In an insightful and engaging conversation presented by the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute,...

With the aggregation of more and more data, and with improvements in machine learning methods, firms and policymakers have developed algorithms to help them make decisions. For example, banks and credit card companies use algorithms to make decisions relating to a consumer’s creditworthiness. The idea is not only to make accurate assessments but to also remove any prejudice or other qualitative errors that could occur when people make such high-stakes decisions.

The numbers are staggering. Domestic abuse affects nearly one-third of all women world-wide who are in a relationship, including one-fourth of US women and one-third of English women who suffer physical or sexual abuse at the hands of an intimate partner.

Trade policy has recently been in the news, with the focus on the costs to firms from higher prices due to trade tariffs. However, the focus on the effect of tariffs on prices misses perhaps the most important benefit from international trade: the transmission of ideas.

In the early days of Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen did not need investors’...