The Pie: An Economics Podcast

John List, University of Chicago economist and pioneer of large-scale real-world experiments. He tells how hands-on markets shaped his approach. Topics include what natural field experiments are, ethical tradeoffs and informed consent, scalable policy tests like Lyft and Walmart studies, common experimental mistakes, replication and power, and practical tips to make your life a lab.

Randall Kroszner, Norman R. Bobins Professor at Chicago Booth and former Federal Reserve Governor, explains why markets stayed calm amid political pressure on the Fed. He highlights institutional guardrails, market data on yields and inflation expectations, and how courts, the Senate, and key advisors help sustain credibility. The discussion touches on credibility versus formal independence and global monetary dynamics.

Raghuram Rajan, celebrated economist and former RBI governor, reflects on how communities shape economic life and why political incentives drive cronyism and crises. He discusses AI risks and job disruption, the rise of stakeholder-focused corporate rhetoric, the role of housing and inequality in financial instability, and his idea of inclusive localism balancing local empowerment with open competition.

Chris Campos, Assistant Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth who studies school choice and student outcomes. He discusses how opt-in designs favor richer, whiter, higher-achieving families. He outlines nationwide patterns, explains inverse sorting where those who’d benefit most are least likely to apply, and evaluates modest effects of information tweaks versus structural participation changes.

Jake Braun, cybersecurity expert who led White House cyber roles, Paul Poast, political scientist focused on warfare and alliances, and Ryan Kellogg, energy economist on oil markets, discuss Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, soaring oil supply shocks, cyber and AI-enabled attacks, coalition reluctance among European and Gulf powers, and shifting strategic goals and great-power dynamics.

Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, a University of Chicago economist who studies spatial economics and trade, explains why schooling and skills cluster geographically. He describes a 16,000-cell model mapping population, education costs, and trade. Topics include how local universities and agglomeration shape innovation, why lowering schooling costs can have surprising tradeoffs, and using satellite data to map economic activity.

Eugene Fama, Nobel laureate and founder of modern finance, reflects on a career that shaped passive investing. He discusses the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the Fama–French factor model, CRSP data’s role in research, the rise of index funds, questions about bubbles like Bitcoin and AI, and how academic work translated into industry products.

Yueran Ma, Carhartt Family Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth and co-director of the Fama-Miller Center, explores 250 years of capitalism’s shift. She traces rising firm-scale and production concentration, contrasts concentrated production with dispersed ownership, highlights churn among giants, and considers how technology, markets, and policy shape a hybrid system between Smith and Marx.

Shaoda Wang, an assistant professor at University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy who studies Chinese policymaking with large-scale text data. He discusses how local governments once drove most policy innovation, the 2013 shift toward top-down control, how that changed local behavior from experimenting to copying, and the trade-offs between centralization and local fit.

Brent Neiman, a University of Chicago economist and former Treasury official, discusses his research on the 2025 tariffs. He explains why realized tariffs were much lower than announced. He shows that U.S. importers shouldered most costs. He highlights China’s sharp drop as a U.S. supplier and explores potential retaliation and lasting diplomatic fallout.