All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions

As the 2025 municipal elections approach, the New York City mayoral race has garnered national buzz, with one issue particularly capturing attention: rent control. 

On this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen explore and unpack the best possible reasons for rent control, and why oftentimes – those reasons still come up short. 

They contextualize their discussion with historical examples from C...

Solicited or not, advice on where to invest your money seems to be around every corner these days. But determining whether the advice is credible and worth listening to can be challenging. 

On this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen put sources of investment advice to the test and provide listeners with some guidance on how to judge the credibility of someone’s stock picks. They also discuss...

With growing concerns over whether or not AI will take away jobs and eventually become superior to human intelligence, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at the human brain and discover how AI will always have its limitations. 

Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen sit down with Jeff Hawkins, a neuroscientist and computer scientist, whose book A Thousand Brains challenges the way we think about intel...

While a higher education may help your career in terms of income, how much of what you’re taught in a classroom actually prepares you for the work you do on the job?

Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen chat with economist Bryan Caplan about his book, “The Case Against Education.” In the book, Bryan lays out why education these days is less about what you’re learning, and more about signaling to future...

It’s the final episode of the summer season and with some key mayoral races coming up this fall, we’re revisiting our conversation on inflation with Veronica Rappoport, a former official at the Central Bank of Argentina who had a front row seat to the country’s inflation crisis.   

Over the last couple U.S. election cycles, one policy idea to get inflation under control that is routinely floated is price caps. But history has shown ...

Private markets have taken off in the last couple decades, with more investors opting to invest in private equity and debt instead of public markets. But what caused that shift? And are the private markets really a better bet right now, or is there more to the story?  

Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen sit down with private markets expert Ludovic Phalippou, a professor of financial economics at the ...

For the summer season, All Else Equal will be alternating between new episodes and reruns. In this week’s episode, we’re revisiting our conversation with Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University John Cochrane. 
 

What exactly is a trade deficit? And why are so many policymakers fixated on it? Lately, the trade deficit in the U.S. is taking the bulk of the blame for the economic situation we’re in and it’s one of...

For the summer season, All Else Equal will be alternating between new episodes and reruns. In this week’s episode, we’re revisiting our conversation with Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and the author of the book Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy, Dani Rodrik.

With President Trump’s tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China, a...

For the summer season, All Else Equal will be alternating between new episodes and reruns. In this week’s episode, we’re revisiting our conversation with Madhav Rajan of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

As more and more universities move away from full-time MBA programs, what does the future of business education look like? How should it look?

In this episode, hear perspectives from three of the top business schoo...

For the summer season, All Else Equal will be alternating between new episodes and reruns. On this week’s episode, we’re revisiting our conversation with historian Victor Davis Hanson.

History shows that as societies rise to greatness, the scales eventually tip back and those societies fall. But what leads to that fall and are we heading toward one? 

In this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen...

For the summer season, All Else Equal will be alternating between new episodes and reruns. On this week’s episode, we’re revisiting our conversation with Mohamed El-Erian on the intricacies of national debt and the best ways to measure it. 

Mohamed, Jonathan, and Jules explore the broader macroeconomic and geopolitical factors at play. They discuss the importance of demographic shifts as well as recent technological advancements (AI...

Is the emperor wearing clothes?  

Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen are joined by economist and political scientist Timur Kuran who wrote the book, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. This 30-year-old book explains the social phenomenon where people express preferences they do not have.   As political and social tensions have risen in the U.S., the freed...

If universities believe they should be free from government interference and that students and faculty have the right to freely express whatever viewpoints they hold, then the universities should be held to the same standard, right? 

Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen are joined by Richard Saller, an American classist and former interim president of Stanford University, to discuss whether or not the ...

What exactly is a trade deficit? And why are so many policymakers fixated on it? Lately, the trade deficit in the U.S. is taking the bulk of the blame for the economic situation we’re in and it’s one of the reasons the Trump administration is pushing for sweeping tariffs. But tariffs are likely not the answer, and a trade deficit might be better referred to as a capital surplus.  

As a continuation of the tariffs discussion in the l...

With President Trump’s tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China, and other countries now in full swing, what consequences from an economic standpoint could the U.S. be facing? And what was the path that led us here? 

Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen put the tariffs question to economist and author Dani Rodrik. Rodrik is  the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kenned...

The recent crackdown on federal spending has universities sweating despite the fact that many of them boast huge billion-dollar endowments. So what gives? Why would less money from the federal government be a cause for concern? Where does all that money go? And could there be more to this budget picture than meets the eye? 

In this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen delve into the inner work...

All Else Equal is taking a little spring break, so on this episode we’re revisiting a fascinating conversation on what happens when universities step off the sidelines and take a stance on contentious issues. Are they boarding a roller coaster that they can’t ever get off? Hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen chat with John Etchemendy, former Provost of Stanford University, for a discussion about inst...

One key to effective negotiation is to keep your opponent guessing by randomizing your strategy. And right now, there might not be a more prolific example of this kind of strategy than President Donald Trump’s communication style.  

In this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen are joined by Peter Robinson, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and former speechwriter for President Ronald...

Is it acceptable for doctors to lie to their patients, or withhold some of the truth, if it’s in the patient’s best interest? 

In this episode, hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen welcome back John Ioannidis, professor of medicine at Stanford University, to discuss the ethical implications of concealing the truth in the medical world, even when it’s for the greater good. 

The conversation touches on th...