Duke Fuqua Insights

Professor John Graham explores how AI is affecting productivity, hiring, and firm strategy based on new CFO survey data

Artificial intelligence is everywhere—from automating routine tasks to generating insights in seconds. Yet despite the hype and anxiety, especially around job loss, the real impact of AI on companies may be more nuanced than headlines suggest.

In this episode of Duke Fuqua Insights, Professor John Graham of Duke Uni...

Professor Jordan Etkin explains how “time-first budgeting” can help people improve performance and set smarter goals

It’s a familiar pattern: You begin your morning with a lengthy to-do list and a plan to complete it, and somehow the day ends with unfinished tasks and a sense that time slipped away. Is there a better way?

Professor Jordan Etkin, a consumer behavior scholar at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, explores why p...

Marketers are increasingly pessimistic about the economy, with sentiment reaching its lowest level since the pandemic in 2020. In response—and facing organizational pressures for returns—marketing activities are contracting, lowering spending and prioritizing existing customers over expansion opportunities.

At the same time, companies are accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence, projecting that AI will account for more than...

Professor Christine Moorman on why keeping marketing secrets may cost more than letting them go

Companies spend billions safeguarding their marketing secrets—from customer insights to pricing algorithms—assuming these secrets are key to competitive advantage. The global data loss prevention market is valued at an estimated $1.5 to $2 billion annually and continues to grow. But does locking down knowledge undermine performance rather...

Professor Anna Cieslak explains how central bank communication shapes financial markets, even when rates stay the same

When the Federal Reserve meets, markets obsess over one question: Will interest rates go up or down? But sometimes, market moves happen even when rates don’t change at all. In uncertain times, a subtle shift in tone can ripple across global financial markets.

In this episode of Duke Fuqua Insights Podcast, Professor ...

Professor Elia Ferracuti explains how activist investors reshape corporate research, and why it matters for long-term innovation.

Why would a company famous for breakthrough discoveries suddenly pull back from bold research in favor of safer bets? Research shows shareholder pressure plays a role. The tension between short-term financial pressure and long-term scientific progress is at the heart of many hedge-fund-led activist campai...

Professor Simon Gervais explains how active managers can grow the economy, even when they don’t beat the market

Many investors are told that active funds rarely outperform passive index funds after fees. So why bother paying for them? 

In this episode of Duke Fuqua Insights podcast, Professor Simon Gervais, a financial economist at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, challenges the narrow way we evaluate active money manageme...

Artificial intelligence promises massive productivity gains, but not everyone can immediately jump in to reap its benefits. While some firms and countries race ahead with new tools, others deliberately stick with older technologies, a choice may be entirely rational.

In this episode of the Fuqua Insights podcast, Professor John Coleman of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business joins host Sarah Kern to discuss how economies and b...

Professor David Brown explains how simple strategies can guide better decisions even when information is incomplete 

New job postings appear daily. Real estate markets update constantly with fresh listings. In an environment where alternatives continuously multiply and options can seem endless, the hardest decision is knowing when to stop searching and commit.

In this episode, David Brown, the Snow Family Business Professor of Decisi...

A single decision improved by 1% might seem trivial. But make 300 small improvements over a year, and the compounding effect becomes transformative. A/B testing allows companies to systematically test different approaches and optimize performance, but research shows that the startups that could benefit most are the least likely to use it.

In this episode, Professor Sharique Hasan of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business discuss...

Professor Bill Mayew explores whether public companies have visibility into the macroeconomy to filter errors in GDP data—and what that means for economic forecasting

Every quarter, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis releases its initial GDP estimate—a flagship measure of economic health that influences corporate boardrooms, Federal Reserve policy, and investor portfolios. But there’s a catch: these early numbers are often wrong.

I...

Professor Tong Guo explains how mandated transparency didn't reduce pharmaceutical payments to physicians—instead, it taught companies to optimize them.

When the federal government mandated that pharmaceutical companies publicly disclose every payment to physicians—from conference sponsorships to consulting fees—policymakers expected transparency to reduce potential conflicts of interest. Instead, the payments kept flowing, and...

Professor Ali Makhdoumi reveals why your friend's social media activity might be compromising your privacy, even when you share nothing at all
 
Every time your colleague shares their location data or a friend posts their workout routine, they're inadvertently exposing details about you–even if you've never agreed to share your data. This hidden web of data spillovers means companies can predict your prefere...

Ronnie Chatterji, Professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of
Business and Chief Economist at OpenAI, joins Jenny Laurence, MBA '26 to discuss his recent research paper analyzing over a million ChatGPT conversations to uncover patterns in where artificial intelligence is making impacts in our homes, our work, and our lives.

Duke Fuqua Insights features digestible conversations with our faculty about the most impactf...

Trump's push to end quarterly reporting could reshape American business. Professor Rahul Vashishtha explains what research shows about the trade-offs.
 
When companies report earnings more frequently, they make different investment choices, often abandoning profitable long-term projects that don't pay off quickly. This behavioral shift sits at the heart of President Trump's renewed call to end quarterly repor...

When a CEO speaks during an earnings call, investors typically focus on the numbers being reported. But studies suggest they should also be listening to how those numbers are delivered. The emotional undertones, vocal pitch, and subtle inflections that executives unconsciously broadcast may reveal as much about a company's future as the financial data itself.

In this episode, Professor Bill Mayew of Duke's Fuqua School of ...

A casual conversation about a coworker's side business could be the spark that launches your own entrepreneurial journey. But whether that inspiration leads to action depends on factors you might not expect—including your race, gender, and workplace environment.

In this episode, Professor Melanie Wallskog shares insights from her research into how workplace exposure to entrepreneurial coworkers affects an individual’s likelihoo...

Our brains are wired to seek order when we feel out of control. A framed logo, an organized grocery store, and a well-designed website all provide unconscious signals of stability to consumers navigating uncertainty. 
 

In this episode, Professor Keisha Cutright of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business discusses her research on how consumers respond to instability. In her widely cited paper, The Beauty of Boundaries: When a...

The next breakthrough drug or industry-disrupting innovation may come from a university lab funded by a federal grant. But a policy shift around how the government supports overhead costs could change which projects are pursued, and which institutions can afford to compete.

When the federal government funds scientific research, universities negotiate overhead rates of 50 to 70% over the direct costs of research to cover expenses lik...