Neale Mahoney
@nealemahoney
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Professor @StanfordEcon . Incoming Director @SIEPR . Former @WhiteHouse National Economic Council. Watches soccer, reads history, listens to all types of music.
Stanford, CA
Joined December 2008
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Why do (don't) economists (non-economists) write like this?
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Some professional news: After 8 years in Chicago,
@AlesVoena
and I are heading west to join the econ dept at
@Stanford
, leaving this morning in the modern equivalent of a covered wagon.
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Would the authors have written the paper if the distribution was normal 😜
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CFPB is proposing to crack down on "junk fees", such as hotel resort fees, concert ticket convenience fees, debit card overdraft fees, and credit card late fees.
See:
This is a research area of mine so I wanted to chime in with a few thoughts.
Begin 🧵
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A (longish) thread on tradeoffs and false tradeoffs during the COVID-19 crisis
With the unrelenting drop in the stock market and off-the-charts UI claims, there are growing concerns that the economic costs of the “cure” are worse than the health costs of the “problem”
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It’s almost as if car accidents occur more readily after people slam on the brakes 🤦🏻♂️
It's almost as if the virus spreads more readily in lockdown, precisely as every study has thus far shown. But opening up is a lot less fun for would-be dictators.
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Machine learning is like cross fit and marathons. The main reason people do it is to brag about it.
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Germans may be better at soccer, engineering, and brewing beer — but we can’t let them beat us at sitting on the couch and doing nothing.
Come on America. This is our time to shine.
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Permanently locked out of Elsevier for too many login attempts, he was unable to publish and fired from his faculty position. Bitter and disgruntled he turned his efforts to medical debt collection, becoming part of the problem he had at one time hoped to solve.
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R&R
What’s a word that has a drastically different meaning in your field from the meaning the general public ties to it?
I’ll start: behavior
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False tradeoff
#1
: The virus vs. economy.
As
@Austan_Goolsbee
tells us, the first rule of virus economics is that the best thing for the economy is anything that slows the spread of the virus (🛑🦠➡️💰)
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A call to arms 👇
Let’s flood the airwaves, twitterverse, and op-ed pages with our support for
@Austan_Goolsbee
’s rule
#1
of virus economics: first stop the virus.
We cannot let an outspoken minority use “economics” as a bludgeon for wrongheaded policy.
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Today,
@potus
met with CEOs in the event tickets industry to announce they have voluntarily committed to eliminate junk fees -- and transition to all-in, up-front pricing.
1. How did the President do it?
2. Why is it good for markets and consumers?
1/
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Ironic that tech makes it easy to cancel people but almost impossible to cancel our monthly subscriptions
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Economists reject the labor theory of value except when they’re responding to referee reports
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Today the big three credit reporting agencies announced they will remove most medical debt in collections from credit reports.
A short 🧵on the economics of this decision:
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"An Econometrica is something everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read"
(h/t Mark Twain)
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I’m devastated to hear this horrible news. My heart goes out to Yiran Fan’s family, friends, and the entire UChicago community.
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Excited to announce that I'm joining the terrific team of coeditors at AEJ: Applied Economics.
I've been lucky to have editors who have invested time and effort in my research, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to "pay it forward" as the kids say.
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exit
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New publication: Medical Debt in the US, 2009-2020 (joint with
@ray_kluender
,
@francisawong
, and
@wesyin
) in
@JAMA_current
Link to the paper:
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Do you overpay for subscriptions (DashPass) bc you forget to cancel?
You're not alone.
New paper (w Liran Einav and Ben Klopack) quantifies how much extra we pay due to inattention/inertia - and impact of policy remedies:
🧵👇
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In a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research ...
What phrase signals that the person using it doesn't understand your field?
Example: "Computer error."
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$31.3 billion in overdraft fees.
I get that banks need to generate revenue from checking accounts but the folks who are paying these fees are *literally* those who can least afford it.
