What Do People Want? Trading Off Different Aspects of Well-Being—Video of an LSE Seminar by Miles Kimball →

Link to the video shown above

How-To Guide for Happiness Surveys, Which Increasingly Drive Public Policy—Dan Benjamin, Kristen Cooper, Ori Heffetz and Miles Kimball →

Link to the article shown above

Why Subprime Mortgage Losses Mattered in the 2008 Financial Crisis

link to the article shown above

“In 2007, many analysts dismissed the significance of subprime mortgage losses, which they compared to a bad day in the stock market. In a report that November, Hatzius called the analogy flawed. Citing research by the economists Tobias Adrian and Hyun Song Shin, he noted that stocks were mostly owned by ‘long-only’ investors such as pension funds who ‘passively accept a hit to their net worth.’

By contrast, mortgages are owned by leveraged institutions such as banks, investment dealers, hedge funds, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. For every dollar of losses, these investors would have to shrink their balance sheets to preserve their capital ratios. This was a key reason Hatzius projected weaker growth and a higher risk of recession in 2008 than the consensus.”

— Greg Ip

A Tweetstorm on Imperfect Information Processing

Because inflation today is caused by firms changing price today & inflation tomorrow is caused by a different set of firms changing price tomorrow, sticky inflation in the face of a big macro shock means firms are changing prices without fully incorporating the new information.

— Miles Kimball (@mileskimball) February 22, 2024

Mankiw and Reis interpret their model as a model of sticky information: firms periodically wake up and get all the new macroeconomic information, then set a new price path accordingly.

— Miles Kimball (@mileskimball) February 22, 2024

Macroeconomic information is actually very easy and cheap to get ahold of. Just google "FRED" and you have a cornucopia of macroeconomics information. Getting macro information is not hard. What is hard is appropriately *processing* macroeconomic information.

— Miles Kimball (@mileskimball) February 22, 2024

When information processing is very costly, it makes sense to economize on it. Hence, most firms only process macroeconomic information into their prices at long intervals. This gives rise to sticky inflation.

— Miles Kimball (@mileskimball) February 22, 2024

In the last half century we have seen modeling *imperfect information* become a solved problem. By contrast, we remain miserable at trying to model *imperfect information processing.*

— Miles Kimball (@mileskimball) February 22, 2024

And avoiding modeling agents who are too smart by modeling agents who are too stupid (e.g., adaptive expectations, finite-state automata, agent-based models) is not that helpful.

— Miles Kimball (@mileskimball) February 22, 2024

Anyone who can come up who can come up with a model of imperfect information processing that is elegant enough that it gets taught around the world in core graduate micro will be a hero.

— Miles Kimball (@mileskimball) February 22, 2024

For more on these issue of finite and scarce cognition (a synonymous phrase for imperfect information processing), see my paper "Cognitive Economics." It isn't easy to publish a methodology paper. This is mine. https://t.co/ZtCbpFdfzz

— Miles Kimball (@mileskimball) February 22, 2024

From Happiness Data to Economic Conclusions—Video of a Presentation at LSE by Ori Heffetz →

A talk about joint work with Dan Benjamin, Kristen Cooper and me.

Posts Useful for Teaching

On Learning

• Andrew Budson and Elizabeth Kensinger's Memory Tips →

• Why Focusing on Grades Is a Barrier to Learning—Gerald Knesek

• Study Less, Study Smart—Marty Lobdell

• 34 Self-Care Tips to Do Before Bedtime

On Writing

• Shitty First Drafts—Anne Lamott, from Bird by Bird

Intermediate Macro

• Technology Shock Stories: How a Steel Box Changed the World

• Eli Dourado Highlights Our Purified Solow Residual

Happiness

• Jordan Peterson on the Distinction Between Tragedy and Evil

• Getting Free Of Self-Importance Is The Key To Happiness—Polly Young-Eisendrath

• Arthur Brooks on How to Blunt Mental Pain

• What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness—Robert Waldinger

• Ryan Holiday: 21 Stoic Quotes To Live Your Life By

Measuring National Well-Being

• Pushing Aside GDP for a Measure of Human Well-Being Turns Out to be Very, Very Difficult. Ask Dan Benjamin

• Ori Heffetz: Measuring 'The Good Life—Alternative Metrics for National Wellbeing

• Measuring Progress & Well-being: Is GDP Growth Enough?

