Francesco Trebbi
@xftrebbi
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Prof. @UCBerkeley @BerkeleyHaas . Co-director Political Economy Program @nberpubs . Co-editor Econometrica @ecmaEditors . Fellow @cepr_org @CESifoNetwork .
Berkeley, CA
Joined March 2013
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I uploaded all primitive files of my teaching notes for graduate Political Economy at:
Download them freely & use them as you wish. They're far from perfect, but I hope useful to those of you who want to teach some of these topics.
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Many students ask me why I work with structural methods, that is theoretical models mapped directly to data, parametrically or nonparametrically. [1/n]
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I'm convinced Economics departments should add a survey design & methodology course to their graduate programs. Add it as part of the toolbox, on top of Econometrics & program evaluation courses.
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Just for fun:
Rejection letter + 2 negative referee reports for one of the best pieces of social science research of the 20th century, "The strength of weak ties" by M. Granovetter (49K citations)
Love R1: "The paper strikes me as trivial"
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Political Economy has now a JEL code.
We are code "P".
We thank the AEA
@AEAInformation
@AEAjournals
for engaging with the
@nberpubs
POL members. But particular thanks have to go to
@renee_bowen_lyn
a leader in our field who made all this really happen.
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My prediction for the 2021
#NobelPrize
in Economic Sciences is J. Angrist and D. Card for their contributions to labor economics and developing new approaches to identification.
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The benevolent social planner does not exist.
- Alberto Alesina
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Roger Myerson, Nobel Laureate, in grad school had his '74 paper on proper equilibrium *desk rejected* at Int'l Journal of Game Theory. That's the idea for which R Selten later got the Nobel. Then Myerson went on to win the prize for another idea.
PhD students: Don't give up.
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"Political-economy models begin with the assertion that economic policy choices are not made by social planners, who live only in academic papers."
- Alberto Alesina, 1994
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I am a firm believer that Theory is an essential field within Econ & that one of the core strengths of Political Economy has been to engage theorists & make them integral part of our field. Without understanding/clarifying mechanisms we go nowhere.
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The 2020 Economics Nobel will be announced on October 12th. Time for predictions: Card & Angrist for introducing new methods of econometric identification in labor economics OR Milgrom, Kreps & Wilson for Auctions/Theory.
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At
@BerkeleyHaas
we have created the Berkeley Political Economy Research Lab.
@m_bombardini
, Ernesto DalBo, Fred Finan,
@guoxu_econ
& myself interact with Grad & UG students weekly (including members of
@ubcVSE
lab team). Apply to our PhD program & join us.
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It's a true honor to be able to build on the shoulders of a giant like Alberto Alesina at
@nberpubs
. Ebonya & I will be hard at work to help the Political Economy field grow, remain open to new ideas, foster interactions w/ other fields in Econ & w/ our friends in PoliSci.
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Fred Finan,
@guoxu_econ
& I are preparing a full year empirical political economy sequence for all
@UCBerkeley
grad students interested in the field. We tag-team on our respective areas of competence through the year to offer a coherent perspective. We'll post all slides & files.
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Probably my most cherished follow is
@AuschwitzMuseum
Powerful and poignant every single day.
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The Nobel Prize in Economics is next Monday. My prediction this year is Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt, Paul Romer for endogenous growth theory. [we are still awarding the 1980s & macro/growth have been skipped for a while]
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Italy has traditionally dysfunctional politics - hence the large representation of Italians studying political economics. But this government is really another level in terms of lack of competence & geopolitical ineptitude. I expect to triple the number of my students.
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Thank you. Deeply honored to have been asked to serve.
We are thrilled to have Francesco Trebbi join the editorial board as Co-editor, starting July 1st, 2023. He will be handling papers in a wide range of topics in political economy and applied economics.
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La prima cosa da pagare in minibot sono gli stipendi dei parlamentari che hanno votato per i minibot.
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Today is the one year anniversary of Alberto Alesina's death
His memory and research are very much with us.
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Ho perso un amico e un maestro incomparabile oggi. Non trovo le parole. Che la terra ti sia lieve, caro Alberto.
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Apparently the Political Economy course at Harvard Econ has some 50 grad students. Our UBC courses in POL are packed. POL field is growing. Within Econ, it creates important synergies w/Development, Public, Macro, Theory, Finance, Behavioral. Outside Econ, strong links w/PoliSci.
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Central bank communication perfection: in 18 seconds and three words Mario Draghi turned around a crisis.
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Tough times. No deep analysis here. I think it's better to bake some pizza. Also I had promised this recipe to
@AtifRMian
in exchange of some awesome Pakistani sweets a while back. So here’s my pizza, optimized for grad students. 1/N
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Great, as usual. Guido Tabellini's on Alberto Alesina’s Intellectual Legacy via
@ProMarket_org
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And a honest and generous human being. Major loss for Pakistan indeed.
