So you want to help people? That’s great — but beware the law of unintended consequences. Three stories from the modern workplace.    SOURCES: Joshua Angrist, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zoe Cullen, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Marina Gertsberg, senior lecturer in finance at the University of Melbourne.   RESOURCES: "Is Pay Transparency Good?" by Zoë Cullen (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2024). "DP18969 Economics Coauthorships in the Aftermath of MeToo," by Noriko Amano-Patino, Elisa Faraglia ..read more

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman — a Nobel laureate and the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow — recently died at age 90. Along with his collaborator Amos Tversky, he changed how we all think about decision-making. The journalist Michael Lewis told the Kahneman-Tversky story in a 2016 book called The Undoing Project. In this episode, Lewis explains why they had such a profound influence.   SOURCE: Michael Lewis, writer.   RESOURCES: The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis (2016). Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman (2011). The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine ..read more

People who are good at their jobs routinely get promoted into bigger jobs they’re bad at. We explain why firms keep producing incompetent managers — and why that’s unlikely to change.   SOURCES: Nick Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University. Katie Johnson, freelance data and analytics coach. Kelly Shue, professor of finance at the Yale University School of Management. Steve Tadelis, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business.   RESOURCES: “People Management Skills, Employee Attrition, and Manager Rewards: An Empiri ..read more

Fareed Zakaria says yes. But it’s not just political revolution — it’s economic, technological, even emotional. He doesn’t offer easy solutions but he does offer some hope.   SOURCES: Fareed Zakaria, journalist and author.   RESOURCES: Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, by Fareed Zakaria (2024). "The Ultimate Election Year: All the Elections Around the World in 2024," by Koh Ewe (TIME, 2023). "The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism," by Vanessa Williamson, Theda Skocpol, and John Coggin (Perspectives on Politics, 2011). The P ..read more

The political debates over immigration can generate a lot of fuzzy facts.  We wanted to test Americans’ knowledge — so, to wrap up our special series on immigration, we called some Freakonomics Radio listeners and quizzed them.   SOURCES: Zeke Hernandez, professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.   RESOURCES: The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers, by Zeke Hernandez (2024, available for pre-order).   EXTRA: “The True Story of America’s Supremely Messed-Up Immigration System,” series by Freakonomics Radio ..read more

As the U.S. tries to fix its messy immigration system, our neighbor to the north is scooping up more talented newcomers every year. Are the Canadians stealing America’s bacon? (Part three of a three-part series.)   SOURCES: Zeke Hernandez, professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. William Kerr, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. David Leonhardt, senior writer at the New York Times. Sindhu Mahadevan, creator of This Immigrant Life newsletter. Marc Miller, Member of Parliament and Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship of ..read more

The U.S. immigration system is a massively complicated machine, with a lot of worn-out parts. How to fix it? Step one: Get hold of some actual facts and evidence. (We did this step for you.) (Part two of a three-part series.)   SOURCES: Zeke Hernandez, professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. David Leonhardt, senior writer at the New York Times. Sindhu Mahadevan, creator of This Immigrant Life newsletter.   RESOURCES: The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers, by Zeke Hernandez (2024, available for pre-order). "Illegal Im ..read more

She arrived in the U.S. as an 11-year-old refugee, then rose to become Secretary of State. Her views on immigration, nationalism, and borders, from this 2015 interview, are almost strangely appropriate to the present moment.    SOURCE: Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.   RESOURCES: "Madeleine Albright, First Woman to Serve as Secretary of State, Dies at 84," by Robert D. McFadden (The New York Times, 2022). "The Case for Getting Rid of Borders — Completely," by Alex Tabarrok (The Atla ..read more

How did a nation of immigrants come to hate immigration? We start at the beginning, sort through the evidence, and explain why your grandfather was lying about Ellis Island. (Part one of a three-part series.)   SOURCES: Leah Boustan, professor of economics at Princeton University. Zeke Hernandez, professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Roger Nam, professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory University.   RESOURCES: The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers, by Zeke Hernandez (2024, available for pre-order). "The Refugee Advantage ..read more

Economists have discovered an odd phenomenon: many people who use social media (even you, maybe?) wish it didn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean they can escape.   SOURCES: Leonardo Bursztyn, professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Benjamin Handel, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.   RESOURCES: "When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media," by Leonardo Bursztyn, Benjamin Handel, Rafael Jimenez, and Christopher Roth (NBER Working Paper, 2023). "Social Media and Xenophobia: Evidence from Russia," by Leonardo Bu ..read more