Why would some business interests prefer for Congress to fly blind in tax policymaking? 🤔 Very good take from @howardgleckman.bsky.social @taxpolicycenter.bsky.social:

🚨New working paper🚨 In this updated work with Annette Alstadsaeter, @bluebery-planterose.com , @gabrielzucman.bsky.social and @andokl.bsky.social , we use leaked data to chart the rise of offshore real estate in Dubai www.taxobservatory.eu//www-site/up...

Guess what? EUTO #LunchSeminar is back! 🚀 🎙️Join Margarita López Forero ( @banquedefrance-off.bsky.social ) for an interesting discussion on offshoring wage inequality in tax havens. 🗓️ September 19 | 12pm (CET) 📍 @pse.bsky.social & Zoom 🔗 Register here: us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Ahh yes, those growth promoting investments: microcaptive insurance and basis shifting through complex partnerships

I have given in and started a Substack to write about illicit finance, development and data In my first post, I explain why we should be careful about citing the $312 billion statistic on the size of Chinese money laundering datadarkly.substack.com/p/exactly-ho...

This is a really cool WP (and therefore a cool conference that has it on the program)

The Fed is not good at talking to citizens. Its communications culture is aimed at markets, which means it knows how to give coded, cautious hints that leave room for negotiation. That means there's little will and no experience with strong, affirmative signals in response to wanton norm-burning.

Good to see the NYT Editorial Section has been Like This towards the Dems since 1937 at least @nytpitchbot.bsky.social

Hey you could join the hallowed ranks of /checks notes me? That can't be right.

Excuse me the irrelevance of municipal credit ratings?!?!

The ViCE seminar schedule for early fall 2025 is up! We start back up again next week (Aug 14). jenniferdoleac.com/vice-seminar/

Wait, did Trump get his uncle mixed up with Jeffrey Epstein the other day?

It’s Day 2 of the Brookings Muni Finance Conference (livestream: www.brookings.edu/events/14th-...)! I will be live tweeting a lot less today but the papers—including my own paper on green muni bonds—will hopefully be just as good as yesterday

Call for papers for the Opportunity Insights conference this fall is now open! opportunityinsights.org/updates/2025...

Volunteering is a great way to be involved with the association and another way to engage with your colleagues! Apply to be a Discussant or a Session Chair at the 118th NTA Annual Conference 👉 nta.memberclicks.net/annual_confe... The deadline to apply to be a chair or discussant is August 15.

The Brookings Municipal Finance Conference is today (available livestream: www.brookings.edu/events/14th-...) and the lineup of papers is excellent! I’m not much of a live tweeter but I’ll try to share a few highlights

New release for the HHP project. We now have rent and sales price indexes for 30 cities along with rental yields, capital gains, and housing returns for the years 1890-2006. Online data viz tools and download here: www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-...

A reminder that as far as we can tell, literally everyone who was born in, e.g. 1971 (really anytime in the 1970s) was lead poisoned as a child (via the great McFarland, Hauer and Reuben PNAS paper)

CoL and housing supply discussions often omit that over-supply is also bad for homeowners (at least in the U.S. where housing is seen as a dual consumption & investment asset). Seems to me the the balance between consumption & investment is also the balance between CoL and price appreciation.

Ah yes. A third party for centrists. My God it’s exhausting watching Elon Musk go through college

Excellent article by German Lopez for the NYT about a big, important problem in the US: Most crimes aren’t solved. If you murder someone, it’s essentially a coin flip whether you’ll be arrested for it. If you steal a car, you’ll almost certainly get away with it.

Dan Garodnick style zoning reform - moderate density increases everywhere - contrasts with prior efforts to stuff the building in a concentrated area. This satisfies @jeffrlin.bsky.social’s idea of zoning based on changes; rather than levels www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

If you've tuned into CSPAN anytime in the last 2 hours and found yourself slapping the side of the TV, wondering why the screen isn't changing, here's what's happening...

Leading a series of several papers on under-reporting at IRS/TPC today, NRP data suggests tax under-reporting primarily comes from, you guessed it, sole proprietorships. More incidental evidence for the @omzidar.bsky.social Country of Car Dealerships hypothesis.

EXTREMELY BAD NEWS for economic research, per former BLS Commissioner @ericagroshen.bsky.social on LinkedIn. BLS is suspending access to its restricted data "for the forseeable future." Applies to projects through the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers & onsite projects with BLS. #EconSky

New research w/ @kirabojackson.bsky.social & @julia-turner.bsky.social on NBER homepage “Universal Pre-K across 9 states & cities increased LFP by 0.8 pp, employment by 0.9 pp, & weekly hours worked by 0.42, with strongest effects for moms. Each $1 spent on UPK generated >$3 in additional earnings”

oh, that's. oh. oh no.

