Seeing the World Through a Lens Colored By Risk

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Economist Allison Schrager, this week's guest on Master's in Business, thinks a lot about risk. She is the co-founder of LifeCycle Finance Partners, and risk colors the topics she researches and writes about, especially when researching people working in unusual industries – think big-wave surfers, poker players, paparazzi and horse breeders.

Her research led her to analyze a dataset of 1.2 million transactions for the online prostitution industry. The result of that was a column about the economics of sex workers, and how they manage the risks associated with their trade. That led her to the Bunny Ranch in Nevada to further study sex pricing.  

In our conversation, Schrager explains how this experience resulted in the book, “An Economist Walks into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.” Schrager tells how she learned that the Bunny Ranch has a training program because employees must negotiate the price of each transaction with customers – and many of them don't know the true market value of the work they perform.

Her favorite books are here.

You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras on Apple iTunes, Bloomberg, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Castbox and Stitcher. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite hosts can be found here.

Next week we speak with Nathan Sheets, head of global macroeconomic research at Pgim Inc.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Barry Ritholtz is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He founded Ritholtz Wealth Management and was chief executive and director of equity research at FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

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