Chicago Booth Review Podcast

Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election took many pundits by surprise. Voters consistently said the economy was their top issue, but even though the US economy is currently the world’s top performer, they nevertheless voted for a change in government. That led many observers to claim that Trump’s supporters had a warped view of the economy, concentrating more on inflation than on growth. Chicago Booth’s Lubos Pastor disagrees. His research suggests that voters knew the economy was growing, and that was, in fact, the very reason why they wanted a change of government. Pastor’s model is relatively simple: when the economy is strong economy, more voters opt for the Republican candidate in elections, while a weak economy favors Democrats. This pattern has held since 1927, regardless of the candidates or the incumbents. The reason has to do with how the economy shapes people’s attitudes to risk, which is also explains another phenomenon: the stock market performs much better under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.

Impact investing accounts for more than $1 trillion under management, and is expected to continue growing at a double-digit rate annually for the next decade. It’s attracted a backlash, with activists successfully pushing companies to cut back on their commitment to diversity and inclusion. We hear from Chicago Booth’s Priya Parrish, author of the new book The Little Book of Impact Investing: Aligning Profit and Purpose to Change the World, about what the critics get wrong.

Most managers would agree that communication is important, and many would also agree that it’s a skill that many workers are far from mastering. Yet organizations typically spend next to no time training their employees how to improve their writing. Melissa Harris wants to change that. She’s an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth, a former Chicago Tribune journalist, and the co-author of the new book Everybody Needs an Editor: The Essential Guide to Clear and Effective Writing.

In September, Amazon announced the end of hybrid work, saying it wanted employees in the office five days a week. To many, it seemed like the end of an era, with management having concluded that hybrid work just doesn’t work for them – even if employees like it. We talk to Chicago Booth’s Mike Gibbs, about what the data tell us about hybrid work, and if we’re heading into a post-hybrid working world.

In September, Kalshi, a US financial exchange and prediction market, won a legal victory enabling it to let people bet on outcomes such as which party will control Congress after the November elections. Is the return of political betting a good thing, or were regulators right to try to limit it? And do the same concerns about manipulation in political prediction markets apply to the stock market? We hear from Chicago Booth’s John Birge on whether trading on insider information might sometimes be positive.

Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker is a frank and ugly behind-the-scenes account of life as a young associate in the world of Wall St finance. The book is 35 years old, but the basic dilemma at its heart – whether follow your conscience or your bank balance—remains pertinent. In this episode, Chicago Booth’s John Paul Rollert reflects on what the book tells us about ourselves and our professional choices. How long can you stay in a poisonous environment before you become part of it?

The COVID 19 pandemic caused perhaps the fastest ever shift in working patterns. One day, many of us were working in offices, the next we were working remotely – and would be for years. What effect did that have on our performance? We talk with Chicago Booth’s Mike Gibbs, an expert on quantitative research, about the consequences of remote work.

Companies track our every move on the internet, and many people are concerned that their data is being used and misused without their permission. The European Union and 13 US states have passed data privacy laws. Are these rules really helping us and making us safer? In this episode, we hear from Chicago Booth’s Jean-Pierre Dube, who argues that data privacy comes with a cost – it can further marginalize low-income consumers and hurt small businesses.

Are American companies any good at hiring CEOs? When a company is searching for its next CEO, what skills are they looking for? And are those the same skills that make CEOs successful in the job? We talk with Chicago Booth’s Steve Kaplan, who’s spent decades analyzing C-suite hiring practices and CEO performance. His research finds that candidates who get hired as CEOs are different from other C-suite executives, but also that hiring practices do not guarantee that the person who wows the hiring committee will succeed in the top job.

We tend to think of leaders in terms of personality types or set ways of behaving. But can you learn to be a better leader? And can you choose when to act like a leader? In this episode, we hear from Chicago Booth’s Linda Ginzel, who presents two ideas: first, that we can become better leaders by being diligent about how we learn from our experiences; and second, that we should think of leadership and management as verbs, rather than nouns.