Robert Frank is the H. J. Louis Professor of Management and Economics at Cornell University. His newest book “Under the Influence, Putting Peer Pressure to Work” discusses how social environments profoundly shape our behaviors and how we can unlock the power of social influence – through fascinating ideas from behavioral contagion to consumption taxation. 



In this interview, Prof. Frank explains the core ideas of his book in detail: how individuals are constantly “under the influence” of others’ behaviors and thus do not always make the most rational decisions; how Adam Smith’s concept of “Invisible Hand” has been greatly misconstrued and overblown by free marketers; why we have a powerful and legitimate public policy interest in encouraging socially beneficial memes and discouraging socially harmful ones…

We also discuss Prof. Frank’s progressive consumption tax proposal. It may sound surprising to many, but imposing higher tax rates for the rich might not hurt their purchase power because the prices for the scarce goods they pursue will come down correspondingly. However, by taxing lavish spending behaviors, we can discourage competitive biddings that do not improve society’s overall welfare. On the other hand, a progressive consumption tax would encourage saving and investment in ways that income taxes cannot, and a carbon tax will be effective in disincentivizing environmentally unfriendly activities.

The deeper part of the conversation is towards the end, when Prof. Frank and Tiger talk about whether the field of economics needs a somewhat complete reworking – not to simply include more behavioral economists’ opinions, but even rethink the ways we teach about supply & demand and uproot fundamental theorems. It matters because economics is not an objective science, and it is built upon a set of assumptions that often do not hold true in reality when irrational agents come together. We talk about the “mis-valuing” of essential workers during Covid-19 to the glaring naïveté of free-marketeer Capitalism underpinned by UChicago-styled economists from the 80s…

Robert H. Frank is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos. For more than a decade, his "Economic View" column appeared monthly in The New York Times. His books have been translated into 23 languages, including ”Choosing the Right Pond,“ ”Passions Within Reason,“ ”Microeconomics and Behavior,“ ”Principles of Economics“ (with Ben Bernanke), ”Luxury Fever,“ ”What Price the Moral High Ground?,“ ”Falling Behind,“ ”The Economic Naturalist,“ ”The Darwin Economy,“ and ”Success and Luck.“ “The Winner-Take-All Society,” co-authored with Philip Cook, received a Critic's Choice Award, was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, and was included in Business Week's list of the ten best books of 1995. Frank is a co-recipient of the 2004 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

IBM Chief Economist Martin Fleming discusses Covid-19’s immediate impacts on labor markets and the long-term trends for the future of work – from automation to artificial intelligence. Given how millions of people have to work from home today, there have been countless research reports springing up talking about “the end of work as we know it.” Some of us at Policy Punchline have always been skeptical about those futuristic claims that portray an utopian image filled with tech innovations but do not seek to present any concrete path on how to get there. If you have the same skepticism, hopefully some of that can be answered by Dr. Fleming.

IBM has long been known for spearheading corporate research and offering forefront business solutions in technology and beyond. Dr. Fleming tells us about the creation of IBM’s Watson, its unique partnership with MIT to jointly research artificial intelligence, as well as other recent innovations in cognitive systems and machine learning meant to aid human decision-making. We talk about IBM’s long history in funding and leading in fundamental science and tech research, and how Dr. Fleming fits in this grand picture as a PhD economist.

Given the rising importance of artificial intelligence and data science, the world of major tech corporations has seen the “rise of data scientists.” Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Sundar Pichai at Alphabet, Shantanu Narayen at Adobe — and just recently from April 2020 onwards, Arvind Krishna at IBM… These are four Indian-born executives who were trained as engineers and rose through the ranks in technical positions. Their backgrounds are very much different from the stereotypical corporate America managers’ background – in sales and general management after receiving MBA degrees – such as Ginni Rometty, IBM’s previous CEO for the last eight years. Dr. Fleming talks about such fundamental sea change across companies, as well as how young students can take advantage of data science education as early as high school.

The disruptions to labor markets by Covid-19 have been dramatic, but most major changes don’t happen overnight. Dr. Fleming cautions us to separate long-term trends in AI from recent changes ushered in by the fear for viruses. We dig deeper into the economic impacts of automation – how its negative impacts on low-income workers might not be necessarily even across the world. Developing countries, in particular, are the most susceptible to losing areas of the work that have been popular in the past, like call centers. On the other hand, middle-tier workers are the most affected in the U.S., while high and low income workers have seen the most robust growth in job opportunities.

