BC ECONOMY
Saved by @Alex1Powell

0/ A holiday economic theory reading list. Some of my favorite pieces on theory that can be read with minimal sweat, but with the maximal intellectual reward. In no particular order:

 1/ Myerson 1999. "Nash equilibrium & history of economic theory." JEL. Written with characteristic Myersonian elegance. "how a few short papers by a young mathematician achieved one of the great watershed breakthroughs in the history of social science."
https://t.co/XqDtKBcrAD
2/ Blackwell & DeGroot 1986. “A conversation with David Blackwell.” Stat Science. After his PhD at 21, "There were 105 black colleges at that time & I wrote 105 letters of application." Beautiful discussion on a gamut of ideas & his intellectual life. https://t.co/vfjbPpf21B
3/ Geanakoplos 1992. “Common Knowledge.” JEP. Zuper piece, lucidly written. Lots of interesting puzzles, great for teaching. When Moriarty says "All I have to say has already crossed your mind," Holmes retorts "then possibly my answer has crossed yours." https://t.co/JQOUsPipDn
4/ Morris 1995. "The common prior assumption in economic theory.” E&P. This beauty was Stephen's first chap of PhD thesis! Does rationality imply CP? Does relaxing CP make theorizing uninteresting? Is failure of CP a failure of information processing?
https://t.co/RnCg0JIl07.
5/ Aumann & Hart 2005. “An interview with Robert Aumann." Macro Dyn. To be savored with a steaming cup of chai (or whisky on rocks). Brimming with deep moments. Aumann's view on the folk theorem, how agree to disagree came about, religion, much more.
https://t.co/xO2BnIYlhw?
6/ Rubinstein 2006. “Dilemmas of an economic theorist.” Ecmta. What are we all trying to do writing models? Rubinstein at his insightful (and provocative) best. "I do think we are simply the tellers of fables, but is that not wonderful?"
https://t.co/bYPAsWbJ8G
7/ Gilboa, Postlewaite & Schmeidler 2008. "Probability & uncertainty in economic modeling." JEP. Beautiful overview of subjective probabilities, Savage's theory of choice, limits of the sure thing principle, Ellsberg paradox, and multiple priors approach. https://t.co/HPi5pFrwf4
7/ cont See also a valiantly argued and thoughtful critique of the ambiguity/MP approach by Al-Najjar & Weinstein.
https://t.co/3jDTnzdt3c
8/ Ostrom 1999 "Coping with the tragedy of commons." Ann Rev Pol Sc. Hardin's idea arguably one of greatest insights of recent times. Ostrom elegantly & persuasively recasts the question in view of evidence from the field and the lab. Research ideas here! https://t.co/r2WEl6cUpg
9/ Rabin 1998. “Psychology and economics" JEL. A fantastic documentation of the "first wave" of behavioral economics. Heuristics, biases and their impact of decision making, and the broader quest to incorporate more psychology into economic theory.
https://t.co/OtwEP9pyks
10/ Read everything by/on Joan Robinson. Remarkable economic theorist of 20th cntry. Found a beautiful essay by her in Cambridge library "Economics is a serious subject (1932)" hard to find copy. Here is NYT on her in 1972 & thread by @Undercoverhist https://t.co/kPdnBnnH6n
11/ Haile 2020, “Structural vs. reduced form: Language, confusion, and models in empirical economics." working slides. Superb deck to understand (amongst other things) role of models in empirical work. Hope @PhilHaile can do a Zoom lecture on this soon!
https://t.co/uVTHNnTAMc
12/ Extra credit! The Economist's "School briefs". Lucidly written summaries of some great ideas of modern economics. https://t.co/Ep9PAHXCS2. And, "A mathematician's apology (1940)" by GH Hardy-- on the value of abstraction beyond immediate applications
https://t.co/PRpTdpURDM
13(end)/ Here is hoping we all continue to theorize as we end this painful year for mankind. In addition to the putting that critical structure on data, it may provide us "narratives that make us look at reality differently" (David Pearce). A promise for our polarized times.

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My friend @itsafronomics wanted to know the breakdown of student debt by income, so I pulled data from the SCF.

Student debt is more concentrated amongst high earners, but disproportionately amongst Black borrowers. The plot below plots the average within Income Quartiles.
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But those are the averages. What's the share that's above 10k? (This is the Biden current cutoff for debt forgiveness, so a useful benchmark).

For comparison, 20% of white Americans have student debt, and 31% of Black Americans.


Let's contrast that with say, above 20k. I was surprised at how high the share remains.


When we get to 50k of student debt, or more, we see it's only about 5% of the US, and around 8% of Black Americans. Strikingly, it's a huge share of high income Black Americans (this is a known fact in the education literature, I believe).


