David Baqaee

Economist at UCLA

[David Baqaee @DBaqaee]

@alz_zyd_ There’s no such thing as “social welfare”

[David Baqaee @DBaqaee]

@KenGardner11 A bet is a trade in the following sense: I trade money in one state of the world for money in a different state of the world. In this sense, it is similar to trading an apple for an orange, or trading money in the present for money in the future (i.e. saving/lending)

[Josh Merfeld @Josh_Merfeld]

Come join us! Great school in a great university in a great city. I moved here 18 months ago and am happy to answer any questions!

[Michael Mina @michaelmina_lab]

Wow… The Babies are No Longer Protected Against Measles

Moms antibodies used to give 6-9 months of Ab protection to infants

Now, protection is gone by ~4 months
Neutralizing Ab titers = 0 by 6m

And… if we give MMR early to fill the gap it can drive a long-term problem

1/

[Sylvain Catherine @sc_cath]

Imagine this logic applied to public debt.

California defaults on its debt, just this once, and promises never to do it again. Proponents say it will keep borrowing at the same rate as before.

Rauh would say: "No. Lenders won't believe you, so you'll pay a higher rate on everything you borrow from now on. That will cost us dearly in the long run."

Zucman would reply: "Fallacy. Why would lenders charge more unless you default again? And if you default again, you save money again... by virtue of, well, defaulting."

[David Baqaee @DBaqaee]

@JoeVavra @adikuva @BachmannRudi Doesn’t this put a lot of weight on maximizing tax revenue as an objective? And saying that revenue effects outweigh deterrence effects at the margin seems quite different from saying there’s no deterrence.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Washington currently spends $43,700 per senior - vs. $4,300 per person under 26.

So if we're going to max-out on taxing the rich and also cut other spending, do we really want to give 100% of the savings to SocSec and Medicare benefits instead of kids & working families?

[Vincent Geloso @VincentGeloso]

Btw, Arnold Harberger could still win this year. And he should. At one, we should honor the guy whose point is included in all textbooks. Everyone. Of. Them. To quote Gary Oldman in Leon the Professional

[George Millo @georgemillo]

Claude: proves the Jacobian conjecture.

GPT6: solves Navier-Stokes and 100 other advanced theorems.

Siri: "Sure, I'll add 'set a five minute timer' to your contacts"

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

Maintaining full Social Security benefits would mean raising the payroll tax from 12.4% to nearly 17%.

Also fully funding Medicare would require adding another 9pp, or perhaps adding a 25% VAT.

So that (often wealthy) seniors can keep getting back far more than they paid in. 🙄

[Alex Kontorovich @AlexKontorovich]

Quasi-RH?!?!???! Are you kidding me? If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.

RH says zeta has no zeros in Re(s)>1/2. The best we had until a second ago was a region that got thinner and thinner the higher up the imaginary axis you go. I thought maybe they’d fatten that up a bit, that’d be a massive breakthrough. But no. They got a zero free strip!!!! Insane

[Vox.LACEA @voxlacea]

🎉 LACEA and the Amartya Sen Economics Prize Foundation are pleased to announce Pablo Fajgelbaum as the inaugural recipient of the Amartya Sen Economics Prize.

The inaugural call received more than 100 nominations from around the world.

[Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 @JessicaBRiedl]

They also have the least poverty, the least personal debt, the least expenses, the highest financial satisfaction, and highest share of millionaires.

Yet they receive 10x as much federal spending (per capita) as those ages 25 and younger. That seems sub-optimal.

[Kevin A. Bryan @Afinetheorem]

If this was one-shotted by Claude (and I think it was), just entirely insane. A Broadway style song about how AI-as-normal-technology, bottlenecks-in-production is wrong where the content is just dead on. Incredible.

[Andrii Babii @babii_andrii]

@UNC_econ is hiring this year.
We have two tenure-track openings (1 Assistant, 1 Assistant or Associate) in any field of economics, plus a Teaching Assistant Professor position with particular interest in macro.
Excellent research environment and a beautiful college town in the Research Triangle.
Apply here:
https://t.co/CRng4k5NZy
https://t.co/ZYFDTTybKY
#EconTwitter #EconJobMarket

[Daniel Gottlieb @danielgott]

I recently asked ChatGPT to improve the efficiency of some simulations from a few years ago. To my amazement, its code ran in a few seconds instead of 3 hours.

It turns out it went into the GitHub repository, downloaded my final results, and used it as a starting guess in the optimization.

I then tried running it on a new set of parameters. It’s been 15 hours.

[ChaoWei @ChaoDWei]

GW Economics Department is recruiting for four (!) tenure-track positions:

• Macro (junior): https://t.co/nxvf6aTIro

• Trade (2 positions; mid-level/senior AP strongly considered): https://t.co/9l92lgbjZa

• Applied micro (junior): https://t.co/boFYSeFTgN

Come join us!

[Hamid Firooz @firooz_hamid]

We're hiring an Asst Prof in Macro at NC State, preferably overlapping adjacent fields (international, labor, IO etc). Ideally experienced; fresh PhDs welcome. Great Duke/UNC interactions in Research Triangle. Review begins Sept 28. Let me know if you have questions. Links below.

[Eric Crampton @EricCrampton]

I'm not upping my p(doom), but this is a catchy tune.

[ppdd @usppdd]

Holy shit now it’s my turn to say FSD just saved my family tonight. It’s on the 71 freeway in California. $TSLA @teslasi

[Jack @tracewoodgrains]

This is the per-pupil funding for the elementary school Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to.

If you subscribe to the funding theory of education, how much would have been enough? It's already crossed the average per capita annual income threshold. Maybe $100k? $200k?