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I agree. I like people who show up, every day. If you think about it, a colleague who works from home or from coffee shops reduces the social multiplier. Being there, being present is important for a research unit, for our junior colleagues, for our students.
A tweet because I have too many friends:
Individual faculty offices are probably the largest captial investments at most universities. I worry that might change of faculty don't start using them more regularly.
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Econ/Poli Sci departments need to start serious contingency planning for their PhD students on the market. There will be a partial market freeze up. Bridge funding for delayed graduating students must be provided.
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Spread ITA-GER. Il rettangolo rosso indica soldi che lo Stato italiano ha speso per evidente incompetenza economica del governo (rischio percepito dai mercati) e non possiamo usare per riparare strade o sicurezza pubblica o pagare insegnanti.
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No data on this until someone runs an RCT, but a good & well stocked coffee machine in the faculty lounge must be by far the cheapest way of increasing a research unit productivity & sociality.
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Happy to be convinced otherwise, but my view is that macro models focused on fiscal policy that omit explicit political economy incentives are misspecified at their core & of limited empirical appeal.
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Monday Oct 14th is the day of the announcement for the 2019 Economics Nobel Prize. This year I am calling it for Alesina, Persson, Tabellini for Political Economics.
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Graduation day with the fantastic Miguel Ortiz, my first PhD student at Berkeley. Truly a privilege to work with such talent. Best part of the job.
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Bolsonaro 2022, Trump 2016 & 2020. We are having serious problems sampling, surveying, & correctly predicting voting likelihood on the populist right. These are anti-establishment voters & they see pollsters as an arm of the establishment. You won't reach them in the same way.
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Political science is underappreciated as a sister discipline to economics. These midterm elections and the coalition breakdown in Italy will be another swift reminder of how important that field is.
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You can download here *ALL* the data on the universe of US federal lobbying.
If you work on regulation, antitrust, finance, any type of public policy evaluation & interested in its political economy, go here. Data is clean, triple checked, ready to merge. Wonderful contribution
I am pleased to announce a major update of the LobbyView database available for public access at This database allows researchers to effectively search, visualize, and download lobbying data in the U.S. between 1999 and 2020. Some key features:
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Help me out in signaling the main conferences in Political Economy. On my calendar I typically have:
NBER POL Summer Inst (mid Jul)
BCEP Berkeley-UBC (mid Sep)
Rochester Wallis (early Oct)
NBER POL Fall Meeting (late Oct)
NBER POL Spring Meeting (Apr)
JHU-Georgetown PECO (May)
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Tutte le volte che guardo a quante tasse degli Italiani van buttate via per pagare l'incertezza politica generata da questo governo mi prende male. E questo e' solo sul debito. Investimenti e consumi ridotti, etc...
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The NBER Political Economy Program meeting for Fall 2022 will be held on October 21, 2022.
It is organized by Hülya Eraslan, James Snyder, & Thomas Fujiwara (the members of the 2021-22 POL Steering Committee).
@nberpubs
The official call for papers will be in August.
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I &
@guoxu_econ
will be teaching a PhD course in political economy next semester
@BerkeleyHaas
. This is part of our full Political Economy sequence, complementing Fred Finan, Ernesto DalBò &
@gerardrolanducb
's current courses - each playing our own strengths.
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A requisite for scientific work is to be based on evidence, not advocacy. So I agree economists should be apolitical in their research. But ignoring political constraints/incentives in economics is not the same thing. It makes as much sense as doing physics without gravity.
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We do so by discriminating good theoretical frameworks from others not in terms of elegance, but ability to match the data. Falsifying theory is key to the scientific method. This is what model selection does. [n/n]
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Most sincere congratulations to our colleague
@claudferraz
for his election to Fellow of the Econometric Society, the second most prestigious professional fellowship in Economics below only the Order of the Sith.
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The NBER Political Economy Program Spring meeting is this Thu-Fri starting 11am ET
It's livestreamed on the NBER's YouTube channel. Students, colleagues or others who might be interested may watch the presentations here:
Program:
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This is Kobe with my brother's team, who was one year older than him. My team was two years older instead. Kobe played in both teams because why not. His dad was there too. His mom & sisters were at every practice.
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These are tough days for some Econ PhD students on the market. Stay positive and focus on all that you have already achieved. It will pay a large dividend, even if not just now.
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Economics is a receptive discipline. It will happen. 10% of all top5 publications in Economics every year in the last decade are in Political Economy. It is about 30 papers a year approximately (we collected the data for NBER POL).
