Matthias Kasper

Private account. Affiliated researcher @euckeninstitut, Formerly @univienna & @tulane

[World Bank East Asia Pacific @WB_AsiaPacific]

The @WorldBankGroup #EastAsiaPacific Youth Forum 2026 concluded last week after two days of dynamic conversations on #jobs for young people across the region.

Day 2 featured expert-led discussions on bridging the employability gap and youth-led pathways to inclusive employment.

[Institute of Economic Affairs @iealondon]

📊 On average, Brits think the NHS makes a 34% profit. It doesn't make any.

Supermarkets profits are estimated at 50%. The reality: 2–4%.

Voters think energy companies make 57%. The reality: -5% to 15%.

We are significantly overestimating how much companies profit.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This New York Times piece is worth your time. Here’s what is happening, as simply as I can put it.

Back in January, Trump sued the IRS, an agency he controls, demanding $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns a number of years ago.

IRS lawyers did their jobs. They wrote a memo laying out the defenses that could beat the suit, including the fact that Trump filed too late. His own lawyer was in court when the leaker pleaded guilty in October 2023, more than two years before Trump sued.

The Justice Department never showed up to court. Never argued back. Never used the defenses sitting on their desk.

The judge got suspicious and ordered both sides to explain whether they were actually opposing each other or just colluding. The day before that brief was due, Trump dropped the suit.

Same day, his Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “anti-weaponization fund.” 

Trump gets a formal apology. The IRS agrees to drop any audits of him and his family, even though a 2024 Times report found a loss in an ongoing audit could cost him over $100 million.

The acting Attorney General, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, picks the five commissioners who decide who gets paid. Trump can fire any of them. Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are not ruled out.

This is the most corrupt thing I’ve ever seen from an American president.

Where in the hell are my Republican colleagues?

https://t.co/La0nlLuz1r

[Sander Tordoir @SanderTordoir]

Germany is the epicentre of the China Shock 2.0 reverberating in global markets

In a new paper, @Brad_Setser and I show the shock is a key driver of Germany’s economic malaise. And it's accelerating

Berlin needs to stop admiring the problem, and join efforts to fight back

1/

[Financial Times @FT]

US tax authorities will be barred from pursuing claims against the president, his eldest sons and the Trump Organization under a deal to halt a $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. https://t.co/UTiZF44UqA

[Chris Blattman @cblatts]

What's even worse is that, like many academic professions, we are status-seeking not relative to our local group of 30 chimps, but to every chimp in the freaking world. You generally know where you stand in the global pecking order, which is insane.

[Benjamin Wolf 🇺🇦 @benbawan]

This chart is making the rounds.

But the values for 2000 don’t really chime with actual IMF (PPP) data – and a solid comparison is 2025 (not forecasts for 2030).

So I made my own chart with more reliable numbers from the @IMFNews.

Looks different, doesn’t it?

[Dina D. Pomeranz 🟣 @DinaPomeranz]

We are disproportionately understudying low- and middle-income countries.

Rather than debating endlessly how many of those studies should be micro vs macro, let's work on growing the overall number of good papers in all areas of economics that study issues outside the OECD.

3/n

[Matthias Kasper @mkasper_]

@SarahNecker @JPubEcon Very nice, congratulations @SarahNecker and team!

[Mushtaq Bilal, PhD @MushtaqBilalPhD]

Meta illegaly downloaded 80+ terabytes of books from LibGen, Anna's Archive, and Z-library to train their AI models.

Aaron Swartz downloaded 70 GBs of articles from JSTOR (0.0875% of Meta) in 2010. Faced $1 million in fine and 35 years in jail. Took his own life in 2013.

[Stefanie Stantcheva @S_Stantcheva]

A major driver of tax evasion isn't just the tax rate but the reporting requirements, at least when it comes to wealth taxes. Our newly revised paper finds that how much you have to disclose matters at least as much as how much you owe 🧵 https://t.co/mAFjV4Jhjk [1/14]

[Danny Arends @DannyArends]

Our paper in @Nature today 🥳 We tracked 6,438 mice from puberty to death and mapped the genetics of *when* you die, not just whether a gene associates with lifespan.

https://t.co/EoeexqJoHk

59 loci. Two decades of data. Thread 👇

#Longevity #Aging #Genetics #Healthspan

[Matthias Kasper @mkasper_]

2) women score substantially lower than men (both self-assessed and measured), 3) individuals outside the political center score higher, and 4) fiscal literacy and economic preferences are barely correlated. 2/2

[Matthias Kasper @mkasper_]

👇New paper (w/ Arrita Domi & @LiliBurgstaller): We map and asses "fiscal literacy", how well people understand the fiscal system, its components and implications. Main findings: 1) fiscal literacy in the general population is modest, 1/2

[Eucken Institut @EuckenInstitut]

New working paper "Measuring Fiscal Literacy: A Framework and Evidence from the General Population". In this study @LiliBurgstaller Arrita Domi and @mkasper_ propose a conceptual framework for Fiscal Literacy, and provide evidence on its prevalence in the general population. 1/5

[Matthias Kasper @mkasper_]

@schnellenbachj Irgendwann kommt dann nun mal der Punkt, da bist du so mürbe und so fertig und die Versuchung ist so groß, dann nimmstes.

[Angela Duckworth @angeladuckw]

Individual willpower can't compete with an effortless, enjoyable distraction.

How can we take collective action to create motivational spaces for students?

K-12 educators, share your voice today → https://t.co/vXSNzeU2MZ

[Jorge Garcia Hombrados @jorgeghombrados]

This paper has been in my head for years. From my time at 3ie and JPAL, wondering why the evidence we produce as researchers so often fails to translate into policy, and what role ideology plays. Very happy to see it now published in the @AEAjournals. Let me tell you the story 🧵

[ChrisO_wiki @ChrisO_wiki]

1/ Goldman Sachs analysts report that the biggest oil crisis in history is about to hit globally, with profound and highly destructive consequences. A new report asks ""Are We Running Out of Oil?", and concludes that the answer is yes. ⬇️

[Wojtek Kopczuk 🇵🇱🇺🇦 and 🇺🇲 @wwwojtekk]

I cannot stop being amazed that somehow, in 2026, he managed to have an article written about him in NYT that reads more like an advertisement despite the context and the "research" history

[Foreign Affairs @ForeignAffairs]

“Germans know that a world in which only power counts is a dark place,” writes German Chancellor @_FriedrichMerz. “Our country went down this path in the twentieth century to a bitter and evil end. Today, we are taking a different path.”
https://t.co/OCzHwmopmi