

All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions
The Lauder Institute
Join Stanford GSB finance professor Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen of The Wharton School in a conversation with prominent business leaders about common flaws in the decision making process and what to do about them. Learn more at AllElseEqualPodcast.com.All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.
Episodes
Mentioned books

9 snips
Aug 2, 2023 • 26min
Ep30 “Becoming a Better Communicator” with Matt Abrahams
Are you breaking some basic rules of communication without knowing it? What are the things you can start doing right now to communicate better? In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen are joined by Matt Abrahams, lecturer at Stanford GSB, and host of the highly influential podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart for a discussion about becoming a more effective communicator and presenter. 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.

14 snips
Jun 29, 2023 • 33min
Ep29 “How Do You Become CEO?” with Dirk Jenter
A lot has been written and said about CEOs and their compensation, but who are they really and how did they get there? According to the data, what are the most likely paths to become one? In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen are joined by Dirk Jenter, Professor of Finance at the London School of Economics, for a fascinating discussion of CEOs, including the surprising truths about who rises to the rank of CEO and from where, as well as exploring the issue of CEO pay, and how it could be justified. 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.

5 snips
Jun 14, 2023 • 26min
Ep28 Incentives and Externalities
Humans respond to incentives, and so incentives predict behavior and sometimes the behavior can be detrimental. In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen discuss a range of less obvious examples of how incentives produce negative externalities — long legal contracts, negative news stories, dumb traffic lights, overly pessimistic disaster prediction and other examples. 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.

6 snips
May 31, 2023 • 30min
Ep27 "The Future of AI" with Michal Kosinski
The speed at which AI is getting smarter is on everybody's mind these days. In this episode of All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen discuss with Stanford Professor Michal Kosinski what we should expect from the coming wave of AI technology, how it relates to the research on "Theory of Mind" and whether and how it potentially could be regulated.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.

May 17, 2023 • 29min
Ep26 “Investigating Implausible Theories: The Case of COVID” with Matt Ridley
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.

May 3, 2023 • 29min
Ep25 “Bubble Trouble” with Will Goetzmann
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.

4 snips
Apr 12, 2023 • 32min
Ep24 “When Institutions Cry Wolf” with Jay Bhattacharya
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.

Mar 24, 2023 • 34min
Ep23 “When Banking Fails” with Amit Seru
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.

Mar 15, 2023 • 27min
Ep22 “How Do You Know If Your Marketing Dollars Are Working?” with Florian Zettelmeyer
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.

4 snips
Mar 1, 2023 • 28min
Ep21 "Disentangling Causation and Correlation" with Guido Imbens
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.