Decode Econ is a startup. Our goal is to help you see the economy clearly — and your place in it. It is a media firm with a mission to improve economic understanding. It is fun building it and seeing its impact, but the biggest joy is in working with the team that makes this work possible. I love working with young professionals and current students. They bring energy and creativity, and in return I mentor them on public engagement and translating research into impact. It is a win-win situation. This week, we sat down with Frannie and Claire to talk about experiential learning through on-the-job work at Decode Econ.They talked about how working at Decode Econ has taught them so much about economics and business, but also about teamwork, creativity, and understanding your audience. Most importantly, they discussed how they grew their adaptability muscle.The classroom only gets you halfway.Claire told me she joined Decode Econ because of my macro class. She learned to love the content, but she appreciated my class more for the energy I brought to a silent classroom on day one, which made her feel comfortable speaking up.Frannie said something similar about her marketing classes: the value wasn’t the frameworks, it was “being able to be applicable and actually figure it out for myself” before getting thrown into a real job.This tells me that the actual value of what we do is to help our students transfer knowledge and skills into action.Confidence isn’t taught. It’s built in reps.Claire shares with us that her turning point in college was showing up to observe the Haile research lab, staying silent for a while, then finally speaking up. Each exposure helped her open up new doors to new opportunities. Opportunity rewards students who are already in the room.My favorite moment: Frannie was on campus for an unrelated meeting when Dr. Raska (Chair of Marketing, Sports Business, and Construction Management) passed by and, on a whim, invited her, on the spot, to tour a market research firm partnering with our college. There was no calendar invite and no time for her to prepare. She said yes anyway. Being present helped her open a new door and expand her network. Adaptability is the actual labor market skill, and startups teach it for free.Both students described Decode Econ’s early days as constant pivoting. The daily changes in direction that, at first, felt like personal failure. Frannie said she used to wonder, “Did I do something wrong?” every time we changed course. It wasn’t her. It was a small team figuring out its audience in real time, which is exactly what most of their future employers will also be doing.This is the argument I’d make directly to other business and econ educators: if you want to teach adaptability, you cannot lecture it into existence. You have to put students inside genuine ambiguity — a live project, a startup, a research team— and let them feel the discomfort of the pivot. That discomfort is the curriculum; do not shy away from it.Pick the manager and team over the salaryThat was a big takeaway from this conversation.If you are interested in supporting the students or have projects you want to work on together, please reach out. Students are funded through consulting projects, public speaking engagement, sponsorship, and gifts.Timestamps00:00 — Economic literacy has to meet Gen Z where they already are02:18 — Frannie’s background: marketing coursework meets real-world application07:05 — Claire’s origin story: how one macro class built her classroom confidence09:31 — Building confidence through low-stakes reps at the research lab14:17 — Purpose and impact: why Gen Z engagement is the point, not a side effect19:09 — FOMO as a signal of investment21:25 — Career advice: pick the manager and team over the salary23:54 — Naming and working through perfectionism and imposter syndrome31:05 — What community inside a startup actually provides

Today’s episode is a special one. It’s a cross-collaboration with Beyond the Degree, the podcast from Haile Graduate Programs — so if you like hearing how executives and researchers actually make decisions, that show belongs in your feed too.

My guest is Dr. Jose Saavedra Torres, my next-door neighbor at Haile College of Business and one of my closest collaborators on campus. Jose studies why we trust the people who sell to us online, and every time you buy something because someone on your phone told you to, you’re making an economic decision without realizing it. That’s what we unpacked on the show.

Here’s the distinction Jose kept coming back to, and it’s the one most people get wrong. Credibility is about knowledge — can I trust this person’s expertise? Authenticity is about honesty — is this person being true to their own values?

Those two things sound similar. They’re not. Marketers have been optimizing for credibility for years. Jose’s research says authenticity is the bigger lever.

