Chicago Booth Review Podcast

What is within the power of free markets? What can capitalism do for society, what can’t it do, and what should it do? On this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, Booth’s John Paul Rollert explores how many people came to have an unshakeable faith in capitalism’s broad ability to solve nearly any problem, while the experience of others has left them skeptical. In the era after “the end of history,” capitalism’s defenders need to reckon earnestly with a series of questions about what the system may leave unresolved, he says.  

It may be in the nature of taxation that it should suffer a bad public image—but US law, with its convoluted tax code, doesn’t help make it any more palatable. Why is it so complicated, particularly when simplifying it is one of the rare ideas that enjoys bipartisan support? And apart from making it more straightforward, how else might lawmakers improve it? This episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast examines three CBR articles exploring research around taxation from different angles.

Much has been said and written about the wealth concentrated in the highest-earning 1 percent of US households. But wealth and income are also similarly concentrated within that small slice of the US economy, with the 1 percent’s 1 percent—that is, the .01 percent—far outpacing the rest of that elite group in terms of income and wealth share, according to some economists. Who makes up this small fraction of households, how rich are they, and how did they end up with so much wealth? On this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, host Hal Weitzman revisits a CBR feature probing the contours of wealth and income inequality in the US.

Good communication is widely recognized as a cornerstone of high-functioning organizations—and yet, it can be hard to achieve consistently for many businesses and other groups. How and why do we fall short at conveying our messages to others, and what can we do to fix it? On this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, host Hal Weitzman revisits a conversation he had with three behavioral scientists—Booth’s Nicholas Epley and Ayelet Fishbach, and UCLA’s Heather M. Caruso, who was then at Booth—about the roots of and solutions to workplace miscommunication.

What does it mean to sell out? What should we make of the tradeoffs we accept between our personal aspirations and professional successes? At what point do such tradeoffs become ethically problematic? On this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, columnist and Booth adjunct associate professor John Paul Rollert considers what makes someone a sellout—and whether being one really matters.

Are prices in financial markets fair and accurate? Or do they reflect human biases? These questions, and variations on them, represent one of the most divisive topics in finance: just how efficient markets really are. To explore this subject at the highest level, on this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast we revisit a conversation from 2016 with two of Booth’s Nobel laureates in economics: Eugene F. Fama and Richard H. Thaler.

The gender pay gap in the United States—wherein women earn about 82 percent of what men do—has been both well-documented and stubbornly durable. Although there’s no single explanation for the gap, economics research is demonstrating that some of its roots lie well outside the workplace, in family dynamics, choices about educational investment, and similar areas. How is the gender gap defined by these forces? And what can we do to narrow it? On this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, we explore these questions with three articles investigating the economics of gender and professional outcomes.

Climate change appears set to kick off a massive human upheaval as changing sea levels, weather patterns, and other forces alter the places we live. How will policy makers respond to this population movement? Who will be moving, how will they be received in their new homes, and what impact will they have there? For clues, we can look to an earlier period of migration: that of the 1930s Dust Bowl era in the United States. On this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, we turn to the research of Booth’s Richard Hornbeck to understand how Dust Bowl migrants differed from other migrants of the time, and what that could tell us about migration induced by climate change in the 21st century.

The Chicago Booth Review Podcast is the audio companion to CBR’s coverage of the latest academic research in business, policy, and markets. Each week we dig into CBR articles and videos to examine a different topic in depth, from inflation to artificial intelligence. Join host and CBR editor-in-chief Hal Weitzman for groundbreaking research, explained in a clear and straightforward way.