Of Significance

Employers are rolling out Large Language Models to take over their traditional hiring practices and this is creating opportunities for litigation up and down the hiring pipeline. To talk about this and other issues surrounding AI's use in hiring, Nathan, Steve, and Brent are joined by Allan G. King for his expert legal analysis.

The Department of Labor is proposing yet another rule change to classification of independent contractors and so Brent, Nathan, and Steve are here to make sense of what the criteria was, is, and will potentially be in this episode that’s all about economic independence and what work makes you an employee.

Nathan, Brent, and Steve talk about the prevailing wage, how it’s calculated, and why the statistics around it can dramatically change incentives and behavior. Brent finds a new way to rank himself.

This is the final episode in a series on Sports Statistics where Nathan, Steve, and Brent explore the mathematical thinking deployed by professional sports teams. In this episode, they look at point scoring strategies in basketball and baseball to understand whether people respond to new data or if some strategies are simply suboptimal.

This is the second episode in a series on Sports Statistics where Nathan, Steve, and Brent explore the mathematical thinking deployed by professional sports teams. In this episode, they are once again joined by Sush Jain to explore the concept of momentum: how well is a team doing and how well will they keep doing before things turn around?

This is the first episode in a series on Sports Statistics where Nathan, Steve, and Brent explore the mathematical thinking deployed by professional sports teams. In this episode, they are joined by Sush Jain to finally figure out if the famous Hot Hand is a statistical reality or a mathematical myth.

The European Union is requiring companies to report on pay differences for equally valued work within member states and it means companies need to start doing these analyses before it’s too late. To talk about the complexity of the new mandate and the ways these pay analyses are different from a US context, Nathan, Brent, and Steve are joined by Chris Jones of Paul Hastings. They’re going across the pond to cross reference their numbers!

Nathan, Brent, and Steve wish the Stat Pack a happy holiday by going through Spotify Wrapped's calculation techniques and share some of their own data and Spotify ages.

It’s been a big year for Supreme Court cases, and in the Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services decision the Court reviewed the standards required in evaluating evidence of discrimination. Nathan, Brent, and Steve are on the case (metaphorically) as they talk through how, in light of the decision, things are going to change and how they’ll stay the same when it comes to pay equity analyses.

It's simple: celebrate with people you love! Steve, Nathan, and Brent have a Thanksgiving message for the whole Stat Pack!

Steve, Nathan, and Brent take a look at lost earnings in light of the Skaggs’ wrongful death litigation and talk about the considerations that have to be made when accounting for the but-for world.

Halloween is here, but are the job opportunities for recent graduates? Brent, Nathan, and Steve enter a veritable haunted house of data to make sense of Federal Reserve unemployment and underemployment numbers to see if there are true terrors or if bad assumptions need unmasking.

Federal law enforcement is in Washington, DC and with the city’s stats under the magnifying glass, Brent, Nathan, and Steve thought they should look into the numbers and see if they can keep their stories straight. How has crime changed in the city? How would we know if numbers were misreported? What will happen to crime rates when the federal troops leave? The Stat Pack tries to tackle all of this and more in this episode on the data problems of crime statistics.

New numbers mean new analyses and Brent, Nathan, and Steve are here to talk about the Bureau of Labor Statistics major update this month. It’s as close to breaking news as they get with a dissection of how to think about these statistics, what the data is hiding, and the challenges the BLS will face going forward.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) drew a great deal of attention in August with jobs number revisions for May and June far below the projected job growth. Additionally, with cuts to their consumer price data collection, Nathan, Brent, and Steve thought it would be worth the time to explore how these numbers are collected, the problems people will make in interpreting them, and whether there’s cause for concern on the nature of data collection by the government going forward.

With the US getting ready to co-host the World Cup in 2026, Nathan, Steve, and Brent kick around some of the economic issues surrounding the World Cup and the countries that host it. But their roster isn’t complete without anti-trust expert (and soccer fan!) Sophie Meadows. This episode is all about accounting for the things that are hard to account for and Steve tries to determine the value of happiness.

With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed, Nathan, Steve, and Brent look under the hood on one of the most discussed provisions relating to hourly workers: No Tax on Overtime. They talk about how workers and employers might respond to the new incentives, where the gains will go, and the potential risks employers will face as they look to optimize their employment practices given the benefits of the provision.

