Listen and Subscribe to The Pie

Featuring conversations with UChicago economists about their research and key events of the day.

Catch Up

Research Briefs

Research Briefs·Nov 18, 2025

The Mortgage Debt Channel of Monetary Policy when Mortgages are Liquid

Matthew Elias, Christian Gillitzer, Greg Kaplan, Gianni La Cava, and Nalini Prasad
Despite the aggressive post-pandemic rate hikes, which pushed Australian mortgage rates up by over 4 percentage points and monthly payments up by $13,800, adjustable-rate borrowers did not cut their spending because they tapped into large savings buffers they had built...
Research Briefs·Nov 13, 2025

Closing Early Math Gaps by Parental Education with Technology at Home

Daniela Bresciani Andaluz, Ariel Kalil, Haoxuan Liu, Susan Mayer, and Rohen Shah
A six-month experiment with 459 diverse Chicago families shows that providing high-quality math apps to children of parents without college degrees improved their math skills by 0.17 standard deviations, closing roughly one-third of the initial education-based achievement gap. The intervention...
Research Briefs·Nov 10, 2025

Debt and Assets

Efraim Benmelech, Nitish Kumar, and Raghuram Rajan
Contrary to conventional wisdom, much unsecured debt is implicitly asset backed, and the degree to which unsecured debt is asset backed can change with a firm’s condition and macroeconomic conditions. Asset values can also affect the price of borrowing, notably...

BFI Data Studio

BFI Data Studio·Nov 6, 2025

Unlocking the Power of Markets as a New Tool for Regulating Pollution

Michael Greenstone, Rohini Pande, Nicholas Ryan, and Anant Sudarshan
How the world’s first particulate pollution market in India reduced pollution and increased industry profits.
BFI Data Studio·Nov 5, 2025

Explore Historical Manufacturing Data

Richard Hornbeck, Anders Humlum, and Martin Rotemberg
In this project, UChicago and NYU economists Richard Hornbeck, Anders Humlum, and Martin Rotemberg have led efforts to digitize the surviving historical records on American manufacturing establishments during the second Industrial Revolution, making it easily accessible to researchers and the...
BFI Data Studio·Sep 11, 2025

The Hidden Volatility of American Workers’ Paychecks

Most US workers experience substantial month-to-month fluctuations in pay, even within ongoing employment relationships, leading to fluctuating household consumption and an increased propensity to quit.

Podcasts

Podcasts episode·Nov 25, 2025

Human Capital for Humans: An Accessible Introduction to the Economic Science of People

Tess Vigeland and Pablo Pena
What’s the greatest driver of economic growth? Love. In this episode, UChicago economist Pablo Peña presents his new book Human Capital for Humans, inspired by Nobel laureate Gary Becker’s legendary doctoral course. In conversation with host Tess Vigeland, he discusses...
Podcasts episode·Nov 18, 2025

Liberalism and the Great Enrichment: Why Ideas, Not Capital, Made the Modern World

Benjamin Krause and Deirdre McCloskey
Deirdre McCloskey argues the world’s jump from $2 to $50 per day in average income came from a radical 18th-century shift: equality of permission, or letting ordinary people have a go at bettering themselves. She traces how liberating human creativity...
Podcasts episode·Nov 11, 2025

Economics for Everyone: Teaching the World to Think Like an Economist

Tess Vigeland, John List, and Robert Shimer
According to the TIAA Institute, American adults correctly answered just 49% of basic financial questions in 2024, suggesting a fundamental gap in economic literacy. In this episode Robert Shimer, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, and John List,...

Initiative Insights

Initiative Insight·Aug 18, 2025

Reframing the Safety Net: Manasi Deshpande on the Unseen Impacts of Disability Policy

Sydney Turner
Economic theories often frame safety net debates in terms of work incentives, but Manasi Deshpande’s research reveals a more complex reality. Using linked administrative data, she shows how programs like Supplemental Security Income affect not just employment, but crime, mental...
Initiative Insight·Jul 31, 2025

What Two Years of Predoctoral Research Taught One Aspiring Economist

Maia Rabenold and Sydney Turner
Through the BFI Predoctoral Research in Economics Program program, Jialing Zhang tackled real-world economic challenges using machine learning and spatial data, helping build tools for GDP estimation in data-scarce regions. Zhang discusses how her journey through economics, mentorship, and discovery...
Initiative Insight·Aug 11, 2024

The Surgeon Shuffle: How Moving Doctors Across Hospitals Can Save Lives

Abby Hiller
WATCH VIDEO Video by Ava Gomez Pauline Mourot has an idea that could save more than 800 lives a year. All it would require? Switching cardiac surgeons between hospitals. The proposal combines a classic idea from labor economics— worker sorting...
Topics: Health care

Videos

All Insights

COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

Ava Gomez

Marketing and Digital Media Specialist, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics

Eric Hernandez

Senior Officer of Digital Media and Data Visualization, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics

Abby Hiller

Senior Manager of Research Translation and Impact, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics

Maia Rabenold

Senior Multimedia Specialist, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics

Sydney Turner

Multimedia Coordinator, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics