Ben Lester
@benjamminlester
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Following
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Economist studying macro, labor, finance. Father of 2. Husband of 1. Master of none. All tweets are my own views & not of the Fed or (typically) anyone else.
Philadelphia, PA
Joined November 2012
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PhD student: hi professor, do you have time to discuss my final project?
Me: sure, how about tomorrow at 11:30?
PhD student: sure. AM or PM?
God I love grad students.
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Hahahaha!! My PhD cohort of 28 had 5 Americans. And two dropped out. Where does he think PhD economists come from?
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Ya always have to watch out for that non-monetary equilibrium in Kiyotaki-Wright.
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So excited to join the editorial board at JET. In grad school, working w/ guys like Dave Cass, Randy Wright, and others, JET was revered in a particular way. Really happy that I now get to contribute to that tradition. Send us your good theory papers!
Since January 1 the Journal of Economic Theory (JET) has five new associate editors: Ben Lester, Evan Sadler, Shouyong Shi, Bumin Yenmez, and Shingxing Zhang. Welcome to JET, and thank you for your willingness to help!
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My Twitter feed is currently filled with (1) beautiful tributes to Lucas, and (2) something about econjobrumors. So basically the max and min of the profession.
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I have one burning question from this article...*MR* Acemoglu? Not Dr? Not Professor? Doesn't
@SteveLohr
know that prices take Daron as given? That Daron's Arrow-securities pay off in every state? That Daron's initial guess is the global maximum...
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Crazy. I was 27 when I taught my first class as a prof. 31 when I got tenure. I honestly don't think I would've gone to grad school in econ if I saw this timeline. I don't pretend to know what caused the equilibrium to shift, but we must be losing talent to other professions, no?
1980s:
BA (4 years) + PhD (4 years)=>TT Assistant Professor
2020s:
BA (4 years)+MA (2 years)+predoc (2 years)+phd (6 years)+post doc (2 years)=>TT Assistant Professor
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Congrats
@itskhoki
! Great choice by AEA. I like to think some of your best ideas came out of this chat from 2013…when we went for coffee & ended up on tv during a segment about a meningitis outbreak at Princeton 😂😂😂
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(1/N) *FINALLY A DRAFT* The scoop: referrals are ubiquitous in the hiring process. What do they do? How do they affect labor market outcomes (wages, turnover, inequality…)? Existing empirical evidence is mixed. Lots of different theories. We make progress using new data + model.
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I just coded my first large-scale calibration exercise on my own. Nobody told me about the sheer joy you receive when you see a big drop in your loss function while the code is running. It's like I want to high five my computer for finding a better set of parameters.
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I am deeply jealous of folks who can write referee reports quickly. It takes me at least a few hours, often more, to *really* understand a paper well, and then even longer to let it marinate and figure out how I feel about it.
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Just back from
#ASSA2023
. Without job candidates/interviews I see no reason to travel the 1st week after Xmas to present a paper in 1 of 50 simultaneous sessions to a room with 12 people. That being said…it was nice to see some old friends :)
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Lunch at the Philly Fed is always fun, but today an extra fun idea was floated: seminar speakers should choose a theme song to walk into the seminar room.
#EconTwitter
: what's your theme song? I'm currently torn between a few options...
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Perhaps a sign of aging (or maybe just maturing?)...I got lots of good news professionally this week, but the most satisfying was when one of my PhD students emailed about receiving a great offer :)
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What a great few days at the
#bseforum
! Great papers. Great city. And so great to catch up with old friends and make some new ones. Now I need to write the next paper so I can come back next year!!
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To the hundreds of economists that are going to write papers about the determinants of individual productivity during the pandemic: put [# HH members who can't wipe own ass] on RHS of your regression. Guarantee that beta dominates all others.
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At last! My paper with
@poweill
and Julien Hugonnier was accepted at
@RevEconStud
today! If papers are our babies, then (in the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield) this one was like giving birth to an accountant. Many years of hard work & revisions, but I love the final product
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NYTimes: using past experience with vaccine development, here is a reasonable timeline.
Every economist: Lucas critique. Lucas critique. Lucas critique.
It's now been almost a year since the New York Times put together this technically impressive yet totally wrong interactive article about how long it would take to get a Covid vaccine.
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A bunch of great hires by
@DukeEcon
. Plus, an awesome, super-heroes style picture to advertise the new faculty!
