The Pie: An Economics Podcast

At a time when forty percent of American two-year-olds have their own tablet, a new generation of AI toys and chatbots is being marketed as a better alternative to screens. On this episode, Dana Suskind, pediatric cochlear implant surgeon, co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning and Public Health, and author of the new book Human Raised, explains the importance of human interaction for ch...

Voters consistently say they care most about the economy — jobs, wages, inflation, the price of gas. So why are campaigns so often fought over culture? In this episode, Konstantin Sonin, the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and co-director of BFI's Political Economics Initiative, walks host Tess Vigeland through his theory of "m...

When a child brings home good grades but low standardized test scores, which signal should parents pay attention to? In this episode, Ariel Kalil of the UChicago Harris School of Public Policy discusses new research showing that parents lean heavily on grades, and high grades often crowd out the extra help low test scores would otherwise prompt. With pandemic learning losses disguised by inflated...

When immigrant workers come to a country on a visa tied to a single employer, what is it worth to be free to switch jobs? In this episode, Chicago Booth economist Matt Notowidigdo discusses new research using Canadian administrative data to track temporary foreign workers when they gain permanent residency. Job-switching rates jump 21.7 percentage points and earnings rise 5.7 percent within three...

Have you taken a Lyft, shopped at Walmart, or used Facebook in the last decade? If so, you've likely been a participant in one of John List's experiments. In this episode of The Pie, List, Professor of Economics and Director of the Becker Friedman Institute, returns to discuss his new 900-page textbook, Experimental Economics: Theory in Practice — the field guide he wishes he'd had as he pioneered...

Earlier this year, former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that political pressure on the Federal Reserve could turn the U.S. into "a banana republic." And yet long-term interest rates, inflation expectations, and the dollar have shown a remarkably muted reaction to President Trump's public pressure on Chair Jerome Powell. Why? In this episode of The Pie, Randall Kroszner, Norman R. Bobins P...

In this Extra Slice of The Pie, guest host Ben Krause sits down with Raghuram Rajan, Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, for a wide-ranging conversation on everything from what 25,000 CEO letters reveal about corporate America's shift from maximizing shareholder value to prioritizing customers and employees, to why communities matter as much as marke...

When public school districts offer options like magnet schools and dual-language programs, families who are richer, whiter, and higher-achieving are more likely to opt in. Meanwhile, students who would benefit most are least likely to apply. In this episode, Chicago Booth economist Chris Campos explains why the participation architecture of school choice matters as much as the quality of the schoo...

On February 28, the US and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran. Four weeks later, the conflict shows no signs of ending. Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz, taking roughly 10% of global oil supply off the market. Energy prices have spiked to levels not seen since the 1970s, and Iran continues to strike US allies using drones, cyber attacks, and other tactics. In this panel recorded at the H...

People in the Netherlands average nearly 11 years of schooling, compared to about 2.5 for those in the Central African Republic. Why don't these gaps close? In this episode, Esteban Rossi-Hansberg of the University of Chicago explains recent research that divides the entire globe into more than 16,000 grid cells to study the costs of acquiring human capital, and how these valuable skills drive eco...

If you have money in an index fund, you are benefiting from Eugene Fama's work. In this Extra Slice of The Pie, the Nobel laureate and "father of modern finance" reflects on a career that reshaped how trillions of dollars are invested, including his development of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which provides the theoretical foundation for passive investing.

Two hundred fifty years after The Wealth of Nations, capitalism looks nothing like Adam Smith imagined (and nothing like Karl Marx predicted, either). Smith envisioned small, decentralized producers, while Marx foresaw concentration dominated by the rich. In this lecture, Yueran Ma of Chicago Booth draws on centuries of global data to show how production concentrated while ownership diffused, and...

The common perception of Chinese governance is a strong, centralized state. For decades, however, the vast majority of the country's policies  originated with local governments, as officials experimented, competed, and copied each other's successes. In this episode, Shaoda Wang of Harris Public Policy describes his research analyzing 3.7 million government documents to trace the origin and diffusi...

Who bore the cost of 2025's sweeping tariffs? UChicago economist Brent Neiman returns to The Pie to discuss his new research with co-author Gita Gopinath examining the effects of last year's tariffs. Neiman reveals a gap between statutory rates and what was actually collected, explains why US importers absorbed the vast majority of costs, and discusses China's dramatic collapse as a US trading par...

Days after the Trump administration's surprise military operation captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, a panel of UChicago scholars gathered to make sense of what it means for Venezuela, the United States, and the region. Professor Christopher Blattman, Deputy Dean Ryan Kellogg, and Associate Professor Paul Poast join moderator Rebecca Wolfe to discuss Venezuela's decline from one of the hem...

Financial crises are "everywhere and always" a problem of short-term debt. In this Extra Slice of The Pie, Nobel laureate Douglas Diamond explains his groundbreaking research on why banks exist in the first place, and why they're vulnerable to runs. Diamond discusses his role advising policymakers during the 2008 crisis, reflects on predicting the savings and loan disaster as a graduate student in...

Standard measures of intergenerational mobility treat parental income as a single average across childhood. In this episode, Steven Durlauf, Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy and Director of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, describes how parental income during the tween and adolescent years (ages 12-18) is far more...

As we close out 2025, host Tess Vigeland highlights research from UChicago scholars. Hyuk Su Kwon, Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, explains the design of electric vehicle subsidies. Eduardo Montero, Assistant Professor at Harris, reveals how Seventh Day Adventist churches adapt when members face costly trade-offs between faith and farming. Virginia Minni, Assistant Profe...

In this wide-ranging conversation, Nobel Prize–winning economist Roger Myerson reflects on a career studying how rules shape human behavior, from optimal auction design to Ukraine's decentralization reforms. Myerson explains the foundations of mechanism design and incentive constraints, tracing economics back to Xenophon and arguing that local democracy is what holds democracies together.

Large gaps in language skills between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds emerge early and persist throughout schooling. In this episode, Ariel Kalil, Professor of Public Policy at UChicago's Harris School, discusses her research on "Chat2Learn," a technology intervention that sends open-ended conversation prompts to parents' phones. The low-cost behavioral nudge increases vocabulary...

What's the greatest driver of economic growth? Love. In this episode, UChicago economist Pablo Peña presents his new book Human Capital for Humans, inspired by Nobel laureate Gary Becker's legendary doctoral course. In conversation with host Tess Vigeland, he discusses how simple economic principles illuminate life's biggest matters, from parenting and marriage to jobs and schooling.

Deirdre McCloskey argues the world's jump from $2 to $50 per day in average income came from a radical 18th-century shift: equality of permission, or letting ordinary people have a go at bettering themselves. She traces how liberating human creativity through what she calls the "bourgeois deal" sparked innovation from Holland to Scotland to America, while state control stifled it elsewhere. McClos...

According to the TIAA Institute, American adults correctly answered just 49% of basic financial questions in 2024, suggesting a fundamental gap in economic literacy. In this episode Robert Shimer, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, and John List, Professor of Economics and Director of the Becker Friedman Institute, discuss Economics for Everyone, a groundbreaking program that tea...

A warmer world is here. Now what? Listen to Shocked, from the University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, and hear journalist Amy Harder and economist Michael Greenstone share new ways of thinking about climate change and cutting-edge solutions: https://lnk.to/shockedpodcastFD!thepie

The secret to winning in a rigged economy isn't changing the rules, argues Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather, but mastering the game. In this episode, Fairweather, the first Black woman to earn a PhD from UChicago's Economics Department, reveals economic "cheat codes" for navigating the modern workplace, from decoding performance reviews to discovering your true market value.