The Pie: An Economics Podcast

Many 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 tax compliance.

A 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 performance.

When 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 Currie of Princeton and Anran Li of Cornell—examine th...

James 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 Krause, BFI Executive Director and new, semi-regul...

Bats are considered a natural pesticide. When they began to die out due to an invasive fungus, farmers turned to chemicals to control pests. The result, as Eyal Frank of the Harris school of Public Policy describes on this episode of The Pie, was skyrocketing infant deaths. Tune in to learn more about the vast ramifications of ecosystem disruptions.

Private equity investors made some $200 billion worth of healthcare acquisitions in 2021, and $1 trillion worth in the 10 years leading up to 2023. In this episode of The Pie, Maggie Shi, professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, discusses how private equity impacts hospitals along multiple dimensions, including patient volumes, revenues, employment, and technology adoption.

When the Soo Line threatened to expand into the Great Northern Railway’s territory in 1905, the two companies entered a fierce competition for marketshare in which the they rapidly constructed nearly 500 miles of rail tracks and over 50 new towns. In this episode of The Pie, Chad Syverson, the George C. Tiao Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the Booth School of Business, explores thi...

The Federal Reserve responded to COVID-era inflation with the fastest increase in the federal funds rate in 40 years. Importantly, the effectiveness of their response depends on how the public perceived it. In this episode of The Pie, Carolin Pflueger, Associate Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, covers her recent talk to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Jackson Hole Economi...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a landmark piece of tax legislation from the first year of the Trump administration, overhauled the tax code for both individuals and businesses. In this episode of The Pie, Eric Zwick, Professor of Economics and Finance at the UChicago's Booth School of Business, discusses how the overhaul affected the economy, including investment, tax revenue, and wages.

The primary contributor to long-run growth is productivity: A country’s ability to raise residents’ standards of living depends on its ability to boost workers’ output. In this episode of The Pie, Ufuk Akcigit, The Arnold C. Harberger Professor in Economics and the College, describes his research on growth through technological progress.

In the wake of numerous high-profile incidents of police use of force, particularly against Black Americans, law enforcement agencies across the United States are confronting issues of officer misconduct. Whether such misconduct is preventable depends in part on whether it is predictable. In this episode of The Pie, Greg Stoddard, Senior Research Director for the Crime Lab and Education Lab, discu...

The United States is in the midst of a student loan crisis, with over 45 million borrowers owing more than $1.6 trillion in federal dollars. On this episode of The Pie, Constantine Yannelis, Associate Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business, argues that federal policy is to blame: Decades of regulation and de-regulation have given way to skyrocketing rates of risky borrowing.

How can we incentivize the private and public sectors to develop and deploy solutions to climate change, while accounting for uncertainties? This episode of The Pie covers a panel discussion among professors David Keith of the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at UChicago and founding faculty director of the university’s Climate Systems Engineering initiative, Franklin Allen of Imperial Colle...

What do location data from roughly 2.1 million cellphones say about religiosity in the United States? In this episode of The Pie, Devin Pope, Professor of Economics and Behavioral Science at the Booth School of Business, paints a new picture of who goes to church, how often, and the other types of activities they do (or don’t) partake in.

India’s government has big goals for economic growth. The former Governor of the country’s Reserve Bank, Raghuram Rajan, argues that India won't be able (and shouldn't try) to follow traditional methods of development. Professor Rajan, now of the the Chicago Booth School of Business, joins The Pie to discuss India’s untraveled path to prosperity.

A year-and-a-half after its launch, half of workers report having used ChatGPT on the job. On this episode of The Pie, Anders Humlum, Assistant Professor at the Chicago Booth School of Business, shares results from a recent, large-scale survey profiling the workers who are leading the generative AI curve.

College graduates earn more than those who didn’t attend college. Does this mean higher education boosts your income? Or, does college simply attract students who would’ve earned more anyway? Jack Mountjoy, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, discusses his research on the returns to higher education.

American cities are overreliant on cars. Policies for reducing this gridlock and pollution range from changing public transit fares or frequencies to introducing new tolls. In this episode of The Pie, Milena Almagro, Assistant Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth, shares her research showing the optimal mix of these policies for cities dealing with transit issues.

A small number of companies are responsible for a substantial amount of the discrimination in today’s labor market. Who are they? In this episode of The Pie, Evan Rose, the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in Economics discusses results from his recent experiment to measure discrimination among the largest employers in the United States.

When the Great Recession hit in 2007, it produced the largest decline in US employment since the Great Depression. It also substantially reduced mortality. In this episode of The Pie, Matt Notowidigdo discusses how economic downturns can lead to valuable health gains that may even offset some of the negative consequences of recessions.

This episode of The Pie features a panel discussion following a talk from Raghuram Rajan, the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, about his book "Monetary Policy and Its Unintended Consequences." The panel included Charles Evans, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and was moderated by Randall Kroszner, the Norman R. Bobins Profe...

Anti-democratic sentiment is on the rise across Latin America. This episode of The Pie explores the evolving political and economic landscape of Latin America, highlighting the region's experimentation with democratization and the growing threats of authoritarianism. Luis Martinez, Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, discusses how economic reforms and pro-market transformati...

Children whose parents have college degrees are often more skilled readers than children whose parents didn't attend college. In this episode of The Pie, Harris Policy Professor Ariel Kalil discusses how certain technologies can help improve literacy skills for disadvantaged children.

Russian-born economist Konstantin Sonin, Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, joins The Pie to provide an update on the economic impacts of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Sonin discusses how the war affects standards of living and output in both countries, and shares his predictions for what the future holds.

Many mines in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo are controlled by armed groups that frequently engage in conflict with nearby civilians. In this episode of The Pie, Hans Christensen, Professor of Accounting at Chicago Booth, and Samuel Chang, PhD student in Accounting, discuss what happens when mines become certified as conflict-free. Hint: It’s not what you might expect.