Two biases distort how we judge economic life of ordinary people. One, often elite-driven, downplays the harms, especially inequality. The other is plain negativity bias, often amplified by media. Our goal? Strike the right balance: acknowledge real progress without pretending the work is done.

Beyonce joins the ranks of a policy failure

It's amazing how myopic the tech elite have demonstrated themselves to be. They have very little support among voters in either party, and this will show up in policies. And yet, they seem to show little recognition of this. At some point, a tax on their wealth will be the least of their concerns.

Merry Christmas! 🎄🎁

Important work using U.S. tax data shows businesses have absorbed minimum wage increases without affecting employment, and through higher revenue-likely reflecting price & productivity offsets. Also shows how reallocation towards more productive firms offers another margin of adjustment.

It's quite remarkable how economists on X skews right. The Bluesky/X divide within the economics community is like a microcosm of American politics

Labor market was so awful in the 1980s that real wages fell for the bottom fifth of workers and didn't bounce back for over a decade

The 1980s really didn't produce good wage outcomes for the bottom half of the American workforce. Worse than before, and what came after (partial rebound in the late 1990s and 2010s.)

This stuff really happened! And it really crushed workers. It's so odd see a kind of whig economic history re-emerge in the last few years

Growth of real wage (purchasing power) has continued to be strong,* and broad-based, even as nominal wage growth has slowed. *not affected very much by quirks in last month's CPI print.

Public Service Announcement: 🚨New updated version (1.0.2) of -lpdid- STATA command now available🚨 Update the command by typing ssc install lpdid, replace directly in STATA Then look at the updated help file help lpdid See below for the key new features...

I was also bored and pulled up the replication package. The results are quite sensitive in aggregate to needing the controls. Here's the replication of Figure 3, including the case w/o controls:

One thing this discussion highlights - as did Bharat and Neale's NYT oped - is that the ideas initially proposed by my colleague @isabellamweber.bsky.social on strategic price caps resonate with many people, and worth engaging with seriously.

This from @davidshor.bsky.social made me LOL. "having wealthy people or economists be mad at you is a feature, not a bug" .... anyway, it's a very interesting conversation I recommend it.

Really enjoyed this discussion between @pkrugman.bsky.social and @hcrichardson.bsky.social. Something Paul said that I want to highlight: negativity bias affects both right and left. I discuss this in my book as well. Some thoughts. open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Between 1979–2019, top pay (90th pct.) climbed 53%, middle only 23%, bottom (10th pct.) even lower 7%. (Productivity per hour climbed much more at 73%.) But since 2019, fast gains at the bottom have already reversed about 1/3 of the rise in pay inequality. A 🧵 about my book: The Wage Standard.

Arin Dube has developed, along with co-authors, a body of work since the beginning of this century that has changed the conventional wisdom in econ about minimum wages. This book will be accessible to a broad readership. And I can't wait to see more from Dube and other empirical labor economists.

yes. Yes. YES!

Can’t wait for this!

"The go-to-guy" on minimum wage" I would say one of the top labour economists in the world rite now. #Econsky

Between 1979–2019, top pay (90th pct.) climbed 53%, middle only 23%, bottom (10th pct.) even lower 7%. (Productivity per hour climbed much more at 73%.) But since 2019, fast gains at the bottom have already reversed about 1/3 of the rise in pay inequality. A 🧵 about my book: The Wage Standard.

Affordability starts with your paycheck. #TheWageStandard

Very excited to see The Wage Standard in The Next Big Idea Club's Must Read Books list!

Waiting for Instacart's rebuttal: "Critics are wrong; we are not extracting consumer surplus via price discrimination. We are merely randomizing prices to estimate a demand elasticity so we can extract consumer surplus better through uniform pricing."

I was disappointed with several elements of The @economist.com recent articles on minimum wages. To their credit, they've published my response. Here are some links to the research I reference and to some other research which had to be cut from the published letter 1/N

Finally, it's always worth pointing people to Dube and Zipperer's excellent minimum wage own-wage elasticity repository (and the accompanying working paper) www.nber.org/system/files... @arindube.bsky.social @benzipperer.org

Here is a handy summary of the literature on the various margins from the latest Handbook of Labor Economics by @arindube.bsky.social & Attila Lindner for reference:

The Economist makes a good point in warning that, at some point, high may be too high, and that we should look beyond the effects on employment. But, I don’t think there is (yet) any consensus that we reached the maximum as they seem to imply in their piece.

Arin Dube has incredible work on this (@arindube.bsky.social) Here’s his page collecting it all in one spot: arindube.com/minimum-wage...

🚨New Working Paper!🚨 @ihsaanbassier.bsky.social & I start with simple stylised fact: lower productivity firms pay ~minimum wage, even as productivity increases. What does this mean for rent sharing/passthrough? Employment? Profits? Monopsony model + 🇿🇦 admin data = striking conclusions!

Wrote a new paper on the econometrics of financial event studies, would value feedback! It's very new. With my amazing grad student Tianshu Lyu www.tianshulyu.com, who is on the market. You should hire him! paulgp.com/papers/finan...

This is the only technological revolution in the history of capitalism I am aware of where the biggest proponents have made their case by arguing the technology will put human civilization at great risk.

"academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it... The dominant four collectively generated... $12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024."

This timeline really needs new characters.

Maine has a bill from Rep @amyroeder.bsky.social to do just this. One more reason for lawmakers to (finally) pass it when they get back in January #mepolitics

When states like Colorado passed policies requiring employers to disclose salary information in job postings, what happened? It increased competition, and raised wages, without harming employment or changing skill requirements. Improved functioning of markets, helped workers.

The Hassett theorem: Tariffs only affect prices when they are removed.

New NYT piece on price/rent control from @bharatramamurti.bsky.social and @nealemahoney.bsky.social suggests a middle ground of careful use.

We really need to release all the Epstein files. A powerful disinfectant that would hold a broad swathe of elites accountable.

Very exciting news. This is going to be an important book.

Reading these emails is really taking a toll on the share of total IQ that I possess.

people really had very little to do in 2017 so they were all sending emails to epstein

How high is $19 in 2028 in Portland ME? It will likely be around 65% of the median wage in MSA (calculations below). This is squarely within the experience of cities that have enacted citywide minimums, as Attila Lindner and I found in our review of 22 major cities min-to-median ratio was 63%. 🧵

Voters in Maine’s largest city on Tuesday approved Question A, a referendum that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $19 an hour by 2028.

Historic.

Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but I am quite confident that the term MNYGA will not live on...

The GOP brand is not looking great tonight. Pushing families off SNAP and hiking their healthcare premium doesn't seem like a winning strategy for turning that around.

If you want more on wage boards and how they can achieve what Dani was referring to, check out my book The Wage Standard - now available for pre-order. www.thewagestandard.com

From the recent New Yorker interview of @drodrik.bsky.social on his new book, by @johncassidysays.bsky.social (Link below in the thread).