• Miles's Tweet Storm on Interpersonal Comparison of Utility

• Noah Smith: 4 Reasons Why GDP is a Useful Number

• Dan Benjamin: Adjusting for Scale-Use Heterogeneity

Political Polarization and Wokeness

• Economics Is Unemotional—And That's Why It Could Help Bridge America's Partisan Divide

• Us and Them

• The Right Amount of Wokeness

• Getting the Best from Wokeness by Having the Right Mean, Reducing the Variance and Mitigating the Losses from Extreme Values

• Although the United States is Not Woke Enough, Its Universities are Now Too Woke

• Alexandra C. Feldberg and Tami Kim: Whites Get Better Customer Service than Blacks, Who in Turn Get Better Service than Asian-Americans

• On Critical Race Theory

• Virtues for Economists

Ethics and Choice

• Martin Luther King's Gospel of Solidarity: Improving the Lot of the Poor of All Races—Matthew Yglesias

• R. Meredith Elkins: We Need to Help Kids Be Braver

• Meeting the Enemy: A Feminist Comes to Terms with the Men's Rights Movement—Cassie Jaye

• Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?—Kate Julian

• 25 Taboo Questions About History and Society—Rudyard Lynch

• Raj Chetty on How Cross-Class Interactions When Young are a Key to Poor Kids Rising

• What David Laibson and Andrei Shleifer are Teaching for Behavioral Economics—Jeffrey Ohl

• A New Take on the ‘Marshmallow Test’: When it Comes to Resisting Temptation, a Child's Cultural Upbringing Matters—Lisa Marshall

• Jonathan Haidt and Jordan Peterson on the Dimensions of Morality, Political Differences, and the Perilous State of the University

• Defending Jordan Peterson

• Miles's Personality in 10 Facets of the Big Five

• How People Differ from One Another Psychologically: IQ and the Big 5—Jordan Peterson

• Although the United States is Not Woke Enough, Its Universities are Now Too Woke

• Alexandra C. Feldberg and Tami Kim: Whites Get Better Customer Service than Blacks, Who in Turn Get Better Service than Asian-Americans

• Jarvis Givens on Education and Learning as a Way to Fight Back against Racism

• Michael Sandel on the Dignity of Work

• The Curse of Meritocratic Hubris

• Steve Faktor's 3 Rules to Avoid Poverty

• The Source of about Half of the Gap Between Judgements of Male and Female CVs in Economics at Promotion Time—A Conjecture

• Justin Wolfers: More Women Than Men Are Going to College. That May Change the Economy.

Jordan Peterson

• Tom Bartlett: What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson?

• Defending Jordan Peterson

• Jonathan Haidt and Jordan Peterson on the Dimensions of Morality, Political Differences, and the Perilous State of the University

• Jordan Peterson Shows How to Engage Your Audience by Respecting Them

• Jordan B. Peterson on the True Purpose of a University Education

• How People Differ from One Another Psychologically: IQ and the Big 5—Jordan Peterson

• Miles's Personality in 10 Facets of the Big Five

• Gratitude for Challenges

• Fatal Flaws Don't Have To Be Fatal

• Jordan Peterson's Argument for the Transcendent Importance of the Religious Thread in Human Life that is Totally Consistent with There Being No Supernatural

• Jordan Peterson: The Virtue of Dangerousness

• Jordan Peterson on Ideological Possession: 'You don't Have Ideas; Ideas Have You'

• Jordan Peterson: No One Gets Away with Anything

• Jordan Peterson on Jung, Human Potential and the Imitation of Christ

• Jordan Peterson on Religion

• Jordan Peterson on How there *is* Reality *and* Values are a Part of Science

• Jordan Peterson on the Human Ideal

• Jordan Peterson on the Downside and Upside of the Patriarchy

• The 21st-Century Malaise of Males

• Jordan Peterson on Ideological Possession: 'You don't have Ideas; Ideas have You'

• Jordan Peterson on What Those at the Top Owe Society: ‘It's Not Reasonable to Destroy the Game You're Winning’

• The Good Mother Fails—Jordan Peterson

• Sometimes the Devil You Don't Know is Better than the Devil You Do

• How the Historical Jesus Set the Oppressed Free

Statistics

• Why Rich Kids Are So Good at the Marshmallow Test: Affluence, Not Willpower, Seems to Be What’s Behind Some Kids’ Capacity to Delay Gratification—Jessica McCrory Calarco

• Evidence on Charter Schools: 'Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City' by Will Dobbie and Roland Fryer

• The Supposed Health Benefits of Moderate Drinking are a Crock

• More Evidence for the Use It or Lose It Hypothesis for Dementia Prevention: Better Vision Seems to Help Ward Off Dementia

• 'Vibration of Effects' as a Tool for Seeing How Sensitive an Associational Study is to Tweaks

• 'Expanded Contraceptive Access Linked To Increase In College Completion Among Women In Colorado'— Sara Yeatman, James Flynn, Amanda Stevenson, Katie Genadek, Stefanie Mollborn and Jane Menken

• How the Historical Rejection of Miasma Theory Made Scientists Slow to Recognize that COVID is Airborne

• Evidence that Air Pollution Messes Up Babies' Gut Microbiome—with Many Downstream Consequences

• An Example of Needing to Worry about Reverse Causality: Satisfaction with Aging and Objective Aging Outcomes

