It can be tempting to think one thing causes another because they happen in succession, but there’s a lot to unwrap in the idea of causality. This week, If/Then is featuring an episode from the podcast All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions. Listen as hosts and finance professors Jonathan Berk and Jules van Binsbergen explain the difference between correlation and causality, and examine cases where it is tempting to assume one thing caused another. Their guest for this episode, Guido Imbens, is a professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2021.

All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions Podcast is a production of Stanford GSB and is produced by University FM. It is hosted by Jonathan Berk, The A.P. Giannini Professor of Finance at Stanford GSB, and Jules van Binsbergen, The Nippon Life Professor in Finance, Professor of Finance, at The Wharton School. Each episode provides insight into how to make better decisions.

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To wrap up the first season of If/Then: Business, Leadership, Society, we invited Senior Associate Dean Jesper B. Sørensen into the studio to talk about the importance of research at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He shares insights on what motivates faculty to study what they do and how it impacts practitioners across industries.

“One of the challenges of being a great researcher is that you need to move away again from this kind of day-to-day reality.… I think a gift that a lot of our faculty have is to be able to both live in that very abstract kind of world and then make it relatable to somebody who’s not living in that world,” Sørensen says.

“Sometimes putting fundamental insights into practice is really hard. One of the hallmarks of research is trying to isolate particular mechanisms through various kinds of control. Scientists live in the world where it’s a vacuum, and so we just watch the leaf fall and we can then time it and then tell you what the answer is,” Sørensen says. “And managers live in a world where the wind is blowing and there’s all these kinds of forces getting in the way.”

In his conversation with podcast host Kevin Cool, Sørensen also shares his thoughts on three episodes from If/Then’s first season.

If/Then is a podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business that examines research findings that can help us navigate the complex issues we face in business, leadership, and society. Each episode features an interview with a Stanford GSB faculty member.

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While our team starts working on our second season, we'll still be sharing insights, bonus content, behind-the-scenes audio, and "class takeaways" from Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty throughout the summer. Stay Tuned!

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