What we get for the transporter beam

Ludwig van Beethoven. Earth's bargaining chip? 

Considering that we have been immersing ourselves in Beethoven, I was pretty amused to see this bit (Tyler Cowen is interviewing Paul Krugman for a podcast):

COWEN: Will there ever be interstellar trade in intellectual property? You send your technology to a planet far away. It arrives much later, of course. Or you trade Beethoven to the aliens in return for a transporter beam? Can this work? You’ve written a paper that seems to indicate it can work.

KRUGMAN: I wrote a paper on the theory of interstellar trade when I was an unhappy assistant professor. Are there any happy assistant professors? [laughs] I was just blowing off steam. But it’s an interesting question.

COWEN: It could become your most important paper, right? [laughs]

Source.

The "Conversations with Tyler" podcast is quite good; there's a wide variety of guests. I like Episode 21, the interview with Cowen himself.