Philip Auerswald

Professor at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government, economist, and author whose work focuses on entrepreneurship, technology, innovation, and global development. He is cofounder and coeditor of Innovations and author of books including The Code Economy and A Phone Is a Cow.

Mobile Phones Became Productive Capital for the World’s Poor

Philip Auerswald tells Russ Roberts that the mobile phone’s importance in countries such as Bangladesh was not that it became a cheaper consumer gadget, but that it functioned as productive capital for people excluded from existing infrastructure. Using Iqbal Quadir’s Grameenphone and Strive Masiyiwa’s Econet as central cases, Auerswald argues that progress depends on more than invention: existing technologies have to be recombined with finance, regulation, distribution, and political persistence before they reach most people.

Hoover InstitutionJun 22, 202619 min read