All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions

When COVID-19 shut down the world economy in 2020 many wondered where it had begun and why the pandemic had even started in the first place. In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen discuss with Matt Ridley (biologist and author of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19) about the possible origins of the coronavirus pandemic, and the reasons that the thinking on what the origin is has changed over time.Submit your questions to the show here: https://bit.ly/AllElseEqualFind All Else Equal on the web: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/all-else-equal-making-better-decisionsAll Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Financial bubbles are episodes where the value of something (like stocks, tulips or cryptocurrency) shoots up very rapidly, but then peaks and comes crashing down. The problem has never been seeing them in hindsight, but rather identifying one while in the middle of it. In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen discuss with Will Goetzmann (Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies at the Yale School of Management how to identify bubbles and which key historical bubbles have shaped our thinking about them.Submit your questions to the show here: https://bit.ly/AllElseEqualFind All Else Equal on the web: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/all-else-equal-making-better-decisionsAll Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It takes a long time to build up credibility, but you can lose it in an instant. What would it take to justify lying to the public for their own good, and are the benefits worth the costs? In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen discuss the costs and benefits of the government lying to its own citizens.They then discuss the topic with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (Professor of Medicine at Stanford University's Medical School, PhD in Economics, fellow of the Hoover Institution, and associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research) in the context of his prescient research during the COVID pandemic.Submit your questions to the show here: https://bit.ly/AllElseEqualFind All Else Equal on the web: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/all-else-equal-making-better-decisionsAll Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The FDIC and Federal Reserve have recently intervened to stop another banking crisis. In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen dig in to see what failed. What causes bank runs? Are the government subsidies of banks worth it? Is a bank the right way to finance risky investments or are they historical artifacts. Their guest Amit Seru, The Steven and Roberta Denning Professor of Finance and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Stanford Graduate School of Business, explains what went wrong with the banks in Silicon Valley, and why regulators seemed to have missed the boat.Submit your questions to the show here: https://bit.ly/AllElseEqualFind All Else Equal on the web: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/all-else-equal-making-better-decisionsAll Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.Show Links:Papers on Bank FragilitySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Florian Zettelmeyer, expert in marketing measurement and advertising impact, discusses the challenges of measuring advertising effectiveness and how advancements in technology have improved tracking. The podcast explores successful cases of connecting online ads to offline sales in the auto industry and highlights the impact of seeing ads from both manufacturers and retailers. It also emphasizes the importance of experiments and optimization tools in measuring marketing effectiveness.

It can be tempting to think one thing causes another because they happen in succession, but there’s a lot to unwrap in the idea of causality. In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen explain the difference between correlation and causality, and examine cases where it is tempting to assume one thing caused another, but the reality is quite different or even the opposite. They then discuss with Guido Imbens (Nobel Prize Winner and a chaired professor in Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business) the revolution in empirical work in economics that he helped start. Submit your questions to the show here: https://bit.ly/AllElseEqualFind All Else Equal on the web: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/all-else-equal-making-better-decisionsAll Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Risk is an inherent part of all business decisions and understanding ways this risk can be reduced is essential to succeeding in today’s business environment. In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen explain how to assess risk and discuss smart ways of diversifying it away. But sometimes diversification comes at a cost to productivity and the hosts present this as the fundamental tradeoff of corporate finance.Submit your questions to the show here: https://bit.ly/AllElseEqualFind All Else Equal on the web: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/all-else-equal-making-better-decisionsAll Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Cryptocurrency is increasing in popularity but still confusing to many consumers and finance professionals alike. On this episode of All Else Equal, finance professors Jules van Binsbergen and Jonathan Berk admit they don’t understand why some central banks are introducing digital currencies and why there would be need in our economic system.To help answer these questions they speak with Kevin Warsh, a former governor for the Federal Reserve and current Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institute at the Stanford School of Business. Kevin makes the case for regulating crypto currencies and what that would look like, and says the recent collapse of FTX, the world’s largest crypto currency exchanges, is not an indicator of this being a failing currency. Submit your questions to the show here: https://bit.ly/AllElseEqualFind All Else Equal on the web: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/all-else-equal-making-better-decisionsAll Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Ioannidis, researcher and expert in scientific theory evaluation, joins Jules and Jonathan to discuss the value of investigating implausible theories and the principle of Occam's Razor. They explore the challenges of navigating science in the age of misinterpretation and the need for humility, rigorous research, and transparency in scientific investigation.

There’s a negative connotation associated with short selling – the act of betting against a stock to perform well. But is this trading practice truly a bad thing? In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen build the case for short selling as a dynamic regulating force in the free market. And an incentive for individuals to investigate and expose fraud.Later in the episode, Jonathan and Jules speak with Marc Cohodes, whose notable short-selling decisions have landed him in hot water with powerful figures all over the world. Cohodes has exposed a series of fraudulent practices – from mortgage lender Novastar to digital finance giant Wirecard, and most recently the cryptocurrency exchange FDX – and shares his view on the role of short sellers to step in where government regulation fails.Submit your questions to the show here: https://bit.ly/AllElseEqualFind All Else Equal on the web: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/all-else-equal-making-better-decisionsAll Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.