When multinational companies move products within their organization and across borders, the value of production has to be considered for tax purposes. This might be fairly straightforward for a tangible good, but with intangibles? Well, that gets more complicated. So to investigate all of this, Brent and Steve talk with transfer pricing and anti-trust expert Dr. George Korenko about what matters in these calculations and why they’re important.

Tulsa, OK was one of the first cities to implement a program where they offer remote workers money to relocate to the city for a year in the hopes they can convince people to stick around longer and create economic growth. Thankfully, someone wrote a paper analyzing the impact of this policy so Steve, Nathan, and Brent decide to dig in and sensitivity test the assumptions of the paper, understand the alleged benefits of the program, and apply economic thinking to what may be missing from the equation.

Brent, Nathan, and Steve have been hearing about some major mergers in the news and want to understand who lets mergers happen, how they get approved, and the analytic questions that go in to thinking about potentially anti-competitive mergers. So they bring on mergers and acquisitions expert Dr. Craig Malam in this perfect blend of American and Australian thinking.

So you missed the job/didn’t get the promotion/got fired – how should we think about what you lost out on? In this episode, Brent, Nathan, and Steve explore the calculation decisions and assumptions you have to make in order to assess what would have happened to someone if everything was different. They get into the limitations of modeling and the various sources of bad empirical thinking in but-for calculations.

Pull up a chair with Nathan, Steve, and Brent as they talk about the economic theory and reality of the black market for dinner reservations with Dr. Jesse David. How are incentives distorted by restaurant culture and should people have to pay to have a seat at the table?

In the dramatic follow-up to their groundbreaking talk about H-1B visas, Nathan, Brent, and Steve talk about the H-2B visa program (non-agricultural temporary workers) with Elliot Delahaye. Are the analytics off about how the program operates? How can we use data to determine if American workers are harmed or helped? All of these questions (and more!) are answered in this action packed sequel!

Steve, Nathan, and Brent are talking about the fact there are more than two ways you can reject a hypothesis. They have some new ideas for randomized controlled trials that will never happen.

With the March Madness over, Nathan, Steve, and Brent wanted to consider whether the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and player portal transfer changes have made a difference in March Madness. They question whether the Cinderella story is truly ended or if media reporting is calling it midnight early.

Brent, Nathan, and Steve are joined by John Lassetter of Littler Mandelson to discuss recent donning and doffing litigation and other “work off the clock” allegations. How does this relate to remote employees? What is the role of personal devices when keeping track of clocking in and out?

The Oscars have Steve, Brent, and Nathan wondering how much an Oscar award is worth and why studios want to get them in the first place. To help sort through the box office economics, they bring back anti-trust/false advertising expert and filmmaker Sushrut Jain and explore the ways studios actually make money and their underlying incentives.

Nathan, Steve, and Brent are joined by anti-trust and pharmaceutical consulting/testifying expert Dr. Tram Nguyen to help make sense of how complicated the pricing for drugs actually is, why the industry is organized the way it is, and how purchasers go about disputing pricing decisions for brand names versus generics.Do they solve the problems of the healthcare industry? Not even close. Do they understand a little bit more about how it works? Yes, ever so slightly!

With the H-1B visa program becoming a discussion in national discourse, Nathan and Brent thought it was worth checking in on their resident H-1B visa expert, Steve, to understand what the program is, what it isn’t, and how to make sense of its effect on the American economy.

California implemented an increase on minimum wages for limited service restaurants with more than 60 locations nationwide and it seems like the effects might not have been as dire as critics predicted. Steve, Nathan, and Brent dig deeper on the policy change and explore how much more there is to the story. 

Nathan, Brent, and Steve take a look at a study done by Trip.com on the effect of allowing worker’s to work remotely versus a mandatory return to office. As always, you’ve got to be careful with how you interpret things, but good data is good data!

As more companies integrate AI models into various business functions, concerns have been raised about the possibility of competitors relying on each others' proprietary data to set unfair prices for consumers. In this episode, Brent, Nathan, and Steve talk to antitrust expert Mike Kheyfets to understand the potential competition issues AI poses and what economics can tell us about algorithmic pricing.

It's the holidays, which makes it time for economists to opine about how people should be giving gifts the right way and Nathan, Steve, and Brent question those intuitions. As a bonus gift, they try to breakdown why Christmas seems so come early every year! (You've always got to follow the incentives!)

So you need to remember how regressions work. Don't worry about it because Brent, Nathan, and Steve are here to walk you through the right way to think about regressions and what they are or aren't good for. This is a conceptual look at regression techniques so you don't have to have taken high level mathematics to pick up what they're putting down.