@pilossopher
giving off serious Black Widow vibes 😂
Economics offers problem-solving tools, and Duke’s 8 new Econ faculty members show just how many problems it can help solve.
Help us welcome them and get to know their research.
.
@nelson_bvsa
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*GOOD NEWS ALERT (for me)*: my paper with
@ShouridehAli
, Venky & Ariel Z-J has been conditionally accepted (in 1st round!) at JET. What's the paper about, you (maybe) ask?
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This is fantastic. Such a well-deserved prize. Anyone else think it's amazing that the first thing Wilson says is "you've won the Nobel prize"...not "we won the Nobel prize"?
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I’ve hit the point where my reaction to every conf announcement that hits my inbox is “I’m in!” Macro? Labor? Finance? Definitely. Development? I see an angle. Experimental? Isn’t every paper an experiment? Just get me back to talking Econ and having a coffee/beer w colleagues!
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Pandemic me @ 8 am: I’m gonna get so much done today.
Pandemic me @ 6 pm: crap. Well, I’m gonna get so much done after putting kids to sleep.
Pandemic me putting kids to sleep: 💤
#sodamntired
#hurryupwiththevaccine
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Another fun fact: my dad (pictured here with my daughter) is Ben Bernanke’s doppelgänger! I always want to bring him to the AEA meetings and have him follow me around so people think I’m important.
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So both Kamala Harris and Susan Rice are daughters of economists? I told my wife that reading our daughter Debreu at bedtime was a good idea...
#econtwitter
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Lucas toasting Wallace at 80th birthday conference. Great stuff.
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@guido_lorenzoni
nails it here. Our profession has 2 parts. The part where you sit alone and write/solve/code, and the part where you go to the seminar, out for lunch/coffee, get on a plane for conferences and seminars (and dinners, coffees, beers...)
Like many of you, still struggling to cope with the death of Emmanuel Farhi. Today I met a group of graduate students I am advising and decided to share some of my feelings. It was hard. 1/4
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Huge huge HUGE congratulations to
@PabloDerasmo
and
@CorbaeDean
. I know how hard these guys worked on this paper and it’s so great to see it end up in a top journal, where it belongs.
How do regulatory policies applied post 2008-crisis affect banking market structure, stability, and allocative efficiency? A new model of banking industry dynamics with imperfect competition consistent with U.S. data is proposed to address this question
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I have been tasked with promoting and spreading all the new and exciting things that are coming out of the
@FinanceTheory
Group (FTG). I'd ask my friends here on X (some tagged below) to give a quick re-tweet to make the econ/finance twitter-verse aware of this account. Thanks!
Finance Theory Group (FTG) is a group that strives to promote and influence theoretical research in finance, guide & illuminate empirical work, and impact policy. This account will be posting about upcoming conferences, workshops, and new papers. Follow and retweet!
#econtwitter
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Whoa! Congrats to
@yfatihkarahan
! Penn Econ continues to take over the world’s central banks :)
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@franciscpitthan
I routinely met two of my advisors at 10:30 pm...at a bar. It was the most reliable way to get feedback on my research!
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Fantastic news. Great economist. Even nicer human being. Good for Princeton.
We're thrilled to announce that the Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the promotion of Ezra Oberfield to the role of associate professor with tenure. Congrats to Professor Oberfield!
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seemed like I was way too productive lately, home schooling two kids, working from a crappy desk in my bedroom, worrying about the future of our country/planet. Didn’t want to make
#Econtwitter
worried that I was leaving them in the dust. So we got one of these
#martythedog
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Sent the link to a recent virtual seminar of mine to my folks. Glad I did. They loved it. Easy to forget that this (huge) part of me/my life is something they’ve never seen. They had so many questions after...not about the paper but just about our professional life
#EconTwitter
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So proud of this paper I wrote with
@poweill
and Julien. Even though it’s fairly “old” at this point, still get a thrill from seeing it in print (yes this is a not-so-humble brag…but so be it).
Published: Heterogeneity in decentralized asset markets, Lester, Weill, Hugonnier,
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Pro tip to the youngins on
#EconTwitter
: always submit a paper at the end of the day. If you do it in the morning, you experience that irrational sense of accomplishment (from simply clicking a button) and proceed to do jack squat for the rest of the day.
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I need to rewrite an introduction for a paper this week. Sometimes, for inspiration, I read great intros from other papers.
#EconTwitter
what are your favorite introductions?
