Policy Punchline

"Jim Simons is the greatest money maker in modern financial history." Since 1988, Renaissance Technologies' flagship Medallion hedge fund founded by Simons has generated average annual returns of 66 percent, racking up trading profits of more than $100 billion. No one in the investment world comes close. Warren Buf­fett, George Soros, Peter Lynch, Steve Cohen, and Ray Dalio all fall short of Simon...

Keith E. Whittington is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He is the author of several important books on constitutional theory, including "Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency, the Supreme Court," and "Constitutional Leadership in U.S. History." He has published widely on American constitutional theory and development, federalism, jud...

Alp Basaran is a Congressional candidate for the NJ-09 district. If elected, he would be the 5th Muslim American, 3rd formerly undocumented, and 1st Turkish American Congressman in U.S. history. In this episodes, Alp discusses his values and main policy proposals – universal healthcare, free education, immigration amnesty, and fair economy for all. Why does he believe that those would be the most...

Arthur Caplan is founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine. He is a pioneer in designing public health policies, from founding the National Marrow Donor Program to creating the U.S. system of organ donation and distribution. Dr. Caplan has been busily advising public health officials on the Covid-19 crisis and educating the public through media outlets like the Time...

Facebook invested $5.7 billion for a 10% stake in Indian telecom operator Jio Platforms Ltd, the biggest telecom operator in the country with more than 370 million subscribers. The deal not only made Facebook the largest minority shareholder in the Indian telecom network, but also brought India’s emerging tech scene back into the global spotlight. In this episode, WSJ Asia tech reporter Newley Pur...

"What are the economic consequences of an influenza pandemic? And given the pandemic, what are the economic costs and benefits of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI)?" In a recently published economics paper, Prof. Emil Verner and his co-authors find that cities that intervened earlier and more aggressively in the 1918 Spanish Flu did not perform worse and, if anything, grew faster after the pa...

Melissa Reynolds is Perkins-Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Princeton University. A historian and humanist, Dr. Reynolds recently published an op-ed in Washington Post comparing the coronavirus epidemic to “the sweat” outbreaks in 15th century Europe. She suggests that, despite the obvious advances in modern medicine since the 15th century, there are similarities between th...

Another wave of reflections for capitalism is now kindled by the Covid-19 crisis. Will the fiscal stimulus uplift the average Americans or end up exacerbating inequality? How is the crisis revealing fundamental fractures of the American and Western societies? The world as we have known it for the past decades has come to a stop, and the global socio-economic system might finally be shaken up as bu...

Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Considered by many as “world’s most influential living philosopher,” Prof. Singer works mostly in practical ethics and is known for his controversial critique of the sanctity of life ethics. In this interview, Prof. Singer discusses how one may reason through triage decisions when it's no longer hypothetical to decid...

Markus Brunnermeier is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Economics and Director of the Bendheim Center for Finance at Princeton University. In this episode, Prof. Brunnermeier explains the nature of the covid-19 economic shock, why it poses a threat to financial stability, the $2tr stimulus package and why the current solutions for funding small & medium-sized businesses are still insufficient,...

Dan Michelson is the CEO of Strata Decision Technology, an analytics and financial planning platform that helps over 1,000 leading healthcare organizations and system in the U.S. to figure out and lower their true costs. In this episode, Dan explains why health systems don't understand the true costs of their treatments and operations, the key interests and incentives for doctors and patients to d...

Nancy Lin is a former senior advisor at Exxon Mobil and has career experiences across the oil and gas value chains, including supply chain logistics, crude oil trading, strategic technology and business alignment studies, long-term market outlook development, and environmental health and safety legislative affairs. In this interview, Nancy discusses the evolution of cleaner energy sources in the U...

Austan Goolsbee is former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Obama and led the Economic Recovery Advisory Board after the 2008 financial crisis. In this interview, he talks about how he first got involved advising Obama’s Senate campaign in 2004 as a fellow UChicago professor, the critical decision-making moments to save the economy from recession, his reasons of endorsing...

