Planet Money Summer School

Let’s call it the luxury of restraint. This is what enabled Norway to avoid the fate of so many other countries when they discovered oil and it changed the mix of their economy overnight.

Norway! It’s expensive, wealthy, and abundant in resources. We’re going to compare two of them in particular today: deep reservoirs of oil and icy waters full of salmon. While one resource was heavily in demand, the country had an oversupply of the other.

In this episode, we learn how Norway built its wealth by carefully avoiding the pitfalls of discovering oil that have plagued countries in the past and how it creatively created demand for its raw fish abroad.

How do you dodge the dreaded resource curse? What clever ways can you benefit from oversupply? And lastly, how do you get rich and stay that way?

Featured Episodes:
Norway Has Advice For Libya (2011)
The Salmon Taboo (2015)

Featured Terms:
Resource curse / Dutch disease / paradox of plenty
Coordination problem
Free-rider problem

Support:
NPR+

Read: 
Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (Audiobook here) 
Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter
Our weekly Indicator link round-up newsletter

Follow: 
Instagram
TikTok
YouTube
Facebook

This episode of Planet Money Summer School is hosted by Robert Smith. It was produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre and edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo with help from Annlie Huang and Robert Rodriguez.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Let’s head to a small town in Kenya that’s become globally famous for helping economists answer some of the biggest questions facing humanity.

In Kenya and Nigeria, economics isn’t just theory, it’s real life. We’ll look at some radical experiments that turned out to be enormously successful.

What are the building blocks of health, education and prosperity for all? How does a nation grow rich? What is the most effective way to spend a dollar to fight poverty? We find answers in a town that became the laboratory for new concepts in economic research that netted some researchers the most prestigious prize in economics.

Featured Episodes:
How randomized trials and the town of Busia, Kenya changed economics (2023)
Nigeria, You Win! (2016)

Featured Terms:
Randomized controlled trial
Human capital
Missing middle

Support:
Planet Money+

Read: 
Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (Audiobook here) 
Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter
Our weekly Indicator link round-up newsletter

Follow: 
Instagram
TikTok
YouTube
Facebook

The series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark. This episode was fact-checked by Leyla Doss, with engineering by Annlie Huang.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

China’s turbocharged growth may have made it rich, but now it has to deal with rich country problems. 

High-speed trains that connect every town. Gleaming new bridges and skyscrapers. An apartment (or two) for every family. No country on Earth has seen the kind of economic growth that China has over the last 50 years. China has become the factory to the world, a grand experiment in central government planning mixed with personal ambition. 

It was all enabled by what our guide for today calls, an engineering state, a central planning mindset where leaders believe they can engineer their way out of economic problems. And problems are mounting. 

Today on the show, the perils of prosperity and the despair of success as China deals with overbuilding. 

We’ll travel back to China’s free-wheeling boom-era of the early 2000s and hang out with a property developer who amassed his wealth at the center of the action – private jet rides, thousand-dollar fish soup, casual bribes. Then, as the economy slows, we ask what can we learn from the despair of success. Does rising youth unemployment signal a less prosperous future? With young people struggling to find white-collar jobs, some of them are opting out of work altogether. 

Featured Episodes:
China’s real estate crisis, explained (2023) 
Young, “spoiled and miserable” in China (2023) 

Featured Terms: 
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
Engineering State
Malinvestment

Support:
Planet Money+
Read: 
Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (Audiobook here) 
Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter
Our weekly Indicator link round-up newsletter
Dan Wang’s book: Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

Follow: 
Instagram
TikTok
YouTube
Facebook
This episode of Planet Money Summer School is hosted by Robert Smith. It was produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Maggie Luthar. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark.

Music: NPR Source Audio - "Setting up," "Almost Anywhere," "Malibu Sunsets," "Dust or Smoke," "This New Year Sham."

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Come along as we travel the world in search of the best economic ideas to bring home!

From the beaches of Barbuda to the fjords of Norway, there's money (and money problems) everywhere. For this summer travel season, Planet Money Summer School will take you on a world tour for your ears. Pack that sense of wonder and nose for adventure, this is our semester abroad. We’re going to explore exotic locales and discover cultural norms, but we’re also going to buckle down and learn the biggest economic lessons around the world from our guides.

We start as far away as you can get from Planet Money headquarters, New Zealand and Australia. We’ll visit a sheep farm to observe an innovative but controversial market for the most important substance on earth, and we’ll ask when do speculators help and when do they hurt the rest of us? Then, we’ll get to know the economist – and jazz musician – who changed how the entire world fights inflation when he released a secret number to tame the dreaded wild beast. How did that work? Spoiler: it was the great leap forward in economic mind tricks.

Featured Episodes:
Liquid Markets (2021)
The Secret Target (2018)

Featured Terms:
Multiple equilibria
Inflation targeting
Speculators (impact on liquidity)

Support:
Planet Money+

Read: 
Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (Audiobook here) 
Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter
Our weekly Indicator link round-up newsletter

Follow: 
Instagram
TikTok
YouTube
Facebook

This episode of Planet Money Summer School is hosted by Robert Smith. It was produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Annlie Huang with help from Robert Rodriguez.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy

Get your own personalized summer school diploma here.

Today on our final episode of Summer School 2025, we will test your knowledge. We will salute the unsung heroes of government service. And we will pick our valedictorian from among you of the class of 2025.

Editorial Note:

President Trump attempted to fire Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee to the Federal Reserve Board. Our daily podcast, The Indicator, has coverage on their latest episode. We’ll have an episode in the Planet Money feed soon, in the meantime, here’s some background listening on why this is so important.

Years before she joined the Fed, we profiled the work of Lisa Cook. Listen here.

Also these:

Happy Fed Independence Day
A primer on the Federal Reserve's independence
The case for Fed independence in the Nixon tapes
Turkey's runaway inflation problem
Arthur Burns: shorthand for Fed failure?
Should presidents have more of a say in interest rates?
Can the Federal Reserve stay independent?
It's hard out there for a Fed chair

The series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Eric Mennel. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Emily Crawford.

Always free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.

Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.

Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

NPR Privacy Policy