John Spry

Economics and Public Finance

[Elliot Lipnowski @ElliotLip]

(BTW, if somebody wants to pursue a fully general APS-style analysis of equilibrium in private-monitoring games with discounting, I think generalizing this beautiful paper to infinite states is the most promising path out there.)

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

@OleTimeHardball Denton Young

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

@3YearLetterman @Richard_Harambe @ashleesimpson Why do you consider Ashlee Simpson greater than Jessica Simpson?

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

@SteveMiran This needs to written out explicitly in a model like Auerbach et al 2026 that adds the tariffs to existing labor and capital taxes, calculated each taxes contribution to the total tax wedge and then calculates the DWL and MCPF for each marginal policy change.

[Stephen Miran @SteveMiran]

You can compare across the different types of tax rates because as long as you know you're starting below optimal tariff rates, you know incremental tariff change to overall national welfare is positive, whereas it's highly negative for the income and capital taxes due to their efficiency costs and this would be true with any standard set of elasticities that yield a positive optimal tariff rate.

[Stephen Miran @SteveMiran]

That comports with standard economic wisdom that intermediate inputs should be untaxed, while final goods should. https://t.co/9fsGRUDvS5

[Gustavo Ventura @King_ofSweden]

We are very happy that our paper “Means-Tested Transfers in the U.S.: Facts and Parametric Estimates,” joint with Nezih Guner @NezihGuner and Christopher Rauh, is now accepted for publication in the Review of Economic Dynamics.

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

@mrginden @Afinetheorem But that doesn’t say how the tax policy could reduce his consumption.

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

World Cup Trivia: This former President’s son is on the U.S. men’s soccer team for the World Cup.

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

A 24-year-old Polish tennis player arrived in Paris last week ranked 114th in the world, with no sponsors, no guaranteed income, and no certainty she could even pay for her hotel room.

She had to win three qualifying matches just to enter the French Open main draw. Prize money is only paid at the end of the tournament, so a Polish sports drink brand quietly stepped in and covered her hotel bill.

Her name is Maja Chwalinska. And today, she plays in the French Open final.

Before this tournament, she had won exactly one Grand Slam main draw match in her entire career. She had battled depression so severe that in 2021 she couldn't get out of bed. She underwent knee surgery in 2022. She spent years grinding through small tournaments across Europe just to stay afloat.

Then she arrived in Paris, won three qualifiers, and kept winning. Zheng Qinwen. Elise Mertens. Maria Sakkari. Diana Shnaider. Nine straight matches. One set dropped.

She is now the first qualifier in French Open history to reach the final. The last time a qualifier reached a Grand Slam final, it was Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open. Raducanu won.

By simply making the final, Chwalinska has earned more prize money than her entire career combined. The runner-up cheque alone is $1.6 million. If she wins today, she takes home $3.25 million.
One week ago she couldn't pay for her hotel room.

[Jesús Fernández-Villaverde @JesusFerna7026]

Exactly one month from today, the United States turns 250. To mark it, the Penn Initiative for the Study of Markets @Penn_Exchange is offering a free online course on the economic foundations of the American Founding.

I will lecture on June 23 and July 28, alongside Alan Taylor, Woody Holton, Joseph Wallis, and Jack Rakove, among others.

The course follows the story from colonial settlement to the early republic, showing how economics and institutions shaped political choices at every turn: the road to independence, the Revolutionary War, the Constitutional Convention, and the rival visions of Hamilton and Jefferson.

This is one of my favorite subjects in economic and legal history.

Details and registration here:

https://t.co/Xe2DlWluVi

[Against Narrative @3RenChengHu]

@johnarnold Capital income doesn't enjoy an advantage over labor income. Capital income tax combines with labor income tax to tax future consumption more heavily than present consumption. Steve Landsburg has a good explanation:

https://t.co/l0CnGJsif3

[Brian Albrecht @BrianCAlbrecht]

Good example of statutory burden vs economic burden.

In the benchmark model, a tax on capital is completely borne by workers.

We can’t compare these rates

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

@fawfulfan @HicksCBER Imaging the tax planning arbitrage to borrow wildly to finance homes. I suggest preferred stock financing of Indiana homes. Oh to be back home again in Indiana with mezzanine debt financing.

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

Ph.D. programs could benefit by creating an alternative to the GRE that provides more information and less noise about applicants' quantitative ability at the top of the skill distribution. Gain better grad students from better info. Thanks @paulnovosad for the idea inspiration.

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

@paulnovosad A university could improve the quality of its incoming Ph.D. classes by creating its own graduate exam to identify strong candidates who may have been hurt by one or two unlucky questions on the Quant GRE.

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

@jabb3r0cky @OpenAI The ability to produce a 3D graphs from simple prompt is amazing: "Create a 3D graph of United State Treasury Interest Rates by Year since 1970, with time on the x-axis, the maturity on the y-axis and the interest rate on the z-axis rising."

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

3D US Treasury Yield Curve created in minutes by @openai 1970-2025

[John Spry @JohnASpry]

@jabb3r0cky @OpenAI ChatGPT 5.5 could download and make this 3d graph showing both the US Treasury yield curve for every year (interest rate for maturities up to 30 yrs) and the history of interest rate rates. Usually a finance book shows just cross sections in each dimension.