After almost a century of post-war prosperity and unrivaled American power, we've entered a new era, growing uncertainty and realignment as many of the world's nations now seek to challenge that dominance. And the race for American dominance in the development of artificial intelligence by just a tiny handful of tech billionaires has seemed to put us all on yet an even more perilous path. If the world is changing at a dizzying pace, the forces driving that change are markedly different than t ...
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Economists are always talking about The Pie – how it grows and shrinks, how it’s sliced, and who gets the biggest shares. Join host Tess Vigeland as she talks with leading economists from the University of Chicago about their cutting-edge research and key events of the day. Hear how the economic pie is at the heart of issues like the aftermath of a global pandemic, jobs, energy policy, and more.
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Pay Isn’t Everything: How Economists Put a Price on Job Perks
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29:55Economists often focus on wages when studying the labor market, but paychecks tell only part of the story. University of Chicago economist Evan Rose and his co-authors surveyed 20,000 Danish workers to put a dollar value on the intangible perks of a job, things like flexible hours, workplace culture, and stress levels. Rose discusses how these “hid…
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Decoding Educational Content: A Computational Comparison Between Public and Religious School Textbooks
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26:31Textbooks don't just teach facts, they shape how children understand the world and their place in it. In this episode, UChicago economist Anjali Adukia discusses her study of textbooks across public schools, religious private schools, and homeschools. Using advanced AI tools to analyze tens of thousands of pages, she uncovers both unexpected simila…
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When Religion Meets the Marketplace: Faith, Farming, and Trade-Offs
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23:22What happens when your religion forbids the production of crops that dominate your local economy? In this episode, UChicago economist Eduardo Montero unpacks new research on the economic costs of religious prohibitions, and how these trade-offs shape church membership, satisfaction, and even sermons.…
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Green Bubble Stigma: Texting, Status, and Market Power
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26:31A text bubble might seem trivial, until it shapes market dynamics, personal identity, and federal lawsuits. In this episode, UChicago economist Leo Bursztyn discusses how Apple’s green bubble design creates a powerful lock-in effect that reinforces Apple’s market dominance.By Becker Friedman Institute at UChicago
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How is AI impacting the economy today? What might this mean for tomorrow? This episode brings you inside a discussion hosted at BFI in April. Moderated by Caroline Grossman, Executive Director of the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation, the conversation features: Anders Humlum, Assistant Professor of Economics, Chicago Booth; Sanjog Misra,…
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Economist Brent Neiman recently returned to UChicago from his position as Deputy Undersecretary for International Finance at The US Treasury, only to find his research being used (and misused) in the Trump administration’s sweeping new tariff policy. In this episode, Neiman walks us through what the original study actually showed, how it got misint…
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Between a Chip and a Hard Place: The Economics of Security and Sovereignty in Taiwan
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28:42What does Taiwan’s precarious position reveal about global power, economic leverage, and the unraveling of diplomatic norms? In this episode, economist Chang-Tai Hsieh returns to unpack Taiwan’s tangled political history, its deep economic entanglement with China, and the global stakes of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). From fear…
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An Extra Slice of the Pie: Choosing with Uncertainty
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48:40How can policymakers make choices when confronted with uncertainty? What happens when the public loses confidence in scientific authority? Are scientists, including economists, overconfident? Nobel Laureate and UChicago economist Lars Hansen, a leading authority on uncertainty in economic decision-making, tackles these and related questions in this…
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Tariffs, Trust, and the Twilight of Norms: U.S.–China Relations in the Trump Era
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27:08What happens when trust in longstanding economic norms starts to break down? In this episode, economist Chang-Tai Hsieh explores the geopolitical and economic consequences of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, particularly its approach to China. From China’s post-COVID recovery stumbles to a global flood of low-cost EVs, Hsieh unpacks the d…
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War Economies: How Ukraine and Russia Are Adapting in Year Three
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24:58More than three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war continues to reshape not only geopolitical alliances but also the economies of both countries. In this episode of The Pie, host Tess Vigeland is joined by Konstantin Sonin, John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Po…
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Crypto’s Fatal Flaw: Trust, Scale, and the Economics of Blockchain
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46:00Crypto’s most groundbreaking innovation, permissionless consensus, may also be its greatest vulnerability. In this episode, Chicago Booth economist Eric Budish breaks down the core mechanics of blockchain trust, the staggering energy costs behind mining, and why these systems are fundamentally exposed to majority attacks. Tune in for a deep dive in…
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Sandy Garossino and Vina Nadjibulla discuss the new world order that is being imposed on the world by the United States. There can be little doubt now that the curtain is falling on the post-World War II American-led rules-based order. The international trade, military and government agreements that have secured an unprecedented era of growth and p…
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Will They or Won't They? A Former Fed Official on This Week’s Interest Rate Decision
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31:26This week, the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee meets to decide whether to adjust interest rates or keep them steady. What should we expect amid today's economic and political uncertainty? On this episode of The Pie, Randy Kroszner, former Federal Reserve Governor and Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics at the Booth School of Business, d…
