, Griffith, Prantl), Review of Economics and Statistics 91(1), February 2009, 20–32. https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article/91/1/20/57753/The-Effects-of-Entry-on-Incumbent-Innovation-and (https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article/91/1/20/57753/The-Effects-of-Entry-on-Incumbent-Innovation-and). "The Emergence of Economic Organization" (with Robert Clower), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 41(1), January 2000, 55–84. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268199000876 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268199000876). "Banks, Market Organization, and Macroeconomic Performance: An Agent-Based Computational Analysis" (with Ashraf and Gershman), JEBO 135, March 2017, 143–180. DOI 10.1016/j.jebo.2016.12.023. "How Inflation Affects Macroeconomic Performance: An Agent-Based Computational Investigation" (with Ashraf and Gershman), Macroeconomic Dynamics 20(2), March 2016, 558–581. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/macroeconomic-dynamics/article/abs/how-inflation-affects-macroeconomic-performance-an-agentbased-computational-investigation/DC3AF3CA750F82FDE20164B36935FA1F (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/macroeconomic-dynamics/article/abs/how-inflation-affects-macroeconomic-performance-an-agentbased-computational-investigation/DC3AF3CA750F82FDE20164B36935FA1F). "Getting at Systemic Risk via an Agent-Based Model of the Housing Market" (with Geanakoplos, Axtell, Farmer and others), American Economic Review 102(3), May 2012, 53–58. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.3.53 (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.102.3.53).

Who has been a guest on Scaling Theory

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Albert-László Barabási
• Scott E Page
• Scott Page
• Cass R Sunstein
• W Brian Arthur

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

9,331

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

6 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

19 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 47 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

37

Social presence

0

YouTube

74

Engagement

71