The reason authenticity moves people is something called a parasocial relationship — a one-sided bond where you feel like you know someone who has no idea you exist. Jose put it well: Cristiano Ronaldo has 900 million followers who feel like his buddies. He doesn’t know a single one of them.

This changes the actual mechanics of a purchase. Normally you search, compare, then decide. When an influencer you trust recommends something, you skip straight to the decision — your brain already did the research for you, because it thinks that person is your friend. I’ve done this myself. I’ve bought books off a single video, no research, because I trusted the person recommending it. Sometimes it’s great. Sometimes it’s a total miss for my taste. That’s the trade-off of buying on trust instead of evidence.

Jose’s advice for anyone building an audience, or any brand hiring one: authenticity lives or dies on consistency. Pick almost any big influencer — Mr. Beast is his go-to example. If Mr. Beast showed up tomorrow promoting anti-aging skincare, you’d feel the mismatch immediately. There’s no story connecting who he is to what he’s selling, and that gap is exactly what triggers skepticism.

This isn’t just a hunch Jose has from watching his daughters trust an influencer he was skeptical of — though that’s literally how the research started. It’s now a peer-reviewed finding. Jose and his co-authors surveyed 504 consumers and found that influencer authenticity significantly predicts both brand engagement and parasocial relationships, and that the fit between an influencer and the product they’re pushing measurably strengthens that effect.

Banerjee, N., Rawal, M., Saavedra Torres, J. L., & Bagherzadeh, R. (2025). Beyond the Facade: Exploring the Authenticity of Social Media Influencers and Its Influence on Consumer Brand Engagement and Advocacy. Journal of Promotion Management. https://doi.org/10.1080/10496491.2025.2571948

I think we’ve been asking the wrong question about influencer marketing. Everyone wants to know if an influencer is credible. The better question is whether they’re authentic — because credibility gets you a sale, authenticity gets you a customer for life. Brands chasing follower counts are optimizing for reach. Jose’s research says the money is in fit and honesty, not fame.

• Credibility vs. authenticity: credibility is expertise, authenticity is honesty — they’re not the same thing, and authenticity is the stronger driver of trust.

• Parasocial relationships change the decision process: consumers skip the research phase entirely when they trust the person recommending the product.

• Consistency protects authenticity: the moment an influencer’s endorsement doesn’t match who they are, skepticism kicks in.

• The data backs it up: read the full study — Beyond the Facade: Exploring the Authenticity of Social Media Influencers, Journal of Promotion Management (2025).

Here's what the data doesn't say: saving for retirement at 22 has an opportunity cost. Every $7,500 someone parks in a Roth IRA is $7,500 that isn't going toward tuition, a certification, or the thing that increases their income over the next twenty years. I've watched students skip a semester of school to save money. That is not what I would call financial literacy. We have pushed this generation to be savers at the expense of income potential. After 2008, we spent fifteen years telling people that the average American doesn't understand personal finance. We weren't wrong. But the lesson that we taught didn’t focus on understanding your options; it was to save every dollar, distrust Social Security, and never touch a Roth IRA. Gen Z is doing just that."Gen Z isn't saving optimally for the future. They're responding to fears that they won't have one."We also discussed Oman’s budget and strategy, and Alan Greenspan’s legacy. We ended the podcast with an audience question. Thank you for sharing those. If you have more, leave them in the comments. Subscribe to www.DecodeEcon.com• 00:00 — Is Gen Z saving too much, too early? The opportunity cost nobody talks about • 11:41 — The Roth IRA deep dive: tax advantages, income limits, and why personal finance is personal • 13:30 — The Oman case study: logistics diversification, Dutch disease, and the easy dollar problem • 23:35 — Alan Greenspan: moral hazard, irrational exuberance, and the AI parallel • 32:30 — Audience question

Wednesday's digest flagged the Levi's logo story in two sentences. This week's episode is the full decode — and it's worth watching, not just reading about.

