Sublime

Not long after arriving at George Mason, Cowen read “Sexual Personae”by Camille Paglia, a buccaneering polemic about Western art across millennia. Although he didn’t agree with Paglia’s ideas, he saw this was the kind of book he wanted to write. Within months he was drafting a lively, popular history of markets and high culture. In 2003 he and Taba... See more

Internal prediction market

In 2011 Cowen published a digital pamphlet in which he argued that since the 1973 oil-price shock, America had experienced a hidden crisis of lost growth that would be resolved only by the development of new technology. He called this period the “Great Stagnation”, and he proposed a cultural solution rather than an economic one: raise the social st... See more

In the market of ideas and technology, the top performers are at least 10x more valuable than the average performers—making hiring of utmost importance