Dr. Fleming has paid close attention to how digital currencies are taking form in many countries around the world – Singapore, China, Canada, and notably Facebook’s Libra, though many of these moves have not been successful. The notion that the Federal Reserve could release their own digital currency is becoming increasingly plausible. Digital currencies, however, are different from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. One practical reason for this transformation to digital currency is how the act of making payments has become inefficient, compared to the immediacy of other tasks, like sending emails or ordering a product. This is a growing danger that if such inefficiencies persist, the international dominance of the dollar could be reduced. However, with such a technological push, Dr. Fleming emphasizes the potential risks and how it could affect financial institutions that derive their income from controlling payment processes.

Made popular by Nobel Laureate and economist Paul Romer, charter city is a new vision for building prosperous cities that can unlock economic potentials and solve common issues in urbanization and poverty for their citizens and countries they are part of. In this episode, Dr. Mark Lutter, Founder of the Charter Cities Institute, discusses what charter cities are, why they are unique compared to special economic zones (SZE), how they can promote progress and growth within a country by reducing regulatory barriers, and how successful examples like Shenzhen and Dubai embody both their advantages and drawbacks.

Due to rapid increases of urban population, many governments in the developing world have shown to be ill-equipped to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the cities. Dr. Lutter has long called into question the conventional and popular idea that urbanization leads to increased productivity and economic growth, and he believes that charter cities could be a bold solution to poorly managed urbanization and global poverty. Our conversation goes over how charter cities can address the pent-up demand for urbanization in developing countries while creating opportunities for all the stakeholders involved, from locals to the governments of host countries. In doing so, we also analyze how new projects arise from private partnerships and how they can integrate with the goals of their host countries and communities.

While charter cities can address the needs of developing countries, they are also worth exploring in mature economies. Allowing people to build new cities in the US or Europe can provide an alternative to existing cities while creating an incentive for regulatory arbitrage, which can trickle down to the rest of the country. The model of charter city offers a blank slate in commercial law, can be developed on greenfield sites (untouched land with no current residents), and can allow for deep governance reforms to be enacted with minimal interference or resistance because of the lack of existing interest groups. Charter cities may be the perfect place to experiment new governance structures proposed by “techno-utopians” from Silicon Valley to around the world.

Dr. Lutter also addresses criticisms for charter cities, such as the possible need for strong central governments during the establishment of charter cities and their incentives to reap the benefits and interfere with organic growth. We also go over a famous charter city blunder in Honduras and the concerns that it would entrench the local elite while limiting freedom of locals. In this context, we also discuss how charter cities can be built so local can actually share the fruits of the progress enabled by the city, as well as how political ideologies intertwine with charter cities and their economic success.

Dr. Mark Lutter is the Founder and Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute, as well as the host of the Charter Cities Podcast. He is on the Board of Directors of Explorer Academy, a Zambian education platform. He is an advisor to and has a financial interest in the Victoria Harbor Group, a firm that is building a new Hong Kong. He has a PhD in economics from George Mason University where his research focused on charter cities. Prior to launching the Institute, he was Lead Economist for NeWAY Capital, an asset management firm which made early stage investments in charter cities. He has been published in several newspapers and magazines including the Chicago Tribune, City Journal, CityAM, and Cato Unbound.

Currently, Dr. Mark Lutter is involved with several charter city projects. In this episode we discuss his recent work in Zambia, Nigeria, and with the Hong Kong-based Victoria Harbor Group. We also go over how the Charter Cities Institute was formed and what the next steps are for this nonprofit.

Nicholas Lemann’s recent book, “Transaction Man,” is an account of the United States economy in the 20th and 21st century, how it has transformed over time, and the impacts of such transformation on all of us. Specifically, Prof. Lemann examines three remarkable economic and social thinkers who he calls, “Institution/Organization Man,” “Transaction Man,” and “Network Man,” who epitomized and helped create the three main eras of American economy.


In this interview, Prof. Lemann explains these three eras in detail, why none of these models has successfully brought sustainable prosperity to the American people, and how his vision of pluralism might provide a synthesis and possible solutions to today’s urgent social problems.

“Institution Man” = Adolf Berle, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s chief theorist of the economy, who imagined a society dominated by large corporations, which a newly powerful federal government had forced to become benign and stable institutions, contributing to the public good by offering stable employment and generous pensions. 

“Transaction Man” = Michael Jenson. By the 1970s, the corporations’ large stockholders grew restive under this regime, and their chief theoretician, Harvard Business School’s Michael Jensen, insisted that firms should maximize shareholder value, whatever the consequences may be. This narrative took place very much under the backdrop of “financialization” and heavy deregulations starting in the 1970s, which allowed capital providers and fund managers to suddenly play the role of textbook capitalist.

