Friends and I wrote a new short paper (with roughly the same number of pages and coauthors). We formalize a link between statistical discrimination and statistical informativeness using Blackwell's Theorem.
I prove an envelope theorem with a converse: the envelope formula is 𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑡 to a first-order condition. Like Milgrom and Segal's (2002) envelope theorem, my result requires no structure on the choice set. I apply it to mechanism design
Paula Onuchic is a microeconomic theorist who works on information economics, especially questions of career concerns in teams and discrimination. Learn more at
A seller bargains bilaterally with several buyers. If there are 4 buyers with values 20,9,8,5 and the seller offers 4 units, her profit is (20+9+8+5)/2=21. What if she supplies 3 units? Answer 23 (not 20/2+2*5=20!) via a SEQUENTIAL outside option principle
A sender designs a monotone partitional signal to inform a receiver about an object's quality. We characterize the optimal signals and their relation to precise notions of optimism/pessimism of the receiver's prior, relative to the sender's.
I'm not on his committee, but I can't resist promoting Philipp. A great economist with an interesting and important job market paper. And he gave an impressive mock job talk that made me reflect on my presentation style. Interview him and fly him out!
Meet our JMC
@PhilippHochmuth
. He is a macroeconomist interested in household heterogeneity and labor supply. In his job market paper, he uncovers a striking new fact: the work hours of entrepreneurs have declined substantially more than those of workers! 1/4
Podcast das economistAs está de volta!
@laukarpuska
falou com a Paula Onuchic sobre teoria econômica e sua trajetória neste ambiente mais masculino mesmo para a economia.
Krusell-Thuerwaechter-Weiss (
@OnuWeiss
) document that investment by young firms is more sensitive to interest rate shocks & rationalize this through a life-cycle model with fixed adj costs.
👉Mon. policy will be less potent in economy with older firms.
🔗
Thank you to Ludvig and Denis (who won't admit to being on Twitter but will surely be aware of this tweet within a few hours) for organizing this now-traditional conference ().
Fun times
@JanKnoepfle
@adikuva
@DGoncalvesDS
.
Very proud of
@ClaireThurwacht
and
@MKondziella
for their great job market outcomes! Although their tweets mentioning only half of us sort of violate the point of this joint account as a pooling device.
There have been a lot of new contributions to the literature on theories of discrimination. See a survey I wrote recently, here: . And please email me to point out any glaring omissions!
A study of the fragility of symmetric collaborative relationships and the use of payoff-irrelevant identities in supporting asymmetric collaborative outcomes, from Paula Onuchic and Debraj Ray
I'm going to leave this note here to commemorate the day
@Overleaf
liked one of my tweets. It's weird knowing that today is the best day of my life. I have to savor every moment.
Whew! Really tired after spending the last couple days fabricating Biden ballots and driving them all the way to Philly. On the upside, we ate some yummy cheesesteaks yesterday.
Just started a new job at the fed and learned the tech security procedures. I have a newfound appreciation for why certain high-level govt officials might prefer to use personal email...
What is the number of economists I should follow on twitter if I want to balance the feelings of "yea, economics really IS cool" and "man, I really shouldn't be on twitter, everyone is so productive"?
Referee reports should just be "Here's the best argument for publishing this paper" and "Here's the best argument for rejecting this paper". The editor decides which argument is stronger or more appealing.
Read this a couple weeks ago and I’ve already shared this “fun pandemic history fact” with many people offline. Here it goes for the online people as well.
Fun pandemic history fact for NY apartment dwellers frustrated by aggressive radiator heat in the winter. The era when steam heat in buildings was new/popular overlapped w/Spanish Flu pandemic, when authorities told everyone to leave their windows open for ventilation. So.... 1/4
My colleague Ludvig Sinander and this AI tool wrote the same paper around the same time. AI’s version is retweeted, Ludvig’s version here: .
Should the editor suggest they merge papers?
The fourth paper in
@ArtEconJournal
introduces the concept of active pessimism & active optimism, emphasizing the role of proactive actions in shaping outcomes. This fresh perspective redefines how we understand responses to economic challenges.
@johnjhorton
@BenSManning
@yudapearl
Holding fixed bandaid, increasing vaccine must mean decreasing blood disease, which adds to the positive effect on health (making vaccines look better). Holding fixed vaccine, increasing bandaid must mean increasing blood disease, so bandaids look bad for health. No?
@Delta
My family is trying to reach a representative for the last 5 hours... Why do I need to call someone to add a pet to the reservation? Please, let me do it online!!!
When you figure out a much better way to structure your paper, are you pumped because the paper will improve or depressed because now you have to do the restructuring? Ughh, version 39, here I come!
Me: Proud that I remember all (most?) of my to-do's without having a planner of any kind.
Also me: Unrelatedly, can't sleep, worried that I'll forget some to-do.
@harry_toulouse
ahem, you have to actually fill out the tailored jmp request form. and print it on paper with official northwestern heading. and get a stamp from my advisor and yours.
To my referees: don't bother gathering your thoughts re my paper. I hereby claim it's a good paper (as widely reported) and should be accepted for publication at any top-5 journal.
@SNageebAli
@4misceldah
Hehe this is the one that came to mind for me. I first encountered this paper in undergrad after googling something like “simple model econ.” Is that how one becomes a theorist?
@mfariacastro
@sarapfmoreira
Ugh, now I feel like I need to qualify this tweet to say that I (Paula, Brasilian) wrote it, so that the world doesn't think that Josh is one of those Americans...
We are excited about the potential of applying well-known results in information economics to traditional models of discrimination, such as the Phelps-Aigner-Cain theory of statistical discrimination.
How many more anxiety-ridden days due to "tomorrow I will do work-related activity X for the first time" do I have to endure before I reach eternal glory?
@akbarpour_
@albertobisin
Nikhil Vellodi (sadly not on twitter) and I characterize the optimal vaccine prioritization scheme in an equilibrium model with endogenous contact responses:
It looked like a The Economist plot, but I cant find it there either -- mind you, I'm probably not searching effectively, so I still believe it's a The Economist plot.
@prof_cookson
The same thing happened to me the other day even though the file was actually more like 2.7 megabytes. Maybe it just gets to the first number above 2 and then stops counting.
@fqroldan
It’s the opposite of Say’s Law. Demand destroys its own supply. Everybody wants to party, so demand is high. But also the disutility of labor is high, so supply is low.
@stefan_f_bucher
This time X was teaching a 2nd year course on a topic that Paula 6 months ago thought Paula today would love to talk about. Turns out Paula 6 months ago was right, I did actually quite enjoy it (despite the anxiety). Now onto eternal glory.
@FilipeCampante
I've attended many seminars and read many papers that were about mitigating or preventing financial crises... I'm guessing this is an example to illustrate a point about the increasingly technocratic nature of econ rather than a claim that all economists study financial crises.
@dandolfa
It is difficult to evaluate the cost of X (so whether Y > X) without knowing how we will "pay for" it. If we build a bridge, what else were those workers doing? That's the "real" cost (govt. financing issues aside)
@sc_cath
The point about firm vs. industry wide shocks seems right, but for the opposite reason in light of It’s large firms with market power who don’t fully pass through cost shocks. Of course, this is all about marginal costs.