Chicago Booth Review Podcast

The Marshmallow Test famously gauges children's ability to wait for a bigger reward. A body of research suggests that the happier we are, the more likely we are to be patient. But many of those studies were undertaken in the US and Europe. So how universal is that conclusion? Chicago Booth's Oleg Urminsky, whose research examines the connection between emotions and economic decisions around the world.

Have you ever pushed so hard to make a change in your organization that you ended up damaging your own ability to make that very change? Chicago Booth's Lisa Stefanac tells us how to think about effecting change. How hard should you push, and when can you know if you've gone too far?

Scott Meadow, a professor and private equity expert who advises on entrepreneurial finance and career pathways, shares practical guidance for breaking into PE. He outlines the main career routes, how PE values cash-generating businesses and picks sponsors, and what to look for in firms, portfolio companies, culture, and compensation.

Most of us have been trained to keep our emotions out of the workplace. We think emotions can cloud decision-making, lead to irrational behavior, and make others uncomfortable. But can getting in touch with your emotions actually make you a better leader? Chicago Booth's Chris Collins tells us how treating your emotions as data can help you to manage people and situations better.

Pradeep Chintagunta, Chicago Booth marketing and retail economics researcher, explores who actually sets supermarket prices. He explains geographic price zones and why parents sometimes price uniformly across regions. He discusses delegated local pricing, chain format discrimination, how mergers shape price zones, and why late-added fees like soda taxes persist.

Abigail Sussman, behavioral scientist at Chicago Booth who studies consumer behavior and corporate social responsibility, discusses internal versus external CSR. She compares fixing a company’s own harms to donating externally. Topics include when consumers prefer internal fixes, risks of advertising fixes, trade-offs between blame and benefit, and why sustained efforts build credibility.

Lisa Stefanik, a leadership and organizational behavior expert at Chicago Booth who advises leaders on high-stakes responses. She tells the missing cat story and other real-world examples. Listens on how stress narrows focus, triggers fight/flight/freeze patterns, and cascades through teams. Offers practical ways to notice hijacked reactions, slow down, and de-escalate tense situations.

Oleg Urminsky, behavioral researcher and professor who studies how people search and process information online. He explores the narrow search effect and how queries often confirm prior views. He discusses why chatbots tend to agree, how design choices can broaden results, experiments that reformulate queries, and the tradeoffs between broader information and information quality.

Erika Kirgios, a researcher who studies decision making and 'quantification fixation.' She explains how people overweight numbers in trade-offs. She gives real-world examples from hiring, ratings, and fitness tracking. She describes experiments showing when numeric attributes win and how comparison fluency makes numbers feel easier to use.

Pradeep Chintagunta, a professor concentrating on the intersection of technology and small business, shares fascinating insights from a study in Rwanda. He challenges the notion that tech dumbs us down, detailing how a specific app improved entrepreneurs' numeracy and decision-making. By nudging users to regularly input sales and product data, the app led to measurable cognitive gains and even better cash-flow tracking. Chintagunta explores whether this tech-driven approach could empower small businesses globally.