That the US doesn't even have a blue bar is a tragedy

Very proud to have this report out! Top-line: when temps go up in summer, budget constrained h-hlds choose between air conditioning and regular spending. Our data suggest they mostly choose regular spending and just endure the heat.

Another paper from that NTJ issue "Trends in Student Loan Repayment" by Rajeev Darolia Tomas Monarrez and Lesley Turner They use Dept of ED data to document lots of interesting facts about student loan repayment journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/73… ungated: lesleyjturner.com/Darolia_Monarr…

New paper out today on how unemployment benefits affect unemployment TLDR: more generous benefits increase unemployment, but by much less than we thought and in ways that make it possible to make sufficient statistics more general than prior work (thread on three key results)

My father was a post-doc nuclear physicist working on civilian nukes in the 1960s when nuclear power was in its heyday. The reasons for its demise have very little to do with the common narratives of "environmentalists blocked it," or whatever. The industry slit its own throat.

Aspiring researchers: come work at Chicago Booth! I'm hiring pre-doctoral fellows along with a large group of Booth colleagues and our co-authors at other institutions. Positions start summer 2025. Application: chicagobooth.edu/-/media/facult… First deadline: Oct 1

Here's the killer slide you were all waiting for: This is what happens to price after private equity does roll-up acquisitions of anesthesia practices.

This, plus a reminder: around half of all US imports are inputs for American manufacturers. So, for example, when you tax (tariff) steel imports (83k workers), you hurt all the US manufacturers that consume steel (~6.5M workers)

And this gets at the deep disconnect within climate world: A techno-utopian camp that says “We don’t need anyone to change their lifestyles, we can tech our way through!” and science camp that says “How do you tech in three feet of salt water?” The tech camp won all debates …

Regarding the question of whether health insurance is really "insurance": The goal of insurance is to make you approximately indifferent to possible, future, adverse experience. A one-year policy cannot do that effectively, because many health problems are long-lasting.

There’s a longstanding question: how much of the union wage premium is accounted for by selection (unions focus on more profitable firms to unionize) vs rent sharing (unions increase workers’ share of the profits) Well, superb new work by Raffaele Saggio & co answers this…!

Mississippi State Univ. is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Prof. of Economics w/ August start! Open field; preference for applied micro & teaching PhD Micro I & II (Micro II this fall). Apply: MSU site & aeaweb.org/joe/listing.ph… Please repost—it's an off-cycle search. Thanks!