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Dean Corbae, Pablo D'Erasmo,
@poweill
, and I are organizing a conference about the Impact of Post-Crisis Regulation on Financial Markets. Link to the call for papers is at the bottom of my website . Please submit your work (and feel free to retweet!)
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Congrats to
@jan_eeckhout
!! Not only wicked smart, but one of the nicest guys in the profession (except on the soccer field).
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Huge congratulations to my co-author Venky! I knew this guy was gonna do great things when I met him as a grad student during a visit to UCLA. Great decision by
@NYUSternEcon
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Academic research: where you work for 6 months only to discover that the optimal approach was what you were doing at t=0.
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Hey
#econtwitter
, anyone else think about fact that, if spread started a few weeks earlier, our profession would’ve been rocked by covid because of ASSA? Think about it...
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NEW PAPER ALERT: super excited about this project with
@mahyarkargar
,
@poweill
, and Sebastien Plante about Over-the-Counter (OTC) markets. Thread below:
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Some economists are brilliant at getting 2-3 publications out of a single paper/idea. I seem to go the other way…I find myself unintentionally packing multiple papers into one!
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Super excited to see this forthcoming in
@RevOfFinStudies
. Makes me feel like I was actually productive over the last year, though it was mostly my amazing co-authors
@poweill
,
@mahyar_k
, David, Diego, and Shuo. Some people have a covid baby. We have a covid paper!
Forthcoming: Corporate Bond Liquidity during the
#COVID
-19 Crisis by
@mahyar_k
@giesbusiness
,
@benjamminlester
@philadelphiafed
, David Lindsay
@UCLA
, Shuo Liu
@Tsinghua_Uni
,
@poweill
@UCLA
, and Diego Zúñiga
@UCLA
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Random thoughts after day 1 home w/ 4 yo & 7 yo: nursery school is cheap; need more sweatpants; teaching elem school math is harder than teaching 2nd year PhDs; need to improve mute/unmute skills on zoom; should’ve paid attention 2 email about remote connecting; need more wine
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The academic Econ world is so small and tightly connected that LinkedIn is completely unnecessary. And yet…I have a profile (that I basically don’t use) and I see many of my econ friends do, too. We don’t connect or anything. But we are there. Lingering. Just in case.
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Ok, twitter. I had to share this with someone so I guess my 14 followers will do...I am ridiculously proud of this paper, finally in print:
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We need to redesign the referee request process. Should start with: do you have young kids? Are they virtual? If you answer yes to both, should automatically go to next person. No explanation needed. I’m dying here.
#EconTwitter
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Don’t worry folks. The economy is safe again in these capable hands 😂😂😂
We are back (subject to conservative capacity constraint, social distancing, and masks when appropriate). With
@benjamminlester
@PabloDerasmo
@PhilFedResearch
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I love that Guido Menzio’s fame continues to reverberate through social media.
He explained it wasn't a plane, it was a three-dimensional solid. This cleared up the confusion.
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I think my home office is bugged. Definitely cameras somewhere. Minutes after hitting send on one report, I get two referee requests (all different journals). HOW DO THEY KNOW?
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First time back in my office since March 2020. Anyone want to guess how many of the items on my 2020 “to do” list actually got done? Hint: “don’t die” wasn’t on the list.
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Wow! Congrats to
@chrsct
!! Great choice by the Bank of Italy! Chiara was my TA at
@penneconomics
many moons ago & has been kicking butt ever since :) We will miss her in the Fed system, but gives me one more reason to visit Rome (as if I needed one)
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My doc (I thought): “how is your year?”
Me: “not bad. Been a bit stressed. We bought a new house and work is crazy…”
Doc: “actually I was asking about your ear” (last visit I had an ear infection)
Me (embarrassed): “oh, yeah. It’s fine.”
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“Reserves are concentrated ... And the key question is how those reserves, as the level was coming down, would get redistributed, and how smooth that redistribution process would be.” If only someone had studied this! Oh wait...
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The 2nd part isn't some trivial sidecar. It's an important input professionally (talking about research), but also a complementary input into my enjoyment of the job. I look forward to resuming it...skype/zoom just isn't the same
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Had an amazing time visiting
@RichFedResearch
this week for their
#EconCOREWeek
. Tons of great people to chat with, tons of great feedback on my paper, and lots of other great research to consume. Thanks for having me!!
It’s
#EconCOREWeek
at the Richmond Fed. From July 31 to August 4, economists from a range of disciplines will share their latest work and connect with our staff economists, with the last day devoted to climate economics.
