When some US states allowed nurse practitioners to prescribe controlled substances without physician oversight, a serious unintended consequence took hold: Doctors found themselves competing with those nurses for patients. Molly Schnell, BFI Saieh Family Fellow and assistant professor at Northwestern University, along with her colleagues—Janet Currie of Princeton and Anran Li of Cornell—examine the resultant uptick in prescriptions in controlled substances, and the impact on patients.

James Robinson, a University Professor with appointments in both UChicago’s Harris School of Public Policy as well as the Political Science Department in the Division of Social Sciences, is the university’s latest faculty member to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. On this episode of “An Extra Slice of The Pie,” Robinson joins Ben Krause, BFI Executive Director and new, semi-regular guest host, to discuss his research and the path to a Nobel. Tune in to learn more about Robinson’s early challenges as a young researcher, his major breakthroughs, and his ideas for future work.

Bats are considered a natural pesticide. When they began to die out due to an invasive fungus, farmers turned to chemicals to control pests. The result, as Eyal Frank of the Harris school of Public Policy describes on this episode of The Pie, was skyrocketing infant deaths. Tune in to learn more about the vast ramifications of ecosystem disruptions.

Private equity investors made some $200 billion worth of healthcare acquisitions in 2021, and $1 trillion worth in the 10 years leading up to 2023. In this episode of The Pie, Maggie Shi, professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, discusses how private equity impacts hospitals along multiple dimensions, including patient volumes, revenues, employment, and technology adoption.

When the Soo Line threatened to expand into the Great Northern Railway’s territory in 1905, the two companies entered a fierce competition for marketshare in which the they rapidly constructed nearly 500 miles of rail tracks and over 50 new towns. In this episode of The Pie, Chad Syverson, the George C. Tiao Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the Booth School of Business, explores this unique historical episode, shedding light on how acts of strategic competition, past and present, can affect our social welfare.

The Federal Reserve responded to COVID-era inflation with the fastest increase in the federal funds rate in 40 years. Importantly, the effectiveness of their response depends on how the public perceived it. In this episode of The Pie, Carolin Pflueger, Associate Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, covers her recent talk to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in which she discussed her research on changing public perceptions and the effectiveness of monetary policy.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a landmark piece of tax legislation from the first year of the Trump administration, overhauled the tax code for both individuals and businesses. In this episode of The Pie, Eric Zwick, Professor of Economics and Finance at the UChicago's Booth School of Business, discusses how the overhaul affected the economy, including investment, tax revenue, and wages.

The primary contributor to long-run growth is productivity: A country’s ability to raise residents’ standards of living depends on its ability to boost workers’ output. In this episode of The Pie, Ufuk Akcigit, The Arnold C. Harberger Professor in Economics and the College, describes his research on growth through technological progress.

In the wake of numerous high-profile incidents of police use of force, particularly against Black Americans, law enforcement agencies across the United States are confronting issues of officer misconduct. Whether such misconduct is preventable depends in part on whether it is predictable. In this episode of The Pie, Greg Stoddard, Senior Research Director for the Crime Lab and Education Lab, discusses recent research using administrative data from the Chicago Police Department to predict officers misconduct, before it happens.

The United States is in the midst of a student loan crisis, with over 45 million borrowers owing more than $1.6 trillion in federal dollars. On this episode of The Pie, Constantine Yannelis, Associate Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business, argues that federal policy is to blame: Decades of regulation and de-regulation have given way to skyrocketing rates of risky borrowing.

How can we incentivize the private and public sectors to develop and deploy solutions to climate change, while accounting for uncertainties? This episode of The Pie covers a panel discussion among professors David Keith of the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at UChicago and founding faculty director of the university’s Climate Systems Engineering initiative, Franklin Allen of Imperial College in London, and José Scheinkman of Columbia. Lars Peter Hansen, The David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, Statistics in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics and the Booth School of Business and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics, moderates.

This podcast was part of a climate change conference, co-sponsored by the Macro Finance Research Program at the University of Chicago and the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis at Imperial College Business School, exploring uncertainty and tipping points. More information on the event can be found here.