Alberto Alesina devoted his life to make of political economy a respected field in economics. He succeeded marvelously. The best tribute we could give to Alberto is to add political economy as a field of teaching and research in all self-respecting economics departments.
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Our Berkeley Political Economy Research Lab is a weekly meeting where all our phd students
@BerkeleyHaas
@berkeleyecon
talk research w/me
@m_bombardini
@guoxu_econ
E. Dal Bo
@gerardrolanducb
F. Finan
@anthlittle
. We meet rain or shine. Apply to our programs to join the discussion
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As chair of the search committee for our group at
@BerkeleyHaas
I would like to thank all the candidates we interviewed today for a great day of Economics. I really enjoyed our conversations & learned a ton of new things.
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200,000 deaths in US for a virus that has been controlled & limited in all representative democracies. Population adjusted & using Canada as the benchmark, that is 119,526 excess deaths. 120K people who did not need to to die. How can this not be gross, unfathomable negligence.
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- Fall '22 NBER Political Economy meeting on 10/21/22
is organized by H. Eraslan,
@thomasfujiwara
, J. Snyder
- Spring '23 NBER Political Economy meeting on 4/21/23 by
@renee_bowen_lyn
@MelissaLDell
- Summer Institute '23 by
@snaidunl
, T. Palfrey,
@m_bombardini
, E. Dal Bo
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Students on Job Mkt: Take all of this w/ grain of salt. It's a painful rite of passage typical of tribal societies. JM doesn't define you.
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Rest in peace, Kobe Bryant. Pistoia and us at the small Libertas team will miss you.
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Getting ready for the
@nberpubs
Summer Institute. This is the Political Economy program 2024 (July 16-17)
An excellent selection by the organizers.
You can watch it live streaming
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First day of the NBER Political Economy Summer Institute begins in about 1 hour.
The program is here: (EDT times)
It is livestreamed on the NBER's YouTube channel & students, colleagues or others may watch the presentations here:
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The New York Times on the financial crisis discusses work by
@AtifRMian
@profsufi
and me on polarization
Data was pointing at political polarization well before Trump and Salvini.
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Yet most of us dedicate minimal time to pruning this space of knowledge of models that are false – not in the sense of the proofs being wrong, but in the sense of not being able to match empirical moments or doing so without parsimony. [5/n]
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Go ahead, google how the spectrum enabling your cell phone reception was allocated.
artificial intelligence will shape future of the economy and economics more than auction theory and other idle pursuits economists obsess about and celebrate -
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Great day for all little girls out there. Overjoyed for my daughter.
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We are seeing Theory in Economics journals taking less and less relevance. I think structural methods are the scientifically sound way of going back to theory and giving it back its relevance. [8/n]
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There was a tribute to Alberto Alesina during our last NBER Political Economy SI meeting, which I thought would be streaming. I posted here my remarks, in case you're interested: via
@ProMarket_org
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There is a whole field called political economy devoted to bridging this gap. Just saying.
Another one is that economists have no particular expertise on the topic of politics while they do on allocation of resources and distributional impacts. We can (try to) tell you what the policy that maximizes or appropriately trades off these outcomes is but not how to get there
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Paolo Savona deve andare in pensione. Non alla Consob.
Intelligenza artificiale e tutela del risparmio nell’intervista al presidente
#Consob
#Savona
del direttore
@sole24ore
#Tamburini
sul quotidiano in edicola e nella versione digitale
#19giugno
s
https://mobapp2.ilsole24ore.com/art.php?testata=S24&issue=20190619&artid=2.0.269576639
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No, they are still super scary and will kill us all.
It's pretty awesome how dancing makes robots less intimidating. Looking forward to seeing more nontrivial Machine Learning on these robots. Credit: Boston Dynamics.
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Students/colleagues: if you experience stress or depression that you feel are affecting your functionality, please make full use of your university resources. Mental health requires as much care as physical health. There is no stigma. It is normal, even absent a global pandemic.
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Make sure to follow the streaming online of the NBER Political Economy meeting this Friday 10/20 on
The meeting is organized by Alessandra Casella, Fred Finan & Brian Knight.
Program is here:
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Probably the single biggest mistake in running an academic research program is to underinvest in students. No resources (both $$ and faculty's attention/time) for your students, then no talent and no intellectual legacy.
@BerkeleyHaas
BPP invests a ton.
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A new paper on polarization. An open question in Pol Econ is what drove polarization to the levels we see today. In Congress, a lot of this division came from pressure by party leaders. Now we are at historically high levels of party control:
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My solidarity to the students at
#Sharif_University
. It takes courage to confront the regime like that.
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In economics we associate false beliefs with a failure of rationality. We can handle that for the isolated individual, but in the aggregate false beliefs require a deeper understanding of where that failure may originate or whether beliefs were incorrectly elicited at the start.
