Of Significance

Brent, Nathan, and Steve have been hearing about some major mergers in the news and want to understand who lets mergers happen, how they get approved, and the analytic questions that go in to thinking about potentially anti-competitive mergers. So they bring on mergers and acquisitions expert Dr. Craig Malam in this perfect blend of American and Australian thinking.

So you missed the job/didn’t get the promotion/got fired – how should we think about what you lost out on? In this episode, Brent, Nathan, and Steve explore the calculation decisions and assumptions you have to make in order to assess what would have happened to someone if everything was different. They get into the limitations of modeling and the various sources of bad empirical thinking in but-f...

Pull up a chair with Nathan, Steve, and Brent as they talk about the economic theory and reality of the black market for dinner reservations with Dr. Jesse David. How are incentives distorted by restaurant culture and should people have to pay to have a seat at the table?

In the dramatic follow-up to their groundbreaking talk about H-1B visas, Nathan, Brent, and Steve talk about the H-2B visa program (non-agricultural temporary workers) with Elliot Delahaye. Are the analytics off about how the program operates? How can we use data to determine if American workers are harmed or helped? All of these questions (and more!) are answered in this action packed sequel!

Steve, Nathan, and Brent are talking about the fact there are more than two ways you can reject a hypothesis. They have some new ideas for randomized controlled trials that will never happen.

With the March Madness over, Nathan, Steve, and Brent wanted to consider whether the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and player portal transfer changes have made a difference in March Madness. They question whether the Cinderella story is truly ended or if media reporting is calling it midnight early.

Brent, Nathan, and Steve are joined by John Lassetter of Littler Mandelson to discuss recent donning and doffing litigation and other “work off the clock” allegations. How does this relate to remote employees? What is the role of personal devices when keeping track of clocking in and out?

The Oscars have Steve, Brent, and Nathan wondering how much an Oscar award is worth and why studios want to get them in the first place. To help sort through the box office economics, they bring back anti-trust/false advertising expert and filmmaker Sushrut Jain and explore the ways studios actually make money and their underlying incentives.

Nathan, Steve, and Brent are joined by anti-trust and pharmaceutical consulting/testifying expert Dr. Tram Nguyen to help make sense of how complicated the pricing for drugs actually is, why the industry is organized the way it is, and how purchasers go about disputing pricing decisions for brand names versus generics. Do they solve the problems of the healthcare industry? Not even close. Do they...

With the H-1B visa program becoming a discussion in national discourse, Nathan and Brent thought it was worth checking in on their resident H-1B visa expert, Steve, to understand what the program is, what it isn’t, and how to make sense of its effect on the American economy.

California implemented an increase on minimum wages for limited service restaurants with more than 60 locations nationwide and it seems like the effects might not have been as dire as critics predicted. Steve, Nathan, and Brent dig deeper on the policy change and explore how much more there is to the story. 

Nathan, Brent, and Steve take a look at a study done by Trip.com on the effect of allowing worker’s to work remotely versus a mandatory return to office. As always, you’ve got to be careful with how you interpret things, but good data is good data!

As more companies integrate AI models into various business functions, concerns have been raised about the possibility of competitors relying on each others' proprietary data to set unfair prices for consumers. In this episode, Brent, Nathan, and Steve talk to antitrust expert Mike Kheyfets to understand the potential competition issues AI poses and what economics can tell us about algorithmic pri...

It's the holidays, which makes it time for economists to opine about how people should be giving gifts the right way and Nathan, Steve, and Brent question those intuitions. As a bonus gift, they try to breakdown why Christmas seems so come early every year! (You've always got to follow the incentives!)

So you need to remember how regressions work. Don't worry about it because Brent, Nathan, and Steve are here to walk you through the right way to think about regressions and what they are or aren't good for. This is a conceptual look at regression techniques so you don't have to have taken high level mathematics to pick up what they're putting down.

Thanksgiving is here and Steve, Nathan, and Brent celebrate by talking about a major change in NFL rules regarding kickoffs. Do they result in more injuries? Do you get a more active game? The Stat Pack carves into details about the rule and they play a side Thanksgiving food game.

The FTC has put forward a rule banning non-compete agreements and Brent, Nathan, and Steve are here to investigate. Why do people sign non-competes in the first place? Would incomes rise if this restriction weren't on the labor market? How would we know? These are all questions the Stat Pack asks so bask in their task and try to relax!

In their first Halloween holiday episode, Nathan, Steve, and Brent talk about some ghoulishly bad statistics and have a bloody good time doing it! Are vampires real? What's the scariest movies? And what are their favorite Halloween traditions? You'll be terrified. KEYWORDS statistics, vampires, horror movies, Halloween, data analysis, heart rate, spooky season, traditions, methodology, fear

With the excitement of the presidential election comes a wave of data and hidden assumptions that Brent, Nathan, and Steve are ready to call out. In the groundbreaking follow-up to their Ample Ramble on Sampling that dig into a major problem with sampling: non-response bias. We look forward to your response! KEYWORDS sampling, surveys, non-response bias, political polls, job surveys, data accura...

It's one of the most fundamental characteristics of statistics and Steve, Nathan, and Brent work through it with a hint of grace, a touch of dignity, and bit of fun: it's sampling! If you listen to a minute of this episode will that have been as representative of a sample as you need? Probably best to just listen to the whole thing then. Keywords sampling, representative sample, consulting, testif...

Are the kids alright? Are they working hard enough? Steve, Nathan, and Brent break down the drama around summer employment among the youths and talk about some of the summer jobs they used to have. They try to include some references for the Gen Z listeners (emphasis on "try").

Summary In a podcast first, Nathan, Steve, and Brent interview false advertising expert, Sush Jain, about how a false advertising claim works, how damages are potentially assessed, and why the market for goods can be so confusing. No doubting it here: this episode is pure podcast gold.   Keywords false advertising, class actions, consumer claims, truth and falsehood, advertising claims, economic e...

Summary Brent, Steve, and Nathan take a look at the age old adage "Correlation does not imply causation" and how people seem to still miss how to think about what factors are related. They become real control freaks when it comes to what goes into their tests. Keywords correlation, causation, sugar intake, activity levels, randomized controlled trials, observational data, confounding fac...

Brent and Nathan plumb the depths of Steve’s mind to get to the bottom of the question on everybody’s mind: is there anything that Steve Bronars doesn’t know about the unemployment rate? Listen to find out! Spoiler: the answer is “probably”.

Nathan, Brent, and Steve finally take on academic elites and their out of control theories about human capital, how it's measured, and whether it's important. Just kidding, this is a classic, balanced episode about human capital in theory and practice that's completely hinged. This episode doesn't just have economics though: it's also got science and art (kind of)!