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Many of us react to the term “performance review” with a shudder. It’s that awkward periodic conversation in which we have to hear feedback, share our assessments of each other, and, occasionally, clash with our colleagues. But do performance reviews have to be like that? We hear from Chicago Booth's Stacey Kole. Does she think that performance rev…
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The Future of U.S. Energy Policy Under Trump
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30:53President Donald Trump has declared a “national energy emergency,” expanding executive powers to shape U.S. energy policy in his second term. What could this mean for the future of American energy? In this episode of The Pie, Ryan Kellogg, the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor and Deputy Dean for Academic Programs at the Harris School of Public P…
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The Economics of Health Insurance: Denials, Pre-Authorizations, and Cost Control
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42:55The debate over health insurance denials intensified last year after the assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. In this episode of The Pie, host Tess Vigeland unpacks the economic forces shaping the US healthcare system with economists from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Josh Gottlieb examines the financial burden of …
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Powering Innovation: How Government Subsidies Accelerate Electric Vehicle Breakthroughs
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26:08The automotive industry is at the forefront of a global shift toward sustainability, with nations setting ambitious electric vehicle (EV) adoption targets. But how do government subsidies and industrial policies shape the pace of EV innovation? Hyuk-soo Kwon, Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, explores the impact of these po…
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Five Years Later: How COVID-19 Reshaped Our Economy and Lives
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30:07It’s been five years since the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world. In this episode of The Pie, Matt Notowidigdo, Professor at the Chicago Booth School of Business, explores the pandemic’s lasting effects on education, work, and daily life. Join us as we dive into the key economic shifts brought on by COVID-19 and discuss how society can better…
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Unlocking Higher Education: Undergraduate Re-Enrollment and Graduate Student Lending
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36:15Why do so many students leave college before completing their degree, and how can we help them return? Lesley Turner, Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, discusses results from a mentoring experiment aimed at boosting undergraduate re-enrollment. Then, she examines the ripple effects of federal policies …
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Americans attend church less often than they claim. Recessions can improve our health. Pesticides pose hidden dangers. And perceptions of monetary policy shape our reality. In this special year-end episode of The Pie, we dive into some of the most compelling insights and conversations from the past 12 months.…
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Balancing Purse and Peace: Tax Collection, Public Goods, and Protests
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37:55Many low-income countries face a dilemma: keep taxes low and remain unable to build state capacity, or raise taxes and risk political unrest. In this episode of The Pie, Ben Krause, Executive Director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, shares insights from an experiment in Haiti demonstrating how the provision of public goods can boost…
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Beyond the Headlines: The India Canada Diplomatic Storm
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39:56On this week’s Mortal Giants Sandy Garossino and Vina Nadjibulla discuss the deteriorating relationship between Canada and India which became pubic after Prime Minister Trudeau in September 2023 accused India of involvement in the killing of a Canadian Sikh leader in B.C. The Indian government called the accusation ‘absurd’. Then both governments e…
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Strange Bedfellows: Russia, North Korea and the War in Ukraine
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24:10On this week’s Mortal Giants Sandy Garossino and Vina Nadjibulla discuss the deteriorating relationship between Canada and India which became pubic after Prime Minister Trudeau in September 2023 accused India of involvement in the killing of a Canadian Sikh leader in B.C. The Indian government called the accusation ‘absurd’. Then both governments e…
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Pricing Pollution: Measuring Carbon Externalities for US Corporations
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23:44A company’s value includes not just the goods and services it provides but also the societal costs it imposes. In this episode of The Pie, Lubos Pastor, Charles P. McQuaid Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, explores how to integrate the costs of corporate greenhouse gas emissions into traditional measures of corporate perf…
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Sandy Garossino and Vina Nadjibulla are having conversations about the fragility of power in the 21st century. And that became even truer after the U.S. election that will return Donald Trump to the presidency in January 2025. Episode six is aptly titled, Trump and the Post-American World. Sandy and Vina talk about which world powers will lose and …
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Deadly Prescriptions: What Happens When Doctors Compete for Patients
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26:15When some US states allowed nurse practitioners to prescribe controlled substances without physician oversight, a serious unintended consequence took hold: Doctors found themselves competing with those nurses for patients. Molly Schnell, BFI Saieh Family Fellow and assistant professor at Northwestern University, along with her colleagues—Janet Curr…
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An Extra Slice of the Pie, with James Robinson: History, Politics, and the Road to an Economics Nobel
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1:34:02James Robinson, a University Professor with appointments in both UChicago’s Harris School of Public Policy as well as the Political Science Department in the Division of Social Sciences, is the university’s latest faculty member to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. On this episode of “An Extra Slice of The Pie,” Robinson joins Ben …
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