• A Linear Model for the Effects of Diet and Exercise on Health is a Big Advance over Popular Thinking

• Some Low Hanging Fruit for Government Policy: Paying Benefits and Wages to Low-Income Folks Weekly

• Insufficient Sleep Contributes to Obesity, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer and Neurodegenerative Disorders—Ken Wright

• Optimism Seems to Lengthen Women's Lives

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia Can Prevent Major Depression

• Growing Evidence for the Safety and Efficacy of Psychedelics Could Lead to Better Treatments for Anxiety, Depression, Pain, and Other Tough Conditions—Allison Eck

• Noise Pollution is More than a Nuisance. It’s a Health Risk. —Stephanie Dutchen

• A Little Bit of Therapy Goes a Long Way

• On 'Does Welfare Prevent Crime? The Criminal Justice Outcomes of Youth Removed from SSI' by Manasi Deshpande and Michael G. Mueller-Smith

• Peter Attia and Rick Johnson on How Kidney Inflammation Helps Explain Why Some People are Sensitive to Salt and Others Not

• Exercise Makes You Smarter

• Suggestive Evidence that Vitamin D Supplements Lower Risk of Autoimmune Disease

• A Fact to Keep in Mind When Parsing the Rise in Obesity: The Decline in Smoking Needs to Be Taken into Account

• An Example of Ideology Leading to Bad Statistics and Social Injustice

Monetary Policy

• How Having Negative Interest Rate Policy in Its Toolkit Would Make the Fed Braver in Confronting Inflation with Needed Rate Hikes—A Tweetstorm

• Brad DeLong Confirms that Not Having Negative Interest Rate Policy in the Monetary Policy Toolkit

• How a Toolkit Lacking a Full Strength Negative Interest Rate Option Led to the Current Inflationary Surge Makes People Afraid of Vigorous Rate Hikes to Control Inflation

• Miles, Brad DeLong and Noah Smith: Hexapodia Podcast #1

• Nominal Illusion: Are People Understanding Real Versus Nominal Interest Rates?

• Ricardo Reis on Inflation Expectations

• Why the Fed Should Keep the Output Gap Equal to Zero

• Analyzing the Great Depression Using Supply and Demand for the Monetary Base

• Supply and Demand for the Monetary Base with a Cap on Reserves, a Zero Interest Rate on Reserves and a Negative Reverse Repo Rate

• Ruchir Agarwal and Miles Kimball on Negative Interest Rates and Inflation—IMF Podcasts

• The Future of Inflation—Ruchir Agarwal and Miles Kimball

• Planet Money and Gillian Brunet on Price Controls during World War II as Perspective on the Debate about Price Controls Now

Business Cycle Theory

• Beatrice Cherrier's References on the History of Thought in Post-1970s Macroeconomics

• Eli Dourado Highlights Our Purified Solow Residual

Finance

• Matthew Yglesias: If the Platinum Coin is Too Weird, Meet High-Yield Bonds

• The 'Portfolio Rebalancing in General Equilibrium' Interview

Political Economy

• Miles, Brad DeLong and Noah Smith: Hexapodia Podcast #1

• Miles's Tweetstorm of Favorite Passages from Noah Smith's Review of Brad DeLong's book ‘Slouching Towards Utopia’

• Brad DeLong on Jacob Soll, Friedrich Hayek, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and the Free Market

Basic Facts

• Global Population Density—Visual Capitalist

• Brad DeLong Boils Down the Spine of Economic History in One Table

• Noah Smith on the Triumphs of Renewable Energy Technology

Economic Growth

• Noah Smith: The Most Likely Reason Mexico isn't Rich is that it is in a Druglord Civil War

• With a Cobb-Douglas Production Function, the Differential Equation for the Solow Growth Model has a Closed-Form Solution—Tsering Sherpa and Miles Kimball

• Technology Shock Stories: How a Steel Box Changed the World

• Noah Smith on the Triumphs of Renewable Energy Technology

Housing Policy and Technology

• Building an Affordable House

• Political Victories for the Supply-Side in Housing: The Long March of the YIMBYs—Noah Smith

• How to Get Abundant Affordable Housing

• Zachary Sonntag: How the Need for Affordable Middle Housing Runs Up Against Zoning Laws

• Suburbia is Subsidized: Here's the Math

• How Do You Make Middle Housing More Appealing? Make It Look Like a Single-Family Home—Zakary Sonntag

Education Policy

• How to Foster Transformative Innovation in Higher Education

Immigration

• How the US and Its Allies Can Weaken the Russian Army in Ukraine

Futurism

• Georgism ... In Space! —Sam Harsimony

Supply-Side Liberalism

• What is a Supply-Side Liberal?

• Christopher Condon: Biden Is Rebranding Reagan’s Supply-Side Economics to Save His Agenda