Guardian coverage here of new analysis by @transparencyuk.bsky.social on the use of trusts to hide the ownership of property. Our research found £2.5bn worth of real estate bought with suspicious wealth and held by trusts. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Requested data from TSA. Sent back a link describing the program I’m requesting data about.

Just saw @mattcollin.bsky.social falling to his knees in a Carrefour

🚀 We've kicked off our annual high-level event, “Competition or Cooperation: EU Tax Policies for Tomorrow! 🇪🇺 “The EU Tax Observatory has been instrumental in bringing evidence to the tax policy conversation.” 💬 Gerassimos Thomas, DG for Taxation and Customs Union 📢 Stay tuned!

Just read this truly lovely history of the fixed effects estimator, a concept I've repeatedly taught and used but never knew the origins of. (Also helps me justify never using random effects!) Thanks to Marc Bellemare and @dlmillimet.bsky.social for writing it. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Importantly, the Urban analysis leaves out the effects of Trump's tariffs which would further rachet down low- and middle-income families' incomes while leaving the wealthy better off. Here's our take with @budgetlab.bsky.social numbers:

Hugely important new @urbaninstitute.bsky.social analysis shows that the emerging House bill's combo of 1.) tax cuts tilted to wealthy 2.) cuts to nutrition assistance/health for low-income families make families making under $30k worse off. www.urban.org/research/pub...

I am shocked to find gambling in this establishment

And this by @mmaggiori.bsky.social is just wildly impressive - use LLMs to parse earnings calls and figure out what kinds of economic coercion businesses are worried about - www.globalcapitalallocation.com/geoeconomic-...

New postdoc opening to go work with the indomindable Annette Alstadsæter and @ronbdavies.bsky.social at @skatteforsk.bsky.social Self-recommending! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Money launderers have always exploited US art markets—and its probably getting worse. So why are art markets still excluded from basic US anti-money laundering regulations? New from me in @thehill.com… thehill.com/opinion/fina...

📢 Join us in #Brussels on May 13 for our annual high-level event! Engage with leading policymakers, experts, and stakeholders as we explore the dynamic relationship between tax policy, competition, and cooperation within the EU 🇪🇺 🔗 Register now: www.eventbrite.com/e/competitio...

Congratulations to Stefanie Stantcheva (@s-stantcheva.bsky.social) of @harvard.edu, winner of the 2025 John Bates Clark Medal! #econsky www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/ho...

1/ Ok, a short thread on taxing the wealthy. JD Vance & the Natcons appear to be pushing to raise taxes on the rich. Color me skeptical. And sure enough, yesterday Trump shot down such a tax: www.wsj.com/politics/pol... But Vance & Bannon are confused. Income tax rates are beside the point.

I want to say this was from an SPSP talk by Sanjay Srivistava, but I repeat it to all students: your first sentence should be about people, not research.

30 years after arriving in the US, I just resigned from Northwestern and we sold our house. We are an American family, I became a citizen in 2014, and until recently did not expect to ever leave. But now, this no longer feels like the right place to raise a family and pursue a research career.

Global Fishing Watch is looking for a Data Coordinator Consultant - Panama to help "strengthen the due diligence process for issuance of licences with the consistent use of ultimate beneficial ownership (UBO) data of vessels". Applications due by 25th April job-boards.greenhouse.io/globalfishin...

📢Heavily revised working paper on AI + Zoning — with @alexbartik.bsky.social and Dan Milo, we have a new draft of our paper which expands on our method to understand housing regulations with AI. Incudes a new public data release with more housing regulation data:

I interviewed an awesome pre-doc candidate who we don't have a position for--is anyone still looking for a candidate who'd like me to pass her info along? Computer Science / Econ major, 3.95 GPA from top school, 4 years of comp sci work experience and now wants to prep for an Econ PhD.

Looking forward to visiting this fantastic group!

🚨Development Economists!🚨Do you use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS Program) data, which had been supported by USAID? IPUMS ( @ipums.bsky.social ) and the UN Statistics Division have a survey for you. I just filled it out. You can too. #econsky

My last piece of advice: is your job in politics? Is it as a news reporter? No? Look at the news like once or twice per day. Don't have it be a constant drip. Evening and morning papers are a good unit to digest the news by. the 24-hour cycle is like a psychic water torture.