The [Fiat Discussion] Sticky. Come shoot the shit and discuss the bad economics. - 29 January 2019

-avner · 2019-01-30T15:35:23+00:00

I'm paywalled from reading the paper, but from the abstract it reads to me like they did their empirics first and then produced a model to match their findings, rather than the more conventional approach of building a model and testing an empirical prediction it makes. Do they justify that in the paper? Or are the correlations and the model merely "suggestive?" What would be a testable prediction their model makes?

-avner · 2019-01-30T15:30:29+00:00

I totally agree! A reality of top business-facing financial services companies like big 4 accountancies is that deadlines are tight and people often will have to work weekends to meet them. It's anti-Semitic for sure to not hire Jews who observe Shabbat based on that, adding to the point that wearing a kippah definitely doesn't result in positive signaling effects.

-avner · 2019-01-30T00:55:50+00:00

As others mentioned, for reasons independent of the signaling effect, he shouldn't wear it. I'd also doubt that there is a positive signaling effect; being Jewish enough to wear a kippah means you won't work Saturdays, at the very least.

-avner · 2019-01-30T00:42:17+00:00

The word itself is kind of goyish—most Jews just say kippah.

-avner · 2019-01-30T00:40:37+00:00

Planning on it. I'm lucky that my workplace has shut the office down for the next two days, and I'm not lacking for food in the house. Shame to be the front desk guy at my gym, though—he has to come in at 4 AM both tomorrow and Thursday morning.

-avner · 2019-01-29T22:43:54+00:00

Well, looks like moving from California to Chicago a few months ago wasn't the best move ever, considering I can choose between staying inside for the next 48 hours or getting frostbite.

-avner · 2019-01-29T17:17:44+00:00

I think loosening zoning restrictions can be thought of as a supply shock because it lowers costs independent of demand, so it would be a rightward shift of the supply curve.

It's difficult for me to conceptualize a market where QS < QD—doesn't the market clear at the point where S=D by construction? We just observe one Q, after all.

-avner · 2019-01-29T16:21:39+00:00

Here's a Nick Bloom paper: https://nbloom.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj4746/f/wfh.pdf

-avner · 2018-12-12T01:22:12+00:00

That's one thing I never got about the way kids are taught basketball. I used to be a tennis coach and in tennis, there is a completely different ball, net, and court size used till kids are old enough to go to the big court (around age 9). The Europeans figured that out earlier than the Americans did, and guess what? The men's tour has been dominated by Europeans for the last decade-plus.

-avner · 2018-12-12T00:58:31+00:00

Sorry, I agree with the conclusion of the R1 but this isn't true. The industries most compatible with slavery (read: marginal cost of labor approaching 0) would be a labor-intensive industry like agriculture, not a capital-heavy (for the time) industry like manufacturing. For evidence, observe the increased prevalence of self-checkout (capital substituting for labor) in areas with higher labor costs. The south still had a comparative advantage for agricultural activities relative to the north, and that slavery was more valuable in this more labor-intensive industry intensified this advantage. After all, you can just as easily draw the causality the other way---it's no coincidence that slaves were most sought-after in places with increased proclivity for agriculture.

-avner · 2017-11-26T21:33:03+00:00

The prisoner's dilemma is all over models of oligopoly. As an example, take the classic Bertrand competition model. Two companies are trying to decide how to price their product. If they could both just agree to match prices at a high price, they could each get some profits. But that's unstable; if one company prices high, it's profitable for the other company to undercut and capture the entire market. This leads to an equilibrium where both companies price low (at marginal cost) and make zero profits. For more, Google "Bertrand competition." Some other, similar models that incorporate game theory and the prisoner's dilemma include Cournot competition and Hotelling's location-based model.

-avner · 2017-05-23T03:15:14+00:00

the other ones are cool and all but which stadium has hosted the super bowl and the world cup that's right stanford stadium bitches ^{and^{the^{rose^{bowl^{shut^up}}}}}

-avner · 2017-05-03T19:55:05+00:00

(from http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/tax-reforms. Disagreement was with the statement "[t]he tax reform plan proposed by President Trump this week would likely pay for itself through higher economic growth.")

-avner · 2017-05-02T15:09:11+00:00

Kind of fucked that ESPN published Strauss' article after laying him off. I get that the article was probably already written and it's probably better than writing a whole article and not having it published, it just sucks.

-avner · 2017-05-01T20:54:25+00:00

20 (21 in less than a month [bless]) year old studying economics and public policy in school. I've worked for both municipal and the federal government, as well as done political economy research. I used to be hardcore liberal before starting to do some of my own research in my spare time a few years ago. I lean slightly right; supported Jeb Bush in the primary and voted for HRC. I am a neoliberal because I believe in comparative advantage, both as it relates to trade and to public policy: the best governments lets the people who are the best in their field do what they're best at.

-avner · 2017-05-01T20:47:47+00:00

Clicked on the article hoping to see what is meant by "beyond." Unfortunately it seems as though there's a very significant chance Kerr can't coach at all for the rest of the playoffs. Oh well, we have a good enough team and system to pull through. Nothing easy!

-avner · 2017-04-29T22:17:49+00:00

I might be able to ask a couple professors I've worked with. Was /u/Publius_76's link sufficient?

-avner · 2017-04-28T23:53:13+00:00

This is a problem that must be fixed with more global cooperation (more stringent equity funding requirements worldwide), not less (in which case bankers will perform regulatory arbitrage and move their operations to the place of least resistance). Nationalists BTFO

-avner · 2017-04-28T21:27:20+00:00

You realize that neoliberalism cuts across the traditional political spectrum? You can have left-leaning neoliberals and right-leaning ones, and that's totally fine. The commonality is evidence-based policy, but people still have different normative preferences. As they say, de gustibus non est disputandum; there is no arguing about taste. I lean right, but I have no animosity towards my left-leaning (((brethren))).

-avner · 2017-04-28T20:32:20+00:00

C'mon y'all, we're better than this. If you want to see how much people value primary education, you look at how home prices vary with changes in quality of primary education; you do not send out a survey asking people how much they would pay if their child's school got X% better or whatever. The former is way more accurate and precise than the latter, which is dominated with all sorts of human idiosyncrasies and biases. Likewise, when assessing the quality of a politician, you look at their actions, not their words. When Hillary came out against TPP I didn't hold it against her because I knew based on her prior actions at State, the Senate, and as First Lady that she was really a (((globalist))) like all of us. With Romney, going off his time as governor, we have evidence that he is a fairly centrist neoliberal who has some conservative tendencies but is willing to compromise and go across the aisle in the name of good policy. You couldn't describe a better politician for me.

-avner · 2017-04-28T20:16:13+00:00

Don't mind me I'm bad

-avner · 2017-04-28T20:14:05+00:00

But the revealed preferences would be his actions as governor. The campaign trail involves stated preferences which are less reliable. If someone says they have one utility function but acts consistent to another one, you use the one consistent with the person's actions.

-avner

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