So what does this look like put together? Overall, we see a higher share of Americans with debt above 10k, and 20k. We would cover a decent amount with 10k, but miss Black Americans especially.
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1/ Since "liquidity" has been the buzzword these days, here's an anecdote and a powerful lesson from history about printing unlimited amounts of money. Story time. #fintwit

2/ Our story begins with Mansa Musa or Musa I of Mali, an African king who consistently figures in the list of richest people in the world (Inflation-adjusted). One of his given names was 'Lord of the (Gold) Mines of Wangara'. Lest we forget, Gold was the 'Money' in those days.


3/ One fine day in 1324, Musa decided to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Of course, it was easier said than done. Mecca was ~8,500 Kms away from Timbuktu, Mali. Ultimately he did make that journey and it has been recorded in the script "The Chronicles of the Seeker" by Mahmud Kati.


4/ Famously, he took a ton of 'money' (Gold) with him to aid in his journey (Well in his defense, it was ~8,500 Kms). About 60,000 laborers and soldiers carried 2 Kgs each and their camels carried 13 Kgs each, bringing the tally to an estimated ~1,30,000 Kgs of Gold.

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pete wolfendale
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@deontologistics
I’m beginning to think that the left has been too obsessed with GDP as a broken economic metric governing the global shitshow, when inflation is more insidious. Deflation may be a more radical demand than degrowth. Burst bubbles. Deflate the price of fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s amazing just how much political economy is still determined by the threat of stagflation. This has created a weird metonymy in which as long as you’re fight inflation (preserving the interests of (older) savers) you’re also fighting stagnation (supporting (younger) earners).

To some extent the residual fear of deflationary spirals lies behind this, waiting in the wings for any suggestion that stagnation must be fought with deflation. This is entirely understandable, as uncontrolled deflation hits the poorest hardest.

The assumption that conjoins these fears into an engine of unbridled economic stagnation is that there’s a unitary market effectively mediating between the markets in different sectors, be this unity micro-economic or macro-economic in flavour. But this just isn’t how it works.

There is so much more logistic friction in the price system than the popular story of just in time production suggests, not least in the concrete details of differentiated trade between economic actors from local businesses to nation states.
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Nick Huber
Nick Huber
@sweatystartup
On Sep 3rd 2020 we closed on a 120k sf glove factory built in 1890 in a small NY town.

Has 45k sf of self storage inside and had $14k a month of net operating income at closing.

Let's breakdown this deal.

A THREAD on creating $2 million out of thin air in 18 months...

👇👇


First saw the property on Loopnet in mid 2018. I ignored it. Who wants to try to operate a business in an old factory in a dying NY town.

A few months later I reached out. Broker sent me financials. They were good. $24k a month in revenue and $10k in expenses.


So I visited the property. It was old. Needed a new roof. Full time manager. Only accessible to customers 9am-5pm M-S. No autopay. A lot of folks paying 1/2 market rent.

I loved everything about it.

But I knew they were going to have trouble selling this thing no matter the profitability, so on July 1 2018 I made a low offer. $750k + seller pays for new $250k roof + $20k in environmental work.

Countered at asking price + $100k credit towards roof.

I ignored the response.

Broker called me back mid September of 2018. Make another offer, he urged.

I knew it was a good biz so I got more aggressive - $1MM + seller pays for roof / environmental.

Declined. Countered with $1.2MM but they'd give me a new roof and do the environmental.
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foone
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Dr. Anandibai Joshi

Upon her birth on 31 March 1865 she was named Yamuna, after the holy river. Her parents Gunputrao Amritaswar Joshee & Gungabai Joshee came from a long lineage of wealthy landlord family in Kalyan of Bombay Presidency, whose wealth was now waning.


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Further Examination of the Motif near PRRA Reveals Close Structural Similarity to the SEB Superantigen as well as Sequence Similarities to Neurotoxins and a Viral SAg.

The insertion PRRA together with 7 sequentially preceding residues & succeeding R685 (conserved in β-CoVs) form a motif, Y674QTQTNSPRRAR685, homologous to those of neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) and Bungarus genera, as well as neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains

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In (B), the segment S680PPRAR685 including the PRRA insert and highly conserved cleavage site *R685* is shown in van der Waals representation (black labels) and nearby CDR residues of the TCRVβ domain are labeled in blue/white
https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa


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https://t.co/BsY8BAIzDa
Y674 - QTQTNSPRRA - R685
Similar to neurotoxins from Ophiophagus (cobra) & Bungarus genera & neurotoxin-like regions from three RABV strains
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Superantigenic core, consistently aligned against bacterial or viral SAgs
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