The Pie: An Economics Podcast

Hosted by Becker Friedman Institute at UChicago

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Episodes

128

Latest episode

Jun 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

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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60 recent

June 9, 202647 min

How Should Parents Respond When Grades are Good, But Test Scores are Bad?

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 grades, Kalil discusses how this dynamic may mean that struggling kids aren't getting the support they need.

May 26, 202625 min

Tied to the Job: The Gains from Permanent Residency

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 years, driven largely by workers sorting into higher-paying firms across industries.

May 5, 202658 min

Life as a Lab: John List on the Art and Ethics of Field Experiments

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 the use of real-world experiments to figure out what moves human behavior across policy and business. From a Wisconsin baseball-card table in 1985 to the White House, Lyft, and Walmart, List shares the lessons, mistakes, and ethical questions that have shaped three decades of discovery.

April 28, 20261 hr 17 min

Wealth of Institutions: Randall Kroszner on Why Markets Stayed Calm While the Fed Came Under Fire

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 Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth and a former Federal Reserve Governor during the 2008 financial crisis, argues that markets are staying calm because they trust the institutional guardrails around the Fed, which include the courts, the Senate, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Recorded live at UChicago as part of BFI's Wealth 250 campaign marking the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Kroszner walks through the market data and draws on his time inside the Fed during the global financial crisis to explain the difference between independence and accountability.

April 21, 202658 min

A Conversation with Raghuram Rajan: Corporate Governance, Community, and Political Economy

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 markets and the state, the political equilibrium that determines whether societies thrive or collapse, how inequality drove the 2008 financial crisis, and why AI could create catastrophic outcomes without better support for workers. Rajan reflects on his path from observing development gaps as a child to prescient warnings about financial crises, explains why modern firms are fundamentally about managing power struggles between stakeholders, and makes the case for "inclusive localism," or, empowering communities while keeping borders open to competition.

April 14, 202624 min

The Uneven Promise of School Choice: Who Applies vs. Who Benefits

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 schools themselves, and why information campaigns alone aren't enough to close the gap.

March 31, 202643 min

The War in Iran: Oil, Cyber Warfare, and Alliances

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 Harris School of Public Policy, three University of Chicago experts, Ryan Kellogg on energy markets, Paul Poast on military alliances, and Jake Braun on cyber policy, discuss why the US struck now, why European allies have been reluctant to join, and why there's no clear exit from the conflict. For more on the event: https://harris.uchicago.edu/news-events/news/operation-epic-fury-and-problem-undefined-war

March 17, 202649 min

The Geography of Human Capital: Why Rich Regions Stay Rich

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 economic development.

March 12, 202648 min

Eugene Fama on 60 Years of Finance Research, Index Funds, and Market Efficiency

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.

March 3, 202647 min

The Transformation of Capitalism: 250 Years After Adam Smith

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 giants at the top keep getting toppled.