Benjamin Lockwood

Assistant Professor of Business Econ and Public Policy @Wharton. Tax policy, inequality, behavioral economics. I have mostly switched to “the other place”.

[Erzo F.P. Luttmer @ErzoLuttmer]

This is a fantastic and rare (!) example of authors of a published paper and the author of a comment on that paper working together to fix the scientific record. Kudos to all involved. This is not easy, even with good faith all around. I hope to see the AER follow suit before too long. @davidroodman @AEAJournals @I4Replication

[Benjamin Lockwood @bblockwood]

@itaisher I'm not disagreeing with you about Anthropic's policy, just your claim that it's false that a LLM has subjective wants/feelings/desires. I *think* they probably don't, at least not yet, but I have a lot of uncertainty about my view, and I'm not sure it's testable.

[Daron Acemoglu @DAcemogluMIT]

Dear followers,
after witnessing the deterioration of Twitter/X, I have just created an account on Bluesky. My handle there is @DAcemogluMIT.bsky.social
I might try to post a few things on both platforms for a while, but I'm hoping to slowly transition to Bluesky over time.

[Ben Sprung-Keyser @bsprungkeyser]

Looking for a predoc position for next year? I’m hiring!

Come work with me at @Wharton BEPP. You will work on a variety of topics related to upward mobility, local labor markets, migration, and the effectiveness of government policy. Apply by May 31:

https://t.co/jrMehocrvN

[Benjamin Lockwood @bblockwood]

@trevorwhealy This widget was *exactly* the thing I was looking for. Thank you for sharing it. Also makes for a nice StandBy display toward the end of the workday.

[Susanna Berkouwer @BerkouwerS]

📢Just *4 more days* to apply to be a pre-doctoral researcher at Business Economics and Public Policy at @Wharton @Penn! The deadline is December 1. Your application can be general interest or specify one of the fields below📢👇

More information here:
https://t.co/kuj90kXya0

[Benjamin Lockwood @bblockwood]

@lymanstoneky @mattyglesias https://t.co/u7l73mvN58

[Benjamin Lockwood @bblockwood]

@alexoimas @J2dubyas @wwwojtekk @DTaubinsky Thanks for the callout! A few others (not exhaustive!): @danhreck, Tatiana Homonoff, @jacobsgoldin, and @nomadj1s in BE; @KatarzynaBilic1, @omzidar, @p_ganong, @nicolas_werquin, @A_Ferey in PF, among many more.

[Hilary Hoynes @HilaryHoynes]

Over 400 Economists agree! Put simply, the Child Tax Credit expansion is good policy and we should make it permanent!

Thank you to everyone who signed.

You can find the final letter with list of signers here:
https://t.co/iK5yd7vNMI
#EconTwitter

[Benjamin Lockwood @bblockwood]

@Philipcheesy1 @wwwojtekk I’m with @IvanWerning on this: key question is whether cross-income differences are due to causal income effects or between-income preference heterogeneity. (Without more info, my guess would be some of the latter, like with soda.) https://t.co/XzqmXs2VWM

[Ivan Werning @IvanWerning]

@wwwojtekk If instead more productive workers consume less tabacco even if they spent and earned the same as less productive workers, then we deviate from this benchmark and should have a lower tax on tabacco.

[Benjamin Lockwood @bblockwood]

Celebrate tax day by [rushing to submit your return and then] submitting your public finance papers for the National Tax Association conference in November! https://t.co/Ux9O6eijG3

[Abdoulaye Ndiaye @AbdouNdiayeNYU]

Submit your public finance papers to the @NatlTax Association Conference. @bblockwood and I are looking forward to reading about how to design tax systems.

[Johannes Haushofer @jhaushofer]

Behavioral economists via text message: “Did you know that most other ships have already gotten their act together”

[Jeff Stein @jstein_star]

Listen up folks: By “Major Biden tax hikes” I mean “significant” or “consequential” — not that Major Biden, who is a dog rather than a tax collector, will be deciding tax rates

[Abdoulaye Ndiaye @AbdouNdiayeNYU]

Submit your public finance papers to the @NatlTax Association Conference. @bblockwood and I are looking forward to reading about how to design tax systems.

[Arthur van Benthem @ArthurvBenthem]

Spread the word! Please retweet!

The economics dep't at @Wharton, and specifically @femonomics, #ShingYiWang, @bblockwood and I, are hiring a full-time predoctoral research fellow. Start date: July 1. @econ_ra #EconTwitter

For more details & to apply: https://t.co/r2MuUZNgUK

[Matthias Doepke @mdoepke]

And now for something different:

A paper on how to think about the optimal size of world population from the perspective of souls who go through multiple incarnations.

Sounds crazy, you say? Hear me out.

(thread)

[Benjamin Lockwood @bblockwood]

@mioana Back to the “conservative case”: low income households (esp single parents with 2+ kids) face an EITC subsidizing work. If you believe Scott’s claims re biases, that’s really good! But then we don’t need to obsess about income effects on labor supply, like diesel in the example.

[Benjamin Lockwood @bblockwood]

Interesting back-and-forth going on about the Romney child allowance proposal and its employment effects: in particular Scott Winship’s AEI post worries that income effects will reduce labor supply among low-income families. Time for some tax theory... 1/n https://t.co/Qg2oA6RW42

[Benjamin Lockwood @bblockwood]

@mioana Now suppose we *have* a diesel tax, to correct for the externality. Does it still make sense to object to grant due to pollution concerns? No! With the tax, the level of diesel usage is efficient. If there is an income effect, marginal pollution + tax revenues = 0, no distortion.