“Network Man” = Reid Hoffman. Today, Silicon Valley titans like LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman hope “networks” can reknit our social fabric and efficient startups like Uber and Airbnb can replace much of the existing infrastructure. 

Bio: Professor Nicholas Lemann is a veteran American journalist and author of six books, including his latest "Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream." He is the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and Dean Emeritus at the Columbia Journalism School. Previously, he has worked at The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Monthly, The Washington Post, and a variety of other newspaper and magazine companies, writing about politics, education, business, social policy, and other topics.

Alan Blinder was the Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System under President Bill Clinton. In this episode, we seek to answer questions on the Fed’s unprecedented actions in light of the COVID-19 crisis and their long-term implications, from whether the injection of liquidity is propping up the financial markets in unhealthy ways, to whether the lack of coordination between fiscal and monetary policies could potentially exacerbate inequality like after the 2008 financial crisis…

We say that the Fed’s actions have been unprecedented because it not only pledged to buy an unlimited quantity of government debt, but also decided to support even some of the riskiest corporate bonds; it lowered the target rate to 0-0.25 percent and announced in the June FOMC meeting that it’s not even “thinking about thinking about raising rates…” Is the Fed well-equipped to mitigate the economic effects of a pandemic? In the process, how can we manage the public expectation so that the Fed is not being given “mission impossibles?”

The Fed’s “Main Street” lending to small/medium sized businesses has somewhat pushed the Fed to uncharted territory. While Prof. Blinder believes that the Fed is doing a better job of injecting money into Main Street than it did in 2008, he acknowledges that the Fed is primarily equipped to support large corporations, and as such may play a role in exacerbating inequality. He also argues that the financial system has grown too large, to the point where “the tail is wagging the dog.”

An expert on the 2008 financial crisis, Prof. Blinder walks us through a series of critical comparisons. Today’s crisis is not one created by housing bubbles or elaborate financial instruments, so there generally seems to be less resentment among everyday Americans towards financial elites. But by stepping into junk bond territory, the Fed has effectively backstopped some of the biggest names in the hedge fund and private equity industry and some of the most aggressive speculators. Will there be a strong reaction against financial elites similar to the one we saw in 2008-09 with the Occupy Wall Street movement?

A lot of studies have been done on how the 2008 financial crisis bailout exacerbated inequality in the U.S. One reason often given by economists and journalists is that the monetary policy response was adequate, but the fiscal stimulus didn’t follow suit. How do we ensure that the same doesn’t happen again? How can the Fed and the Treasury be smarter and attach more conditions to the loans and grants they make to large corporations?

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Prof. Blinder dismissed concerns over the inflationary impact of the Fed’s radical monetary policies as “Scarlett O’Hara questions” about the long-term effects of the Fed’s monetary policy – specifically on the deficit and on inflation. He argues that these potential issues are not particularly pressing or worrisome and that these are questions to be dealt with after the coronavirus crisis is averted: “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” In this episode, we probe deeper into the reasoning behind this idea, and whether the fear of the deficit or inflation might undermine the economic recovery in the short and long run.

Full bio: Alan Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He previously served as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System under Bill Clinton, as well as on Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors. Blinder is one of the leading voices in the discourse surrounding fiscal and monetary policy, and has written many best-selling books, including the latest “Advice and Dissent: Why America Suffers When Economics and Politics Collide.”

What is gerrymandering and how does it affect people’s electoral rights? How can we use technology and data to empower communities to get the representation they deserve? More importantly, why is 2020 important besides the presidential elections, and how can it shape American politics for at least another decade? In this interview with Princeton professor Sam Wang, we explore what gerrymandering means for local communities and voters, why it has become such a big issue in the last decade, and what citizens can do about it. We also discuss how COVID-19 impacted the 2020 electoral and redistricting processes in the United States, as well as what it means for the current election and gerrymandering cycles.

Sam Wang is a unique figure: a neuroscientist by trade, he started analyzing politics in the early 2000s, when he was among the first to aggregate US presidential polls and use statistical methods to analyze them. This work led to the establishment of the Princeton Election Consortium, a blog opened with the mission to provide informed analysis of US national elections by members of the Princeton academic community. In 2012, he recognized new, systematic distortions in representation in the U.S. House. Understanding the causes of these distortions launched his interest in voting rights and led to the creation of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project conducts nonpartisan analysis to understand and eliminate partisan gerrymandering at a state-by-state level.

