Ben Ho

Vassar (oft Columbia) behavioral economist (formerly White House & Cornell) working on trust, inequality, climate change Author of

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

Time to do a proper 🧵of my book https://t.co/ElWqBklmkU. I only started twitter when it came out, now after a year of experience, using the occasion of the paperback release to try again. Also a year of book tour talks have helped refine my sales pitch!

Why Trust Matters - 1/n

[Luis Garicano 🇪🇺🇺🇦 @lugaricano]

Beautiful post by @HannoLustig
arguing bond holders are the most junior claimants to tax revenue-because of the political power or retirees. (True everywhere.) I was struck by this chart showing how little of government revenue even in the US is used for doing stuff and how much more is just transfers. Our governments become gigantic insurance companies.

https://t.co/ywfeNbk8Vj

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@weakinstrument @paulg @Noahpinion it does seem to have shifted recently.

https://t.co/7HzZqmILFR

but in this survey of veterinarians from 2019, one half liberal only one quarter conservative.

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

Law professors wrote questions they were asked during office hours. Gemini 2.5 & humans answered them then other law professors blindly judged the results:
-Gemini had a 75% win rate vs. professors
-Gemini's answers were rated LESS harmful than humans
-Newer models do even better

[Kyle Siler (@kylesiler.bsky.social) @KyleSiler]

New article in @PNASNews:

We all know that ChatGPT loves to delve, bolster, leverage, encompass, showcase, underscore, et cetera. I analyzed full text of 7.3 million journal articles published 2020-2025, hunting for 228 words that spiked after ChatGPT launched in late 2022.

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@arpitrage @HoffProf rachel croson said one of her proudest achievements as provost was making all travel expenses per diem and so not requiring receipts. which is brilliant and should be done everywhere.

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@jasonfurman @soumitrashukla9 went to a major medical conference with my wife (Columbia med school prof) recently. was surprising how unapologetically open to ai it seemed to be. seemed like there was a lot more resistance in medicine in the past (eg radiology two decades ago)

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@MatthewGNagler sounds like Mr beast counting to one hundred thousand which helped launch his career and helped to make him the most watched person of all time (closing in on half a billion followers)

https://t.co/JwzJEXYSBr

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@talmonsmith @jmhorp that's all fair. growth is hard. the median wage picture is even worse in the rest of the oecd world.

also in same time, health care way up (often not in wages). household sizes down so fewer people to support. eitc and transfers are way up. leisure time is up. work hours down.

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@Jabaluck @ManWithA_Van Stories and storytelling!!! which is what my new book is about.

And yes games which lets us all create our own stories.

And even though yes computers can also tell stories we will prefer human ones just like we prefer human chess players over ai.

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@talmonsmith the economist used cpi-u for the 1970s because we don't have a chained CPI index before 1999. but your analysis starts in 2000. chained CPI is preferred because it accounts for consumers adjusting what they buy. consumers in 2025 buy very different things than those in 2000.

[Ivan Werning @IvanWerning]

Excited to FINALLY release toughest+most rewarding paper I've worked on...

….we attack a 150 year old Walras question that's gone unanswered, not for lack of trying (Hicks, Samuelson, Arrow; our chances?😱)...

Q: Is the market equilibrium stable or unstable?¯\_(ツ)_/¯
🧵

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

The government should have done this years ago, but in the US we have rely on big tech to create public goods 🙃

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@akoustov @Noahpinion I think a lot of distrust in US now is partisanship... but here is one:

https://t.co/PRMj7GllHZ

But also context matters. e.g. people don't lock doors in suburbs. Or we let strangers sleep in our homes (airbnb)...

https://t.co/FfOsTmJnQz

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@alz_zyd_ @Noahpinion ha yes I was literally thinking about that example of doors being unlocked when I wrote this.
https://t.co/6XqsbSheHB

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@jayvanbavel I don't see the passive engagement as a problem though. social media is largely just displacing the five hours per day the average american spends passively watching tv.

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@alz_zyd_ @Noahpinion ha yes I was literally thinking about that example of doors being unlocked when I wrote this.
https://t.co/6XqsbSheHB

[Ben Ho @ho_ben]

@akoustov Measurement issues for sure!!!

As someone who literally wrote the book on trust I've been saying that the narrative of declining trust and distrust depends very much on where you look. The WVS survey @Noahpinion posted has never shown it. And lots of examples of increased trust!

[Arin Dube @arindube]

Clear exposition of the confused state of discourse on EU vs US standard of living.

Link in next post.

[Andre Silva @andresilvatw]

"The series also shows that Spain did not benefit from its empire. That is a problem for every theory tying colonies to modern growth." This is important and surprising: with all the gold and new territory, GDP per capita in Spain did not increase. The figure below shows the same message with a different dataset. GDP per capita in Spain is almost flat between 1500 and 1800. It is not gold that explains the wealth of nations

[Basil Halperin @BasilHalperin]

https://t.co/VnDhyTHlyq collected ~1k matched questions from real-money prediction markets vs. non-market platforms: skin in the game seems to still matter, at least some?