Quick recap of where we left it: FIFA strips every sponsor logo off a host stadium, no exceptions. Levi's got blacked out like everyone else — except their silhouette happened to read like a comic-book bat symbol, someone turned it into a joke online, and Levi's leaned all the way in. Profile picture, and Reels. The post blew up. Their stock hit a two-year high the day after.

What Wednesday's digest didn't have room for: why this actually worked, economically. On the episode, Claire — who runs our Instagram — walks through the marketing mechanics in real time, and I get into why this is brand differentiation doing exactly what it's supposed to do. The value was never in how much logo space Levi's bought. It was in how distinct the moment felt next to every other forgettable sponsor placement. That's what lets a brand extract producer surplus — pull more value out of the market — without spending another marketing dollar to do it. Jack puts it best on the episode: stop measuring ad spend, start measuring ad outcomes.

We also discussed Levi's actual stock price the day after the post went viral, on camera — and the real story behind that number is messier than "marketing stunt moved the stock." That part doesn't read well in a newsletter recap. You kind of have to watch us work through it.

Then we move from the World Cup to the World Cup's other economics story this week (hydration breaks are not about hydration), and close out with our take on Kevin Warsh's first Fed press conference.

00:30 – Welcome Back to Decode Econ (Claire's 2nd Episode)

02:54 – How Levi's Turned a Logo Ban Into a Viral Moment

05:20 – Did It Actually Move Levi's Stock?

07:40 – FIFA's Hydration Breaks: Player Safety or Ad Revenue?

10:05 – For-Profit vs. Nonprofit: Why FIFA Still Maximizes Profit

12:27 – Is the World Cup Becoming Four Quarters?

14:50 – Kevin Warsh's First Fed Press Conference

17:06 – Should the Fed Say Less? Prediction Markets & Transparency

19:25 – Claire on Learning Economics Before Forming Opinions

21:51 – Claire Summer & Team Reflections

22:25 – Takeaways: Be Like FIFA

This week’s episode looked different. For the first time, Jack and I sat down at a table together instead of across the internet, and we brought a second student voice into the discussion.

Meet Claire

Claire Maddox is a first-year student; she starts her second year in August at the Haile College of Business, and she's my research assistant on a project we’re running this summer on housing affordability policy. This was her first episode, and the in-person setup was actually her idea. We weren’t sure if it would work. We think it did — but we want to hear from you. Tell us in the comments if you want more episodes like this one.

And do us a favor: this was Claire’s first time on the mic. Drop her a comment and welcome her to the show. First episodes are nerve-wracking — a little encouragement goes a long way.

Leave a comment

The jobs report looked fine on the surface: 170,000 jobs added, unemployment holding at 4.3%. But almost half of those jobs came from hospitality and leisure, and there’s a real chance a lot of that hiring is World Cup-driven and temporary. The number that actually worries me is long-term unemployment: over 2 million people have now been out of work for 26+ weeks. That’s not a “create more jobs” problem anymore — that’s a skills-depreciation problem, and it calls for a completely different policy response.

Then we layered in this week’s inflation data. CPI came in at 4.3%, PPI was close to 6.8%, and 80% of that increase was due to energy prices. Real wages went negative. So if your grocery and gas bills feel like they’re outrunning your paycheck, you’re not imagining it, the math backs you up.

And here’s the complication for the Fed: the market expects them to raise rates to fight inflation, but this isn’t a demand problem. Raising rates won’t touch energy and supply costs. It’ll just slow things down without solving the actual issue.

We also got into the economics of the World Cup (hosting it is probably a wash — or a loss — once you account for crowding-out effects), and a conversation about picking a major that I think is one of the more useful things we’ve said on this show: it’s not about whether your degree has “ROI.” It’s about whether you understand the risk profile of the path you’re choosing and budgeting accordingly.

Timestamps

• 0:40 – Welcome back + introducing Claire’s first episode

• 1:34 – Does hosting the World Cup actually pay off?

