Cornell Professor Vicki Bogan describes what a bond is, how it is different from a stock, and how they help companies grow. Also, learn what happens when you purchase a junk bond.
Discussion Prompt: From your listening (and additional research if you wish), briefly explain the difference between stocks and bonds. What do you think are the pros and cons of investing more in stocks or more in bonds, or a portfolio of both?
Original Air Date: August 18, 2021
Length: 33 Minutes 34 Seconds
Link: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/fmd-kidney-transplants/
With 90,000 people on the kidney transplant waiting list in the United States, it is shocking to learn thousands of these available organs are thrown away each year. Doctor Sumit Mohan and economist Alvin Roth discuss policy and incentive issues that lead to wasted kidneys.
Original Air Date: November 11, 2021
Length: 27 Minutes 3 Seconds
Link: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/23/1030276615/planet-money-summer-school-5-bubbles-bikes-biases
Learn from Planet Money’s Summer School what causes financial bubbles with examples such as the dotcom bubble and the Great British bicycle bubble. Also, hear about how behavioral biases, greater fools theory, and herd behavior make bubbles much worse.
Original Air Date: August 25, 2021
Length: 29 Minutes 57 Seconds
At the end of each semester students in Econ 1101 Principles of Microeconomics at Emmanuel College create their own podcast to demonstrate their ability to apply microeconomic concepts to their world and to use those terms, theories and tenets of micro to understand and evaluate the world around them. Each semester I pick a few of my favorites to post here on AudioEcon. Check out the ‘Podlearning: Student podcast‘ page to listen and learn for yourself. This semester’s star topics include vaccine externalities, the economics of food banks and food insecurity, and a bartender’s eye view of the elasticity of alcohol.
Econ educators, check out the Podlearning page for assignment descriptions and tips to implement student-created podcasts in your classes!
Link: https://www.aeaweb.org/research/dna-databases-deterrence-detection-doleac
Professor Jennifer Doleac discusses how registering offenders in a DNA database make them much less likely to be convicted of another crime in coming years. Doleac also speaks to the importance of economists when studying crime and how policy makers should consider the tradeoff between privacy and effective policing measures.
Citation: Anker, Anne Sofie Tegner, Jennifer L. Doleac, and Rasmus Landersø. 2021. “The Effects of DNA Databases on the Deterrence and Detection of Offenders.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 13 (4): 194-225.
Original Air Date: October 27, 2021
Length: 20 Minutes 25 Seconds
Even before the pandemic, childcare has been inaccessible and too expensive for families. Experts Beth Mattingly and Tom Weber discuss the childcare crisis and the impact it has on parents, the labor force, and the economy.
Original Air Date: October 29, 2021
Length: 26 Minutes 19 Seconds
Link: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/sports-gambling/
About 60 million people across the US and Canada play fantasy sports. Fantasy revenues in the US alone are around $8 billion a year. With sports betting illegal in some states, the fantasy sports company FanDual asked M.I.T professor Peko Hosoi and her team to determine if the contests were based on skill or luck. With this unregulated industry growing, there are concerns about the effects it will have on society, real-life sports, and the younger generations.
Original Air Date: September 4, 2019
Length: 55 minutes 23 seconds
Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000540488241
Federal student loan interest and payments are set to resume after January for about 45 million Americans who carry an astounding $1.8 trillion in student debt. Louise Seamster, a sociologist at the University of Iowa, discusses wealth disparities between black and white borrowers and how student debt shapes the lives of young people. Seamster also considers solutions to the student debt crisis, one of which includes debt cancellation.
Original Air Date: November 2, 2021
Length: 58 Minutes 11 Seconds
In mid-October, Congress raised the national debt limit to prevent defaulting. This episode discusses how the United States got into this mess, where all this debt comes from, who came up with the idea of a debt ceiling, and what happened when it was paid off.
Date Posted: September 29, 2021
Length: 21 Minutes 12 Seconds
Link: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/20/1047777081/keep-calm-its-just-the-bullwhip-effect
As we already know, the whole world is struggling to get items shipped to distributors because of supply chain issues. The Beergame App, created by logistics expert Mathais Le Scaon, uses the demand of cases of beer to demonstrate the bullwhip effect, where small fluctuations in demand at the retail level cause increasing larger fluctuations up the supply chain. After participating in the game, members of tPlanet Money’s indicator team find that fixing the supply chain is no simple task.
Original Air Date: October 20, 2021
Length: 9 minutes 52 seconds
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