#EconTwitter
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Two of the best:
@mazzimon77
and
@paures12
. RED cornering the market.
Welcome Marina Azzimonti and Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria as Associate Editors of RED!
#RevEconomicDynamics
#RED_SED
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👇 for anyone interested in learning some of the basics of the search-theoretic approach to studying over-the-counter markets, below has links to a great lecture by
@poweill
and a mediocre lecture by another guy (who apparently says “um” way more often than he, um, realized)
We are excited to announce that the lecture "OTC Markets Theory" by Ben Lester (Philly Fed) and Pierre-Olivier Weill (UCLA) is available in our YouTube channel and also on our website!
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Congrats to my colleague Simon at
@PhilFedResearch
for winning the Aigner award (on a single-authored paper, no less!).
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Watching these young economists post new wp after new wp while I struggle to complete remedial tasks during the pandemic (including home schooling my kids), I feel like the guy at the desk next to Josh Baskin in Big. Slow down! You're making us old (er, middle-age) folk look bad!
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So excited for first in-person seminar in 2 yrs
@stlouisfed
… aaaaand flight to STL canceled. New route: PHL>ORF>DCA>STL. Nothing will stop be from hanging with
@paures12
@mfariacastro
and the rest of the gang…except a minor delay in any of the three legs! Wish me luck!
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What terrible news. My advisor suggested that I send my very first paper to Ed, since he knew the topic well. He called me a few days later and spent hours going through his (incredibly helpful) comments even though we’d never met. Every time i talked w Ed I learned something new
I just learned that Ed Green passed away today.
He was my advisor, role model, and one of the kindest and more fascinating people in the profession.
I am deeply grateful that I had the privilege and pleasure to know him and learn from him
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The best part of this new trend on
#econtwitter
of advertising JMPs is imagining what my advisors would have tweeted about me 12(!) years ago. In this sense, I’m thankful I came out of grad school pre-twitter.
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Wow! Well-deserved prize. Always assumed Bernanke would be paired with some combination of Kiyotaki-Moore-Gertler. This opens up the possibility that all three of them get it in the future? Or none of them?
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I replied "it's dead. one of the referees hated it." This person tells me: "I'm the referee! I like the paper! Send it back!" That's when I understood that, as an academic economist, I would be living on a different planet 😂😂😂
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Watching the PA numbers and my 8 yo asks me questions about electoral college. I explain. She asks: “so basically PA is the golden snitch?” I think she’s a genius.
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I’m not necessarily looking to move, but if the Bank is Jamaica calls...
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Yeah
@EnghinAtalay
!!
@PhilFedResearch
Congratulations to
@EnghinAtalay
, Phai Phongthiengtham, Sebastian Sotelo, and Daniel Tannenbaum who were recognized for the AEJ Best Paper Award for Applied Economics at
#ASSA2024
for the paper “The Evolution of Work in the United States”
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@snavarrol
@heckmanequation
@JaapAbbring
Oh, man. Is this where we complain about our work not being cited? I always did it quietly to my friend in the office next door, but since nobody is in the office any more...Twitter storms coming soon!
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Very cool to see three papers from our special issue of
@RevEconDyn
on the most cited list. Congrats to the authors!
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Next best thing to winning a prize is being cited in the prize announcement (for work w
@poweill
and Hugonnier). Congrats to
@DuffieDarrell
, Nicolae, and Lasse for winning the Ross prize!
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We are 21 minutes into the virtual school year and I’ve already revised down the forecast for my output.
#prayingforavaccine
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Got one R&R today and re-submitted another. This means that today I will experience the largest gap between how productive I *feel* and how productive I actually *am*. The former skyrockets as the latter plummets.
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Since I’m turning 40 soon I finally decided to google “permanent press” to see what I’ve been doing with the washing machine for all of these years.
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Sadly, this situation (and my views) are evolving. This is awful. I’m so sorry
@bocar_a
(and, it seems, many others) had to go through this. The PhD is hard enough. This kind of crap is unacceptable. As a profession, we need to do better. Not plan to do better. Do better now.
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#EconTwitter
advanced PhD students!! See opportunity below for visiting the Philly Fed, getting feedback on your work, and interacting with a great group of economists (plus me)!
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Fantastic choice by TE
@EconTheory
! My brilliant, yet humble coauthor
@poweill
has been named co-editor.