Professor Jessica Metcalf of Princeton explains how to best understand the novel Coronavirus and emerging diseases in general, why it might take a long while to find and produce a vaccine, why the WHO would declare a State of Emergency around the Coronavirus, how researchers can measure its severity and spread, and what properties of COVID-19 compel her to think it might go global. Jessica Metcalf...

Princeton Investment Company (PRINCO) CIO Andy Golden walks us through Princeton’s investment theses and manager selection processes, speaks to the importance of value add in partnerships, responds to divestment concerns, and addresses upcoming challenges in the finance and private equity industry. One of the most successful investors and endowment directors today, Andy manages Princeton's $26 bil...

Joyce Chang is Chair of Global Research for J.P. Morgan, whose research capacities expand across equities, currency and commodities, fixed income, emerging markets, derivatives and structured finance. Ms. Chang’s team has been named the top global research firm for 2017 and 2018 by Institutional Investor. In this episode, Ms. Chang tells us how the utilization of alternative data has revolutionize...

“Most sports and entertainment companies are satisfied by taking a more traditional focus on game attendance, meaning ticket purchases and merchandise purchases as a measure of fan engagement, and they stop there,” said Iwao Fusillo, SVP of Data Data Analytics and Insights at the National Football League. Since his arrival, however, Mr. Fusillo has spearheaded the NFL’s “data revolution” – from br...

Andrew Winston is a prolific writer, consultant, and globally recognized expert on how companies can navigate and profit from climate change while transforming their businesses to be more environmentally friendly. Andrew's first book, "Green to Gold," was the top-selling green business title of the last decade. His latest book, "The Big Pivot," provides a practical roadmap to help leaders build re...

An American singer-songwriter, Mr. Pete Muller forged a rather unconventional path. He founded and now runs PDT Partners, one of the most successful quant investment firms in our world today. But he is also a famous musician, having just recently released his 4th studio album, "Dissolve," and is touring all around the world. In this interview, Mr. Muller talks about his educational and music journ...

It seems that American politics has reached a new level of tension. The Democratic and Republican parties have become more polarized over years, and Congress is currently mired in an eye-opening impeachment inquiry, which could alter the course of American history. But has Congressional partisanship actually gotten significantly worse than before? Are there in fact fewer bipartisan legislations ge...

Are you constantly getting inundated by notifications from your phone? Do you fondly remember the good-old-days when cellphones were just a tool and not an extension of our personalities? How can we make sure that phones and tech products do not induce anxiety in our lives but can actually improve our living quality? ... In this episode, we talk to Kaiwei Tang, Founder of Light Phone, a product th...

Shaun Stewart is currently the CEO of New Lab, a frontier tech incubator located in Brooklyn supporting over 150 startups and 600 entrepreneurs who work on innovations ranging from quantum computing to hydroponic gardening, from autonomous driving to AI in medicine… In this episode, Shaun discusses the process of incubating frontier tech innovations and supporting entrepreneurs through business de...

Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist specializing in writing about China’s long-term social issues, such as the country’s search for faith and values, as well as its political and religious challenges. In this episode, Mr. Johnson explains the complexity of Chinese religion and how it is often misunderstood by Westerners, the nuanced relationship between religion and the Chinese gove...

Blair Effron is one of the most successful American financiers today, having co-founded elite boutique investment bank Centerview Partners and prominently involved in Democratic politics. In this episode, Mr. Effron tells us about his journey as an investment banker, the importance and intellectual excitement of advising companies through their lifecycles, his take on the socio-political gridlock...

In this interview, Prof. Tim Besley of LSE highlights issues in development economics and introduces a series of new concepts such as "fragile states" and "the Curse of Denmark" that provide much needed nuances in discussions about development. As an introduction to this interview, we want to highlight one important point from Prof. Besley’s talk on state fragility in Princeton. He noted how the U...