Sweeter than ice cream, more useful than sunscreen, better than a day at the beach: Planet Money Summer School is back!
This year, Planet Money Summer School is taking your brain on a trip around the world in search of the best business ideas to take home with you. For more than 15 years, we’ve packed our microphones and traveled the world in search of people and stories that explain how business really works. We’re really proud to be one of the few podcasts doing this for business stories. That’s why this summer we’re revisiting some of our favorite places, people and stories—and pairing those stories with new conversations with the economists best suited to unveil the big ideas behind them.
(You can listen to past seasons of Planet Money Summer School here. We’ve covered economic history, investing, and the basics of micro and macroeconomics, among other topics.)
Episodes will be released every Wednesday through Labor Day Planet money Podcast feed.
In Episode 1 we see how Australia used a market to make the most of scarce water resources. But at the same time it invited speculators to profit from the water. So who wins? Then we meet the New Zealand economist – who is also a jazz musician – who invented one of the most influential ideas in modern central banking: inflation targeting.
In future episodes, we travel to Norway to learn how a nation can overcome the paradox of abundance (the resource curse) to get rich and stay rich while selling its excess resources to the rest of the world. In China we see what happens when you run an economy like an engineer, and the dangers of overbuilding.
Everywhere we stop, we gather innovative ideas worth borrowing (or avoiding). By the time the series ends at the end of August, we probably won’t have solved all the world’s problems. But we hope we’ve gathered enough good ideas for some good conversations – or maybe even a few ideas worth pestering your elected officials about.
Thank you to everyone who has sent us ideas so far. Timothy, who lived in Taiwan, told us he was impressed by how easy it was to file taxes there.
“You simply used a government-provided downloadable program to complete your taxes – no complex loopholes, deductions, etc.,” he writes. “It took me maybe 30 minutes to finish it.”
Timothy says he would love to see the US adopt something similar. “I know the lucrative tax preparation industry would be vocally opposed,” he writes, “but their accountants could find new jobs.”
Kate writes about informal savings groups known as ROSCAs (Rotating Savings and Credit Associations). “They exist everywhere, from West Africa to Latin America and parts of Asia, and millions of people rely on them instead of banks,” she writes. “At first glance, they seem irrational. Why would you give your money to a group when you could simply save it yourself? But once you get into them, they become a fascinating story about economics, trust, bonding tools, social capital and financial inclusion.”
What is the most interesting business idea you have encountered while traveling or abroad?
Send us your ideas: planetmoney@npr.org. Type “Summer School” in the subject line. In our final episode we will share some of our favorite posts.
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2026/07/21/g-s1-134281/the-best-economic-ideas-from-around-the-world-planet-money-summer-school-is-back