In its landmark 2019 decision on partisan gerrymandering, the Supreme Court acknowledged the Princeton Gerrymandering Project’s analysis. While approving of the Project’s mathematical analysis, the court decided that there was no legal standard for it to act with regard to gerrymandering, so it barred challenges on a federal level. This decision breathed new air in Prof. Wang’s work with the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, encouraging them to adopt a federalist, state-by-state approach to pursue reforms against partisan gerrymandering, a topic that’s discussed at length in the episode.

The episode is co-hosted by Tiger and Theodor Marcu, a 2020 Princeton graduate who worked closely with Prof. Wang and the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. He and four other undergraduates founded Representable.org in 2019 to fight gerrymandering across the US with the help of a novel approach: collecting crowdsourced data about communities. Representable allows nonprofits and community members to draw their communities on a map and submit them to an online database that can then be referenced by journalists, nonprofits, redistricting committees, and lawyers in each state. This data can be used to show how proposed or existing district lines may break communities apart, which is a marker of partisan gerrymandering. In the second half of the episode Tiger and Theodor discuss the role that Representable will play in the 2020 redistricting cycle, how crowdsourced data can be used to fight gerrymandering, as well as the role of online platforms in a democracy.

“Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party” is the latest book of Princeton politics professor and historian Julian Zelizer. The book explores how the 50th House Speaker Newt Gingrich started an era where Republicans practiced a ruthless style of partisanship that ignored the conventional norms of Washington and continually tested how far politicians could go in bending government institutions to suit their partisan purposes.

In this interview, Prof. Zelizer, Tiger, and G. Terrell Seabrooks discuss some of its most salient themes and explore the many thrilling stories in this book: such as Gingrich’s takedown of Democrat House Speaker Jim Wright – a pivotal moment when Gingrich “swept the old order aside;” or, in 1983, Gingrich crafted the message of his career – branding the Democratic Party as the symbol of Washington’s corruption in the post-Watergate era…

Gingrich redefined partisanship by expanding the boundaries of what was permissible in the arena of congressional warfare, and he legitimated ruthless and destructive practices that had once been relegated to the margins. Steven Bannon said that when Republicans went for head wounds, Democrats were having pillow fights. Why didn’t the Democrats follow the Republicans’ strategy? Was it because of integrity or was it because of a fundamental lack of political will? We reflect on the history of partisanship and Congressional warfare tactics and hope to provide clarity on the near-term development of American politics.

We also discuss Gingrich’s relationship with the media and President Trump. A historian by training and having received his PhD from Tulane, Gingrich understood the importance of narratives and good storytelling. We explore how Gingrich helped fuel the rise of TV politics, where the line between entertainment and serious policy discourse became increasingly blurred.

As one of Trump’s most trusted advisors, Gingrich was considered for being Trump’s running mate in 2016. Both men are like “pirates,” as Gingrich himself explained: “[Trump] is outside the normal system, he gets things done, he’s bold, he’s actually like a figure out of a movie. In a lot of ways, my entire career has been a little bit like a pirate. I’ve taken on the establishment of both parties, [I’m] very prepared to fight in the media.” However, Trump eventually chose Pence over Gingrich as his running mate in 2016 because he didn’t want a “two-pirate” ticket. Pence was a much safer, composed vice presidential candidate who indeed helped Trump get elected – an outcome that Gingrich had always hoped for.

From Gingrich and the “establishment,” to President Trump and modern legislative floor tactics, this interview delves into the strategy that has helped shape the Republican agenda for the last three decades. Is Gingrich responsible for the partisan divide we see today? How can democrats respond to the increased politicization of lawmaking in Washington? Is this polarization a permanent element of our political system? All of these questions, and more, are answered in this episode.

“Burning Down the House” will be available for purchase beginning on July 7, 2020. We also encourage you to listen to Prof. Zelizer’s podcast, Politics and Polls, co-hosted by Princeton professor Sam Wang.

Julian Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs, Princeton School of Public & International Affairs. He has been one of the pioneers in the revival of American political history and is now the author and editor of more than 20 books on American political history. Professor Zelizer is also the co-host of the popular podcast Politics and Polls and a frequent CNN Contributor.

In late June 2020, Covid-19 claimed one of the largest giants in the energy industry: Chesapeake Energy. Chesapeake is a leader in the fracking industry that had been on the rocks for a few years now. In this episode, we detail the rapid rise of the fracking industry with Russell Gold, WSJ senior energy reporter in Texas.

