excellent work by @theonion.com this month

Since the $200 billion GSE announcement 10-year yields are up 6bps -- ultimately without some game-changing announcement that would cost real money, we're just not going to move the needle much on housing affordability in the short-run.

Hey #econsky: are you a researcher who secretly prefers your side teaching gig? Or is tenure looking like a reach because you “teach too much”? Or a liberal arts prof who’d prefer a big city with a larger pool of impressive, thoughtful students? Come be a Boston College PoP! 1/x

Policy chaos is an economic variable. When leaders threaten the Fed, fire the BLS head, impose tariffs then reverse them, and rattle sabers, no one knows tomorrow’s news. Uncertainty makes firms delay hiring/investing—and households delay big buys.

💯

I am calling for a complete and total boycott of the Mercator projection in all news stories about Greenland until every member of the American public has seen this

The “Trump two-step” is basically a volatility tax: float a norm-breaking threat, then maybe retreat. Even if he backs down, the fact it happened raises the perceived risk of future interference.

The Church Committee's investigation into the crimes of the intelligence community is about as good a model as we have for the kind of investigation into the crimes of ICE and other agencies. This is really a must-read for understanding our own moment.

The curse of great wealth is that slowly your money comes to own you, not vice versa. California's billionaires are demonstrating this to everyone. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/prisoners-...

Janet Yellen tells @nytimes.com that the investigation against Powell is the most significant attack ever on Fed independence. "If you can bring charges for no reason whatsoever against your enemies, we're no longer living in a society governed by the rule of law." www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/b...

Attempting to criminalize the actions of an independent public servant, Fed Chair Jay Powell, for the sin of acting independently is an outrage. It's bad economics, bad politics, bad for the rule of law, bad for the public sector, bad for American credibility and bad for Americans.

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

If you overlay Alex Bregman's 2025 spray chart atop Wrigley Field, you see that not only would Wrigley Field not have hurt him, it may actually have helped his power to the left-center alley.

Steve Kerr on the murder of Renee Good: "It's shameful that the government can come out and lie about what happened when there's video and witnesses who have all come out and disputed what the government is saying."

Doc Rivers: "What happened in Minnesota was a straight-up murder"

There are several good leading indicators for the economy including housing starts, new home sales, the yield curve, heavy truck sales ... unemployment (Sahm rule) is more coincident as are weekly claims. However we can't be a slave to any indicator ... but this collapse is ... uh, interesting.

Discussing the distinctive concerns of household finance in relation to other fields of financial economics, and outlining directions for the future growth of the field, from John Y. Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai www.nber.org/papers/w34621

New year, new op-ed from me and Vincent Reina on the need for aggressive multifaceted action to address the housing affordability crisis: It’s not simply a zoning story! thehill.com/opinion/fina...

These are 10 of my favourite #UrbanEconomics & #SpatialEconomics articles published in academic journals in 2025, continuing with a tradition started in 2018 (order is alphabetical by first author, no ranking implied):

Heading to Philadelphia for the #ASSA2026. Presenting research you think our readers would be interested in? Working on something you think I should know about? Reach out here or by any of the ways linked in my bio: www.nytimes.com/by/ben-casse... #EconSky

Mamdani: For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty

Trump’s Tangled Web of Deal-Making, Policy and Riches An illustrated guide of the first year of profiteering. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Literally destroying the independence of agencies *created* to be independent

JUST RELEASED TODAY: North: The Future of Post-Climate America (Oxford University Press)(Discount Code AUFLY30 for 30% or just email me for a copy) global.oup.com/academic/pro... www.youtube.com/watch?v=Buo2...

The rate of sea-level rise along U.S. coastlines has more than doubled over the past 125 years, according to a new analysis, contrasting the Trump administration's widely criticized assessment of climate science released this summer.

A task-level minimum pay standard for gig delivery work did not increase drivers' monthly earnings. Higher pay rates were offset by lower tips and more competition for scarce tasks, from Yuan An, Andrew Garin, and Brian K. Kovak www.nber.org/papers/w34545

Climate change is an affordability issue

Households face annual costs of roughly $400–$900 from climate change—mainly from disasters, higher insurance, and energy costs—with lower-income families and certain regions hit disproportionately, from @kclausing.bsky.social, Knittel, and @cwolfram.bsky.social www.nber.org/papers/w34525

Incredibly random, but do I know anyone who can put me in touch with Del The Funky Homosapien?

Just trying to understand these two news items published within 5 days of each other

"Western civilization," the font, the 11 stars - 11 states in the confederacy, for the record. Why is this never news? Why are we letting our government agencies do this sort of thing while the news agencies report on hallucinated trade deals and act like everything is normal

With a win over the Eagles, the Bears move to 9-3 on the season. That matches their best start since 2010 🤯

It's Thanksgiving and I'm feeling generous so here's Busta Rhymes and the TMNT

"We show that rising insurance premiums, driven by changing reinsurance prices that reflect increasing catastrophic risk, are being capitalized into house prices, and may further reduce demand for properties exposed to increasing disaster risk."

A very happy Taco Party for Dragons at Robbie’s House to all who celebrate!

"Climate shock." New study shows that rising property insurance premiums caused by growing weather extremes are cascading into the real estate market. Homes in the ZIP codes most exposed to hurricanes and wildfires would sell for an average of $43,900 less than they would otherwise.

Home Prices on a Warming Planet "chaos in the insurance market is starting to eat into the real estate market in some places, a scenario that experts have dreaded for years"... www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/c...

A member of Congress just filled out a threat report with the Capitol Police naming the President of the United States as the person making the threat. Think of where we were on January 7, 2021 when the country overwhelmingly repudiated what had happened. And think of where we are now.

Call for Graduate Student Fellowship Applicants: The NBER is accepting applications for 15 dissertation-writer fellowships on various topics for the 2026-27 academic year. Deadlines are Jan. 4-8, 2026. Further information: www.nber.org/career-resou...

NYT: “.. high insurance costs are cascading into the broader real estate market, suppressing home values by an average of $44,000 in the top 10 percent of U.S. ZIP codes most vulnerable to hurricanes and wildfires ..” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

We document rapidly rising premiums & a doubling of the pass-through from disaster risk into premiums. Using variation in correlated wildfire and hurricane exposure, we show that the increase in the risk-to-premium gradient was accelerated by a repricing of catastrophic risk in global capital market

Keys & Mulder build dataset to study homeowners insurance using over 74 million premiums from 2014–2024 inferred from mortgage escrow payments. Premium increases are capitalized into home values, reducing home price growth by over $40,000 in the most exposed zip codes. www.nber.org/papers/w32579

Philip Mulder and I are excited to share a major update to our working paper, "Property Insurance and Disaster Risk: New Evidence from Mortgage Escrow Data," with NYT coverage and making our data publicly available! www.nber.org/papers/w32579 (1/n)

See my commentary in @nytimes.com in re climatic & non-climatic factors pushing down home prices (always excellent work of @benkeys.bsky.social & P. Mulder) Amazing to see how far prices have tanked in Nola. Good News: homes w/ Fortified Roofs are holding their value. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Senator Menendez is sitting in his cell at Allenwood right now because he took a 1kg gold bar from the Egyptians, among other forms of “lobbying.”

My group at the University of Illinois is hiring a tenure-track applied economist. We're especially interested in environmental/public reduced-form rookies with research that complements our group. Tell your students to apply! #EconSky www.aeaweb.org/joe/listing....

I hope future generations recognize how quickly and strangely the contours of what counts as a political scandal changed for this president.

A pardon "following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company." Unprecedented corruption.