Chicago Booth Review Podcast

Most workers in the US say they are feeling angry, anxious, and disengaged from their jobs. Why is that, and what can be done? In this episode, we hear from one of the world’s leading researchers on motivation, Chicago Booth’s Ayelet Fishbach, who calls this “a crisis of motivation” whose roots lie in how we work, and how we think about work. The motivation crisis has consequences for both employees and employers. So how can we get ourselves and our teams excited about work again?

Debates on charity focus on financial aid versus self-sufficiency. Cotton Mather's unorthodox views and Franklin/Carnegie's strategic philanthropy are discussed. Carnegie emphasizes narrowing wealth disparity through philanthropy and educational endowments.

Would you speak up at work if one colleague said something that unintentionally discriminated against another? And if you did, what would you actually say, and when and how would you say it? In this episode, we continue our Business Practice miniseries, where we ask people to script what they would say in a challenging workplace scenario. Chicago Booth behavioral science professor George Wu analyzes the results.

The movie “Gone with the Wind” depicts a genteel, harmonious world torn apart as the old way of life comes to an end. Behind that gentility was the inhumanity of slavery, whose end transformed the economy of the American South. Morally, that was a good thing, but, contrary to the depiction in the movie, was it also positive for the economy? In this episode, we talk to Chicago Booth’s Rick Hornbeck, whose research with Trevon Logan, a professor of economics at The Ohio State University, suggests that emancipation created huge economic value, a boost to the US economy that was even bigger than the introduction of the railroad.

Experts discuss the Fed's dilemma in managing inflation amid a robust labor market, exploring potential rate changes. The episode delves into bank oversight, regulatory challenges, and political pressures on economic policy. It also examines global economic trends, geopolitical risks, and strategies for navigating the job market and building fulfilling careers.

We are used to paying different prices for airline tickets, Uber rides, and hotel rooms, but can you imagine a time when all sorts of retailers use data to tailor their marketing and pricing for each individual customer? Does fairness require prices to be equal for everyone, or do certain groups and individuals deserve discounts? In this episode, Chicago Booth’s Jean-Pierre Dubé and EngineBI’s Jon Morris discuss the ethics and practicalities of personalizing pricing.

Greg Bunch from Chicago Booth explores how AI can revolutionize strategic decision-making in business. He discusses leveraging GPT chatbots for idea analysis, decision-making, and execution assistance. The podcast also delves into entrepreneurship, coding languages for web development, and steps to understand AI's financial benefits.

How would you tell one of your direct reports that their work isn’t good enough? Especially if that person seems blissfully unaware that they are underperforming? In this episode of the Chicago Booth Review podcast, we’re launching a new podcast miniseries, the audio version of our popular Business Practice column, where we asked people to script what they would say in a challenging workplace scenario, and Chicago Booth behavioral science professor George Wu analyzes the responses.

Many of us have seen bullying behavior at work. And though we might not like to admit it, many of us have failed to do anything about it. That can reflect the difficult trade-offs that come with calling out bullying: subjecting ourselves and others to scrutiny, completely changing the dynamic between colleagues, and potentially damaging your own career. In this episode, Chicago Booth’s John Paul Rollert reflects on “the precarious relationship between ethics and expediency” when it comes to blowing the whistle on workplace bullying.

The podcast explores the limitations of evidence-based policy, the relationship between economists and policymakers, challenges in interpreting laboratory experiments, communicating confidence in economic findings, pricing carbon, and the potential of machine learning in economic analysis.