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There used to be a lot more political economy in macroeconomics in the 1990s, especially wrt to thinking about policy. That was a good thing, because in reality there is. I don't see this as a problem necessarily, rather an opportunity for young researchers.
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This can be a very stressful time for PhD students on the Econ Job Market. Checking your phone/email won't help. 1 Keep your advisor in the loop even if there's no news; 2 Focus on small, well-defined tasks (referee reports or things you can complete w/ satisfaction); 3 Hold on.
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We received 176 submission for the NBER POL Summer Institute this year. The field of Political Economy, which NBER POL founder Alberto Alesina helped establishing, is growing at a fast clip.
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Structural approaches are great at disciplining model selection. If your model doesn't have forces pushing towards minimum winning coalitions & in the data you mostly observe those, this approach will make that immediately clear with poor fit or nonsensical estimates. [6/n]
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In this, structural approaches fulfill the important scientific role of rejecting theories that are not supported by data. [7/n]
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I wish more theorists sat down w/ people able to estimate models & jointly devised falsification or model selection tests. We learn as much from killing a theory as from building a theory.
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The Spring 2023 NBER Political Economy program meeting is this Friday 4/21, followed by Economics of Culture & institutions on 4/22.
Program is here:
The POL Summer Institute meeting is on 7/18-19.
Join us live on
@nberpubs
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I am going to leave this here for my Brazilian, Argentinian, & German colleagues.
30 years ago today Roberto Baggio glides across the grass, drops his shoulder and scores one of the most iconic goals in World Cup history.
What a moment. What a player.
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I am really looking forward to reading this one.
(Incidentally, IO & Political Economy are such a good mix for student to find new thesis topics.)
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Trying my best video editing on statistical inference teaching material. I sound like the Italian version of Werner Herzog & require 1.5x speed not to induce sense of incumbent collapse of human civilization.
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Uplifting tribute by Ed Glaeser, coauthor in some of Alberto's most important books: “There Are Few Things More Exciting Than Learning Something New and Important About Humanity”: Alesina’s Scientific Odyssey
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The NBER POL this week is organized by K. Casey, A. Lizzeri & P. Yared. It features a panel discussion on The State of Liberal Democracy (Fri @ 4pm ET)
Panelists:
Daron Acemoglu, MIT
Glenn Loury, Brown
Condoleezza Rice, Stanford
E. Zhuravskaya, PSE
Moderator:
P. Yared, Columbia
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Soon the admission process of entrant PhD students in most Economics programs will be underway. As a successful applicant (fingers crossed), you may wish start selecting few medium-run areas of interest which may guide you in your choice of departments. 1/4
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I am going to be teaching Political Economy I to graduate students at Stanford in Winter 2018.
The syllabus is here:
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Probably the dumbest economic idea of the last 40 years: it will cost ITA in terms of credibility, with no gain whatsoever. Per i bischeri non c'è medicina.
Barbara Palombelli mostra in anteprima i MiniBot.
Voi che idea vi siete fatti di questa operazione?
Ora a
#StaseraItalia
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If this saves folks a bunch of time in preparing your Pol Econ lectures, I'm happy. Not claiming they are great, but it is 2020 after all...
I uploaded all primitive files of my teaching notes for graduate Political Economy at:
Download them freely & use them as you wish. They're far from perfect, but I hope useful to those of you who want to teach some of these topics.
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I hate censorship, mob trials, tw groupthink. Free speech makes people uncomfortable. I find the posts by
@haralduhlig
disgusting. I found the testimony of
@bocar_a
@jordanr_k
@nad_lucas
@GeorgeVojta
@deehrlich
full of courage. The
@UChi_Economics
should be proud of its students.
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Looking forward to teaching Econ 215B Political Economy in spring 2022
This graduate course will mostly focus on model estimation & structural approaches in different environments, from nondemocratic systems to legislatures, elections, political behavior.
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Cortado is superior to macchiato. Cortado functions as the proper middle point between an espresso and a cappuccino in terms of its indulgence. Macchiato is a timid attempt.
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US debt/GDP around 115%, Italy 158% in 2021. Unimaginable 15yrs ago. What is worrisome is that this is a necessary political response to prop up a struggling middle class from a deep crisis to the next. It is not the level of debt that is unsustainable, it is its origin.
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The paper "The Effects of Firms’ Lobbying on Resource Misallocation" by Huneeus and Kim is one the the best argumented articles I have read on U.S. lobbying in a while:
Covering it in our Annual Review piece on empirical models of lobbying.
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Economics conferences are turning into superspreader events. Virus incidence is very high in my circle of friends and either we are super unrepresentative of the overall population trends or covid is super mismeasured right now. Or both.
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