Gold’s first book, "The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World," documents the invention of hydraulic fracturing in 1974, how it is both a threat and a godsend for the environment, and how it led the revival of manufacturing in the United States.

We also discuss Gold’s second book, "Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy," in which he discusses renewable energies and focuses on the legendary figure Michael Skelly, who used his Harvard Business School contacts to create impressive companies. The midwest can produce the most amount of renewable energies because of the cheap land and suitable climate, so Skelly’s vision was to build low-cost clean energy options between places such as Oklahoma and non-midwest states. The already crazily complicated deal was even further complicated by the strong political opposition at the time, from which we discuss the today’s landscape from The Green New Deal to a realistic vision for sustainable energy use.

Russell Gold is an award-winning investigative journalist at The Wall Street Journal, responsible for covering all facets of global energy with a particular focus on the U.S. energy boom, power generation and the global energy transition. He’s been covering energy for the journal since 2002 and his reporting has taken him to five continents and above the Arctic Circle two times. In 2010, he was part of the Wall Street Journal team that covered the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. The Journal’s work was awarded the Gerald Loeb Award for best business story of the year and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting. In 2020, he will inaugurate a new beat the Journal: Climate change and business. Outside of his work at the Wall Street Journal he’s written two books. His first book, The Boom, was longlisted for the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the year prize in 2014. Superpower, his second book, was published in June 2019.

Museums and galleries have been closed since March under lockdown rules, and there are growing fears among curators that many museums may never open again due to financial difficulties. James Steward is the Director of Princeton University Art Museum, where he leads a staff of 110 with an operating budget of $20 million and collections of over 110,000 works of art that span the globe and encompass 5,000 years of world history. In this interview, we discuss the role of art museums in helping make us better citizens and how the responsibilities of large art institutions may even expand in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic.

An avid museum visitor himself, Tiger also asks Director Steward how the art viewing experience has changed and will continue to evolve in light of Covid-19:

- Can the art viewing experience possibly be even better after we take away the shared physical space and give people a chance to reflect in a solitary fashion?

- Art museums have always said to perform effects of anti-alienation and symbolize the unification of a social sphere rendered by fragmentation by class division and other societal issues. One often argues that in a place like an art museum, we may finally have a model of utopia as people come together across those obstacles and collectively share an experience. Is this something that art museums can actually achieve, especially after Covid? 

- Museums often contain people with the same class, race, educational level… What major takeaways could the art museum industry derive from this Covid crisis and the ongoing #BlackLivesMatter movement that might motivate it to change its course, so that museums can in fact achieve such utopian vision – helping restitch our social fabric and transcend divisions?

How can we use evidence, not predetermined cultural scripts based on past pandemics, to evaluate the current Covid-19 crisis? This is the question Dr. Merle Eisenberg raised in his recent Washington Post op-ed. When we talk about coronavirus, we often hear anecdotes from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Why do we focus so strongly on this particular historical example, and what do we miss out on when we ignore earlier histories, such as the Justinianic Plague (550-750 CE), which we will explore in detail in this episode.

What are the differences between the way Covid is being handled compared to past pandemics? From the public’s social distancing measures to the rich people’s fleeing from crowded cities, are there any broad trends and patterns of behaviors during pandemics that consistently lasted throughout history? Are pandemics generally inequality-reducing (like how the Black Death ended Feudalism), or inequality-exacerbating (like today’s billionaires getting richer from Covid)?

In this long discussion on the history of pandemics, Dr. Eisenberg and Tiger also explore topics on state capacity and resilience. For instance, the Ottoman Empire tested by a series of local droughts, shortages and famines during the 1560s–1580s, but the pre-industrial society was able to “contain the damage by shifting tax burdens from the affected areas, ordering fixed price sales of grain from other provinces, and in some cases arranging direct shipments from local or imperial granaries.” It provides an illustration to how societies throughout history develop anti-fragile political structures.

Merle Eisenberg is a late antique, medieval, and environmental historian who investigates how people responded to end of the Roman Empire to shape their communities and create new medieval states. His research projects range from analyzing how rulers issued laws to build frameworks for their states to case studies of how climate change has affected pre-modern localities.

He co-hosts the podcast “Infectious Historians” with Lee Mordechai. The podcast aims to provide a flavor of past disease outbreaks while also discussing some pressing present questions.

Currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), Dr. Eisenberg is working on a project entitled “The Making of a Pandemic: Plague, Environment, and the End of Antiquity.” It examines the outbreak of the first great socio-ecological disaster in recorded human history: the first bubonic plague pandemic, commonly known as the Justinianic Plague (c. 541-750 CE).