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Thread with some of my favorite charts from the 2024 Economic Report of the President
Huge props to
@econjared46
,
@HBoushey
,
@KiraboJackson
, and the tireless
@WhiteHouseCEA
staff for deepening our economic understanding
And for the beautiful charts 😍📊
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New White House initiative to dredge the sludge that wastes our time and saps our patience
Actions include:
- Making it easier to cancel subscriptions
- Requiring airlines provide automatic cash refunds
- Allowing you to submit health claims online
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Rock star 🤩🤩🤩
Pagano and
@AlessandraVoena
receive De Sanctis Award for Economic Sciences
@StanfordEcon
@SIEPR
Premio De Sanctis a Pagano e Voena - La Stampa
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As others have pointed out, the contrasting images of police rolling into black neighborhoods with more war-toys than GI Joe and healthcare workers fighting covid-19 without adaquate PPE tells you everything you need to know about our country’s messed up priorities.
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A few weeks ago, I voiced my concern that debates over Covid-19 policy would fall victim to the false trade-off between the economy and the virus.
I now realize there is a corollary to this concern: The dangerous and largely false narrative of economists vs. epidemiologists
I know many of you must have these same thoughts and questions:
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Vaccine developed in my dad’s homeland (🇬🇧) being shared by my homeland (🇺🇸) to help my mother’s homeland (🇮🇳).
We’re all in this together. Let’s beat this thing.
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Great article by
@zackcooperYale
and
@steventberry
Tl; dr
Q: How do we save the economy?
A: Stop the virus
Q: How do we stop the virus?
A: Throw the kitchen sink at it
Q: Won't that cost a lot?
A: Not compared to the cost of doing nothing
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How about this: Families must decide whether to spend their money on groceries for 2 weeks or a $237 micro textbook.
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Congrats to my “graduating” pre-docs Ella, Chris, and Bruno who are heading off to start their PhDs.
Their creativity, insight, and kindness has kept Mahoney Lab fun and productive.
They have bright futures — and I can’t wait to see what they do next.
@StanfordEcon
@SIEPR
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American exponentialism 😢
The current outbreak in the U.S. looks like nothing in any other rich country:
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The culture in Silicon Valley is contagious. We recently moved here and our 3-year-old has already learned how to move fast and break things.
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Thrilled that the brilliant
@m_sendhil
will be joining the faculty at
@ChicagoBooth
. Welcome to Chicago!
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Spending more on PPE, ventilators, and ICU capacity both slows the virus and stimulates the economy
Even lockdowns, which harm the economy in the short run, allow us to transition to less aggressive measures over the medium run and are therefore good for the economy.
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Tuesday was my last day at the White House NEC. I'm indebted to
@BrianCDeese
and Lael Brainard for their trust and incisive leadership, and to
@POTUS
for his vision of a bottom-up, middle-out economy that animated our work. 1/3
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Overheard 7-year-old telling 3-year-old:
"Magic doesn't exist ... but there's science and it's almost as cool"
And that perfectly encapsulates the good and the bad of raising kids in Silicon Valley
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However, when it comes to COVID-19, the tradeoffs I think are *greatly overstated*. Indeed, I’m worried that the language of tradeoffs is being co-opted by outsiders who are shortsighted or pushing for corporate cronyism. We economists should get ahead of this ... and call BS.
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TIL Paul Douglas of Cobb-Douglas was US Senator from Illinois and a champion for civil rights.
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🚨 New Working Paper 🚨
Long-Term Care Hospitals: A Case Study in Waste
Me + Liran Einav + Amy Finkelstein
This is my first new working paper thread. Thanks to
@nomadj1s
,
@ProfNoto
,
@SteveCicala
, and many others for inspiration.
\begin{thread}
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This is fantastic, amazing, wonderful news.
University president is always a tough job, and it's tougher now than ever.
I know Jon well. He is a coauthor and mentor and was my primary advisor in grad school.
Jon is kind and generous, brilliant and wise.
He is deeply
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But let's also be on the lookout for politicians dressing up shortsightedness or corporate cronyism in the language of economic tradeoffs … and let’s make sure we call BS.
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Providing cash for airlines or the cruise industry is not about the tradeoff b/w the economy and the virus. There are no elasticities that can rationalize bailing out airline shareholders who receive a premium exactly because they are exposed to this type of risk.
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1. Cracking down on junk fees is *pro-market*
Markets work when consumers observe prices (and quality) and shift their demand accordingly.