We are thrilled to have Pierre-Olivier Weill join the editorial board as Co-editor, starting July 1st, 2022. He will handle papers in a wide range of topics including finance, macroeconomics and search.
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Congrats
@jessiehandbury
! Another example of philly’s phinest 😄
How do local price indexes vary differently for the rich and the poor? Higher-income cities and neighborhoods are relatively cheap for the rich, in spite of high unit prices, because chains offering high-quality products are more likely to operate there
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Who wants to come join us
@PhilFedResearch
? Great group of economists. Great research environment. Great city. Be in touch if you are interested!!
#EconTwitter
Our Monetary and Macroeconomics Section of Research Dept at FRB Philadelphia is hiring! We are seeking an experienced Ph.D. economist who does interesting research in macro and monetary economics and can do policy advising and more.
#EconTwitter
Link:
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Has anyone else found that the “oh no, I went to the store and forgot to put on clothes” nightmare has been replaced with the “oh no, I went to the store and forgot to put on a mask” nightmare?
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Just caught myself saying the least subgame perfect sentence in the English language to my son: “fine but if you smash your face open I’m not taking you to the hospital!” So…if you’re teaching intro game theory…you’re welcome for the perfect example.
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When going back to a project that's been dormant for a bit, it's amazing how optimistic I am that Ben (now) is so much smarter than Ben (a few months ago), only to rediscover that the two Bens are basically the same.
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Beautiful tribute to Prescott. I’m not a “direct descendant” but I find it incredible how much of an impact he’s had on me in terms of methodology, philosophy, & other tidbits I picked up from my profs, coauthors, & colleagues. What a legacy…
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Feeling conflicted about this RT. On one hand, want people to check out our paper and give feedback. On other hand, hesitate to circulate such a goofy picture. First effect dominates. Come learn about referrals! Hint: it’s not who you know, it’s how you know them.
Registration is now open for the tenth SaMMF Virtual Seminar: Benjamin Lester on "Job Referrals and Labor market Outcomes Across Occupations” ( ) Looking forward to your participation!
#SearchandMatching
#EconTwitter
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Special issue of
@RevOfFinStudies
on impact of COVID-19. Really great list of papers on a variety of topics. Many thanks to Itay,
@rkoijen
, and Holger for putting this together and including my work with
@mahyar_k
,
@poweill
, Diego, David and Shuo!
#SpecialIssue
:
#COVID
-19 and Its Impact on Financial Markets and the Real Economy
Edited by Itay Goldstein, Ralph S. J. Koijen
@rkoijen
, Holger M. Mueller
The entire issue is
#freeaccess
thanks to
@OUPEconomics
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Much better than the hatchet job of an obituary in the
@nytimes
. Amazing what happens when you speak to active (well-respected) economists, and not to someone (perhaps in the op-Ed department?) who still sees macro through the outdated lens of fresh vs saltwater!
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Congrats to my fantastic co-author
@mahyar_k
on publishing his job market paper in the
@J_Fin_Economics
!!
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👇
Liquidity conditions in the corporate bond market since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, from
@mahyar_k
,
@benjamminlester
, David Lindsay, Shuo Liu,
@poweill
, and Diego Zúñiga
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Had huge plans to hit the ground running at work in 2020. First roadblock: after 10 days out of the office, totally forgot the password to both my computers.
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Dilemma Fed economists face weekly: when your neighbor/doctor/etc starts castigating you for “running the printing press” do you (a) engage or (b) nod your head and deflect? I always choose (b), which prob means they all think I’m an idiot (maybe true, but for other reasons)
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So...single people just don’t date for a few months? As a dork, this seems like an obvious paper. No new matches being formed. I imagine plenty of existing matches being destroyed (Amy and I will likely make it, but just barely). So test for thick market effect after a vaccine!
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Congrats to the newest fellows, including one of my advisors
@jan_eeckhout
and one of my coauthors Nicola Persico!!
The Society is pleased to announce the election of 14 new Fellows of the Econometric Society. Please click on to view the results.
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Econ focuses lots on heterogeneity in ability but I've been thinking about heterogeneity in available "bandwidth" lately. Underprivileged kids don't have time/safe/quiet to do HW, person experiencing loss/divorce can't concentrate, etc
#EconTwitter
what papers capture this idea?
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I had a very unfortunate streak of getting papers rejected while away on vacation. I would swear not to check email, but then I would, and that big stinking turd would be waiting in my inbox to ruin my day. Today I’m very happy to break that streak!
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