Thanksgiving is here and Steve, Nathan, and Brent celebrate by talking about a major change in NFL rules regarding kickoffs. Do they result in more injuries? Do you get a more active game? The Stat Pack carves into details about the rule and they play a side Thanksgiving food game.

The FTC has put forward a rule banning non-compete agreements and Brent, Nathan, and Steve are here to investigate. Why do people sign non-competes in the first place? Would incomes rise if this restriction weren't on the labor market? How would we know? These are all questions the Stat Pack asks so bask in their task and try to relax!

In their first Halloween holiday episode, Nathan, Steve, and Brent talk about some ghoulishly bad statistics and have a bloody good time doing it! Are vampires real? What's the scariest movies? And what are their favorite Halloween traditions? You'll be terrified. KEYWORDSstatistics, vampires, horror movies, Halloween, data analysis, heart rate, spooky season, traditions, methodology, fear

With the excitement of the presidential election comes a wave of data and hidden assumptions that Brent, Nathan, and Steve are ready to call out. In the groundbreaking follow-up to their Ample Ramble on Sampling that dig into a major problem with sampling: non-response bias. We look forward to your response! KEYWORDS sampling, surveys, non-response bias, political polls, job surveys, data accuracy, BLS, election data, statistical analysis, survey methodology

It's one of the most fundamental characteristics of statistics and Steve, Nathan, and Brent work through it with a hint of grace, a touch of dignity, and bit of fun: it's sampling! If you listen to a minute of this episode will that have been as representative of a sample as you need? Probably best to just listen to the whole thing then. Keywords sampling, representative sample, consulting, testifying, data, misclassification, off-the-clock work, sample size, question design, class certification

Are the kids alright? Are they working hard enough? Steve, Nathan, and Brent break down the drama around summer employment among the youths and talk about some of the summer jobs they used to have. They try to include some references for the Gen Z listeners (emphasis on "try").

Summary In a podcast first, Nathan, Steve, and Brent interview false advertising expert, Sush Jain, about how a false advertising claim works, how damages are potentially assessed, and why the market for goods can be so confusing. No doubting it here: this episode is pure podcast gold.   Keywords false advertising, class actions, consumer claims, truth and falsehood, advertising claims, economic experts, damages, materiality, consumer surveys, harm to consumers

Summary Brent, Steve, and Nathan take a look at the age old adage "Correlation does not imply causation" and how people seem to still miss how to think about what factors are related. They become real control freaks when it comes to what goes into their tests. Keywords correlation, causation, sugar intake, activity levels, randomized controlled trials, observational data, confounding factors, theory, hypothesis testing, identification

Brent and Nathan plumb the depths of Steve’s mind to get to the bottom of the question on everybody’s mind: is there anything that Steve Bronars doesn’t know about the unemployment rate? Listen to find out! Spoiler: the answer is “probably”.

Nathan, Brent, and Steve finally take on academic elites and their out of control theories about human capital, how it's measured, and whether it's important. Just kidding, this is a classic, balanced episode about human capital in theory and practice that's completely hinged. This episode doesn't just have economics though: it's also got science and art (kind of)!

Problem: You've got to make sure you hire a proportionate distribution from the people applying to your company. Solution: Make a benchmark. Problem: You don't know what the right benchmark is. Solution: Listen to Steve, Nathan, and Brent talk about better ways to think about the characteristics one should be looking for in a benchmark. Problem: Oh wait, there are no other problems...

In the case of Muldrow v. St Louis, the Supreme Court changed the standard required to show discrimination by employers. Brent, Nathan, and Steve chat about how this could change the way we investigate these kinds of cases and Brent has ideas about what companies could be keeping better track of when it comes to employee activity.

Let's get meta right off the bat as Nathan, Brent, and Steve think about how we think about what's important. In this kickoff episode, they dive deep into the different ways things matter or mislead and Steve reminisces about a poll that came out when he was a wee lad.

Edgeworth Economics is excited to introduce our brand-new podcast: “Of Significance.” Expert economists Dr. Nathan Woods, Dr. Steve Bronars, and Brent Butgereit come together with many decades of combined economic experience for this biweekly podcast in which they dissect issues relevant to the current economic landscape. It’s the behind-the-scenes conversations about data analytics and statistics that they do want you to hear. Now you too can have practical insights to look smart in front of your clients and friends!