Junk fees, defined by the CFPB as hidden back-end fees that are added after the transaction takes place, gum up these market forces.
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It’s a pleasure to read JMPs.
As I have gotten older, it has become increasingly apparent how hard it is to come up with important new questions or fresh, thoughtful takes on old ones.
This year’s JMPs do this in spades.
Bravo 👏 👏👏
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Thrilled about this prize. The applied economics that many of us do each day is a tribute to their work.
Overjoyed for my friend Guido Imbens. Could not happen to a more kind, thoughtful, generous person. Also, pretty fast on the uphills 🚴♂️
Nice guys do sometimes finish first!
BREAKING NEWS:
The 2021 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded with one half to David Card and the other half jointly to Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens.
#NobelPrize
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How big is the subscription cancelation problem?
We signed up for and canceled 47 newspaper subscriptions to find out.
New Briefing Book piece with
@giacomofcr
and
@zahra_thab
Short 🧵👇
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When you p-hack like hell and can still only get p = 0.049 👇
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I know I’m an optimist, but this gives me hope that the GOP can close this dark chapter and be a party that I often disagree with but still respect.
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If you want to instantly gain 10 IQ points, read this deeply researched, well-balanced, and acutely thought-provoking piece by my coauthor Amy Finkelstein:
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See the excellent Hammer and the Dance article for more on this:
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🚨Consumer finance researchers🚨
We're submitting a comment on how CFPB's proposed rule on personal financial data rights may curtail researcher access to consumer transaction data.
We're urging CFPB to consider permitting anonymized data access for research purposes.
1/2
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Live view of referee 2 offering “constructive” comments to help improve the paper
(
@KhoaVuUmn
, am I doing it right?)
We got home after a week at my moms and the cats were nowhere to be found. I’d had someone checking on them and was watching them on the security camera but they weren’t here. Well the door to the HVAC was left open and they’d gotten lost in the walls. Landlady gave permission.
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$5 cappuccinos
(In Italy you can get a €1.30 cappuccino served in less than 1 minute that tastes better too)
What’s something that’s clearly a scam but Americans have been conditioned to believe it’s “normal”?
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Congratulations to this year's
#SloanFellows
in economics 🎉🥳🎈
The creativity, dedication, and generosity of these (and many other) young scholars fills me with optimism about the future of our profession
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One silver lining of the cubic fit fiasco is that I’m seeing a lot of people on here embracing their inner structural economist
To better visualize observed data, we also continually update a curve-fitting exercise to summarize COVID-19's observed trajectory. Particularly with irregular data, curve fitting can improve data visualization. As shown, IHME's mortality curves have matched the data fairly well.
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Quitting my job to start a property management company called the Rent Seekers
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Daughter asked me why a rainbow has 7 colors.
So I've now spent the last 30 mins reading random articles online and my best answer is
"Newton made it up because a major scale has 7 notes and he thought it would be cool for a rainbow to have the same number of colors"
Really?
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Congrats to my brilliant wife
@AlesVoena
on winning the Carlo Alberto Medal for best Italian economist under 40.
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This is a microcosm of a larger concern of mine: With increasing educational polarization, the Democratic Party will promote policies that *feel* progressive but actually disproportionately benefit the professional class.
It may sound nice and play well on the evening news, but (another) student loan repayment pause is regressive and expensive. Who benefits? What is the cost?
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This argument was overplayed during the Financial Crisis, but it was at least it was a theoretical possibility at this point. Now, the point is to get people *not* to work.
I’m going to be generous and assume that Laffer and Moore made a sign error when doing their homework.
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Submitting this as Exhibit A in wife’s citizenship application.
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Happy to see that the administration is taking steps to lower housing costs, including a pilot to waive title insurance on refis
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Under-reported fact: The tax credits include a big handout to the regression discontinuity industrial complex
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While headlines about the $1.9T relief bill that passed the House highlight the $1,400 checks, UI extension, and funding for vaccine distribution, tucked inside the bill is a provision that would *substantially increase the generosity of the ACA health insurance subsidies*
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3. The ACA Medicaid expansions led to a (huge) 34 pp decline in medical debt in collections in expansion states vs non-expansion states (left). Non-medical debt did not trend differentially in expansion vs non-expansion states (right), reducing concerns about confounding factors.
