I obviously know that correlation doesn’t imply causation, but sometimes I see a sequence of events and I’m like COME ON…case in point: same tbh https://t.co/9qS1WVoyV2 — Jodi Beggs (@jodiecongirl) September 13, 2018 And lo and behold, less than 12 hours later (focus your attention on the hovertext)… See what I’m saying?????? Hey world, I, … Continue reading "Ask And You Shall Receive, Economic Superhero Edition…"

Ok, I’m a little late with this, but, um, he might kind of have a point… In speaking with some of the world’s top business leaders I asked what it is that would make business (jobs) even better in the U.S. “Stop quarterly reporting & go to a six month system,” said one. That would … Continue reading "On the Revival of the “Quarterly Capitalism” Discussion"

We’ve officially gotten to the “actually insider trading is kind of fine” stage of the universe… Opinion | Show me the victims of insider trading. I’ll wait. Opinion | Show me the victims of insider trading. I’ll wait. Meanwhile, take an honest look at the ways the institutions you belong to manage to hoard the … Continue reading "Here are the Victims of Insider Trading, Hope I Didn’t Keep You Waiting Too Long…"

In learning about the music industry, I often think about how what behavioral experiments I would want to run if I had the proper resources/infrastructure/etc. Along these lines, one thing I’m curious about is how people’s willingness to pay for music is affected by the financial situation of the people creating the music- in other … Continue reading "My Interest In The New Goldman Sachs CEO Goes Pretty Much Exactly As You Would Expect…"

The Fields Medal and Nevanlinna Prizes were given out today. They represent the highest honor possible for young mathematicians and theoretical computer scientists, and are granted only once every four years. The mathematics involved is often very challenging for outsiders. Indeed, the most prominent of this year’s winners, the German Peter Scholze, is best known […]

So does this count as regulatory capture or a form of publication bias? Update: To be fair, the paper did get published? IMO, Randall is subtweeting my father.http://t.co/xFowkXjmjz pic.twitter.com/GTRJ7Nstvt — Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom) July 31, 2018

I got bored so I looked up some numbers… What The Brady Bunch Can Tell Us About Housing Market Dynamics What The Brady Bunch Can Tell Us About Housing Market Dynamics So I have a new dream purchase, since I learned this week that the Brady Bunch house is up for sale. I’m still kinda … Continue reading "What The Brady Bunch Can Tell Us About Housing Market Dynamics…"

It’s NBER Summer Institute season, when every bar and restaurant in East Cambridge, from Helmand to Lord Hobo, is filled with our tribe. The air hums with discussions of Lagrangians and HANKs and robust estimators. And the number of great papers presented, discussed, or otherwise floating around inspires. The paper we’re discussing today, by Wyatt […]

It’s causal Friday, so I’m poking around in some data trying to make a case for cause and effect. More specifically, I’m drowning in a differences-in-differences analysis trying to construct a proper control group. (In this case, identifying a control group isn’t conceptually difficult, it’s just really annoying to pull the data.) So what is … Continue reading "Causal Friday: The Dumbest Differences-in-Differences Ever, Viral Video Edition…"

Ok, story time, so go grab your blankie and a beverage… A number of years ago, I taught an econ tutorial entitled “Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll”…it was a neat class- as the name would suggest, we looked at papers on birth control, drug legalization, the music industry, and so on. For reasons I’m … Continue reading "Experimental Pitfalls Are Generally Dumber Than We Imagine, Now With More Dogs"

You guys, I love monopsonies…for starters, it’s a fun word to say, and it makes people do a double take when they initially think you said “monopoly.” Definitionally, a monopsony is a market with only one buyer- basically the economic counterpart to a monopoly, which is a market with only one seller. Not surprisingly, the … Continue reading "How Monopsonies Work, Now With More Numbers…"

Every Friday at about 5pm or so, Justin Wolfers declares it beer o’clock on Twitter: By the power vested in me by Scott Pruitt, I suggest you enjoy an EPA by ordering from a secret email address, getting a lobbyist to pay, deleting it from your calendar, firing staff who won’t play along, and thanking … Continue reading "Economist Beverages Just Got A Major Upgrade…"

There has been a tremendous rise in patent litigation in the past decade (Bessen and Meurer 2005). Many of these lawsuits have come from “non-practicing entities” – also known as patent trolls – who use their patents to sue even as they produce no products themselves. These lawsuits are often targeted at end-users rather than […]