• 6:27 – The jobs report: 170K looks fine, until you look at long-term unemployment

• 11:48 – Real wages went negative — what that means for your wallet

• 12:34 – Claire’s take: how this economy hits students at the pump and the grocery store

• 13:08 – Rethinking the “is college worth it” question

• 22:22 – Retirement, the FIRE movement, and why doing nothing is harder than it sounds

One More Thing

Next week the Fed meets for the first time under Kevin Warsh. We’ll be watching that press conference closely — see you then.

Thanks for sharing this post with your community. Informed consumers and employees improve market outcomes for all.

The savings rate just hit 2.6%. Disposable income dropped for the second straight month. And somewhere under all the tariff headlines, a quiet shift in American family life is telling us something the Wall Street Journal got almost entirely wrong.

This week, Dr. A and Jack work through three data points that don't look related on the surface — falling savings, rising childcare costs, and fathers quietly cutting their work hours — and show why they're actually the same story.

The consumer is still spending, but they're running out of room to do it. When they stop, that's the beginning of something.

Plus: Dr. A's take on higher education's real problem. It's not AI. It's that faculty stopped explaining what they actually do.

01:00 — The personal savings rate: what it is, why it matters right now, and why Abdullah has been watching it

03:30 — Credit card debt, delinquency rates, and how much longer the consumer can hold this up

08:47 — The Wall Street Journal's childcare piece — and why Abdullah thinks they gave men too much credit

11:00 — The real driver: childcare costs are reshaping labor force participation, not culture

18:15 — Stock market reality check: what's holding the positive numbers up, and why Abdullah is personally preparing for Q3/Q4 weakness

24:00 — What students should do differently right now (and why office hours are underrated).

Want to receive our commentary via email? Subscribe at www.DecodeEcon.com

The Economy Is Messy. That’s the Point.

Consumer sentiment just hit its lowest level since the 1950s — yet Americans are still spending. Inflation is picking up, and your grocery bill is getting out of hand. Economists even have a name for what’s happening: doom spending — spending freely because the future feels too uncertain to save for.

This week on The Weekly Rap, Dr. A and Jack sit down with Dr. Cecilia Cuellar, research analyst at the Hibbs Institute at UT Tyler, to decode the gap between what the data says and what people actually feel.

Three things worth your time:

• Why uncertainty hasn’t changed — but the weight we give it has

• What doom spending reveals about how people really process economic fear

• The BRIC method: a karate-trained economist’s framework for navigating high-stakes uncertainty

Nobody Trusts the Numbers. (The Economy Is Fine. For Some People.)

73% of Americans say they're financially stable. That number is up 10 points from 2013. So why does nearly everyone say the economy isn't working for them?

Dr. A and Jack break down the K-shaped economy, congressional stock trading, prediction market addiction, and why trust — not data — is the real economic crisis right now.

In this episode:

00:00 — Welcome & intro

02:12 — The K-shaped economy: why the average hides the real story

06:50 — Economics has become the third rail — after religion and politics

09:15 — Congress is working less. Is that actually the problem?

12:04 — Gen Z, voting, and institutional trust

15:47 — Congressional stock trading: the incentive structure is broken

19:46 — Prediction markets are the new cigarette ads 22:40 — Capitalism runs on trust and hope — what happens when both erode

25:44 — Where to find us this week

Links & resources mentioned:

→ Washington Post: prediction market ads appear every 4 minutes during sports broadcasts

→ Senate committee meets this week to examine prediction market oversight

→ OGE financial disclosures: 3,700+ stock transactions tied to Trump portfolio in Q1 2026

Subscribe to the Decode Econ newsletter: Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — economics decoded without jargon, hype, or partisan framing.

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Decode Econ helps people understand what economics and data actually mean in the real world. Led by economist and educator Dr. Abdullah Al-Bahrani, the show translates data, policy, and research into clear, responsible analysis — without jargon, hype, or partisan framing.