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Congratulations to the brilliant
@AlessandraVoena
for her election as a Fellow of the Econometric Society
@SIEPR
@Stanford
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Today, the
@FCC
proposed a rule to require "all-in, upfront" pricing for cable and satellite TV providers.
Thread summarizing the problem, the rule, and why it's good for markets and consumers.
FCC NPRM:
WH statement:
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I share
@BetseyStevenson
's frustration with the US healthcare system.
But I think this view - that we're unable to recognize or admit how broken the system is - is too simplistic.
Since this view is held by many who share my politics, I wanted to push back a little.
Begin 🧵
When will we admit that the US healthcare system simply doesn't work?
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A equilibrium where students feel like they need to lie to get into their preferred college because everyone else is doing it is bad bad bad in so many ways.
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🚨New Working Paper🚨
The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization
with
@alyceadamsPhD
,
@ray_kluender
,
@JinglinWang4
,
@francisawong
,
@wesyin
NBER WP:
Ungated version:
Begin 🧵
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Honored to be appointed to the
@CFPB
Academic Research Council.
CFPB researchers, together w/ the broader research community, have built a strong, robust body of evidence to guide policy and enforcement.
Excited to advise CFPB on future research.
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A January weather FYI for any grad students or faculty we are or will be trying to recruit 🌞😎
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I love it.
@JustinWolfers
on CNN basically telling viewers to turn off CNN.
Well done, sir
“Just tune out…Have another look at it in a couple of months bc riding every up & down over the next few weeks is going to cause you nothing but heart palpitations. Focus on the big picture” -
@JustinWolfers
, prof of economics & public policy at UMich, on stock market volatility
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🚨Call for papers🚨
Ignacio Cuesta, Gaston Illanes, and I are organizing a SITE conference on *IO of Healthcare and Consumer Finance Markets* Aug 31 and Sep 1 at Stanford
Details below:
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Novice question: Are the false negatives iid or is there within-person correlation that makes multiple tests of the same person less effective.
4. Official data shows 88-94%. If you assume 90% sensitivity, this is the best accuracy (sensitivity) of any saliva test.
(It also means if you took it twice, for $20, you would have 99% accuracy).
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Congrats to my amazing, super smart, kind, and crazy productive colleague
@maya_rossin
! 🎉🥳🎈🎈
@SIEPR
@StanfordHP
@Stanford
.
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I'll be first in line to donate to the free ice cream stand at the Biden Presidential Library 🍦🏦
Thank you, thank you, thank you
@POTUS
for your vision, leadership, and historic accomplishments.
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Freaked out that the WH is predicting positive zombies starting around June 1
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2. Medical debt is disproportionately concentrated in the South and in low-income communities. The avg amount of medical debt is 3x higher in the South than in the Northeast (left). The avg amount of medical debt is 5x higher in poor communities than rich ones (right).
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Fantastic list but wish they had made room from my colleague Magne Mogstad
-
@oslouniversity
PhD who worked his way to Gary Becker Prof and editor at
@JPolEcon
- CV you could divide by 3 and each third would get tenure at top dept
- Consistently blows my mind with his comments
.
@TheEconomist
’s 8 best young economists:
5
@MITEcon
grads
2
@MITEcon
profs
(+ Emi, who seems pretty cool at parties.)
“They mostly want to change the world, not just fathom it.”
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Chicago Booth micro faculty (
@RDizonRoss
, Pascal Noel, Eric Budish, Eric Zwick, and I) are hiring full-time RAs
You'll be part of a vibrate community of RAs and full participants in the
@ChicagoBooth
and
@UChi_Economics
communities
Job posting:
@econ_ra
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I don’t have any deep objections with the method. It’s just that the name sounds ... umm ... fishy.
(Ok. I will show myself out.)
Poisson regression can get one so far with so little trouble, why do so many still resist? Especially with panel data. It’s too bad we can’t give it another name to reflect the fact that its a fully robust estimator of conditional mean parameters.
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