Sam Levey

I posted a new video! It's the first in a series of videos that will explain the concept of "Degrees of Freedom" from statistics, in a way that actually makes sense. I'm really excited about this one - check it out! youtube.com/watch?v=VDlnuO…

@Suck_my_bress Well, raising rates generally causes asset prices to fall, at least for bond prices. Even if their MPC is small, eventually the income becomes large enough to overcome that, and that's the scenario I'm describing.

@SamHLevey Not consumption, but purchase of assets given that the ppl who benefit the most from additional interest income are usually wealthier ppl who’s marginal propensity to consume is lower. It’ll be like 2020-2022 again w massive increases in asset prices

Seems like a supply shock is when you need to be investing in production of substitutes, i.e. exactly the wrong time to raise interest rates. Plus, if higher rates + high gov debt -> higher interest income, *consumption might increase* at the same time you tighten investment...

@DavidBradley34 Those are good things, but not nearly sufficient. I mean popular culture touchstones, like how people talk, dress, holidays, etc.

@SamHLevey That broader, universal culture is, at least partly, international law and human rights

Free society ought to mean that nobody is forced to give up their culture, and nobody should be stopped from adopting desired parts of other cultures. But to avoid escalating factionalism, there needs to be some broader, universal culture that anybody may join and take up.

@Brad_Setser Haha, I don't have one. I'm just saying, you shouldn't let this shift your prior much or at all.

@SamHLevey open to your estimate

Ouch. A standard estimate (ballpark) is ~ 10 mbd/ 10% of world supply is now off the market. Some elasticities were closer to -0.1, which implies a price hike of up to $100. This elasticity would put the price hike at more like $150 ... 1/2

Two view of humanity. From a talk I gave some years ago. Relevant today.

@MosheEcon @RepFine I am jewish, and of course that counts. I know, from the losses in my own family during the holocaust, what comes from labeling an entire religious group an enemy. "Never again" doesn't just mean never again for us, it means never again for anyone.

@SamHLevey @RepFine Saying "Im jewish too" does not count.

We need more Islamophobia, not less. Fear of Islam is rational.

This and the following tweet do seem to have basically held up.

🚨 Available Now In Paperback: The Elgar Companion to Modern Money Theory Edited by Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray Learn More: e-elgar.com/shop/isbn/9781… Sample Chapter: doi.org/10.4337/978178… This Companion is a comprehensive introduction to Modern Money Theory.

@sigmahamster2 taking models seriously vs. taking them literally. Both some proponents and some critics take the models literally instead of seriously, to the detriment of both groups.

@sigmahamster2 I'm reading pretty much exactly that point, that these heterodox models do make better predictions, in the paragraph that you're quoting above, so I'm not sure where the disconnect here is. I definitely have talked to some mainstreamers who believe that. It's a question of

Kinda of insane to me how every post-Keynesian slide deck I stumble on, always fails to grasp the decades old Friedman f-twist. “Often do not correspond to how economists think the economy works”. If you want to reject an unrealistic assumption, show me how complicating it, either by adding sector specific behaviors or mapping cash flows or WHATEVER, is instrumentally useful for your predictions. Otherwise you’re just begging for complexity for its own sake. I have no issues with complexity economics, I think it’s super cool, but obviously tractability matters. If I hear one more post-Keynesian object to global optimizers and instantaneously clearing markets being an absurd assumption, I might have to become an Austrian full time.

Some things that true war economies tend to have: - shortages of goods, and hence - substitution to, even invention of, alternative materials - labor shortages - inflation - higher taxes, and/or direct rationing policies to control inflation and hoarding - profiteering.

@GeorgeSelgin I've always found J.W. Mason to be a really thoughtful economist, definitely the sort of person I think you'd enjoy engaging with, for what it's worth.

I just read the publisher’s verb, saying that the book in question (_Against Money_, UCP, forthcoming) is “In the tradition of works by Thomas Piketty and David Graeber.” Alas, it appears likely.

@ThomasHerndon1 Ah, AFIT is the Association for Institutional Thought, they promote old Institutionalism, esp. Veblen. They always do a series of sessions at the World Social Science Assocation yearly meeting (WSSA), and heterodox people of a variety of stripes show up to present.

@SamHLevey I don’t think i’ve heard of AFIT. What is it and what’s going on there?

I posted a new video! It's the first in a series of videos that will explain the concept of "Degrees of Freedom" from statistics, in a way that actually makes sense. I'm really excited about this one - check it out! youtube.com/watch?v=VDlnuO…

@dandolfa @anup_malani matched their beliefs. Then theory/modeling, to try to generalize those responses and, importantly, explore aggregate implications. What one should *not* do is pre-commit to finding any particular mechanisms, nor pre-commit to the relative importances of certain mechanisms.

@dandolfa @anup_malani different types of actors on what they know about the details of the policy, what they think the likely effects are, how they expect to react, and so on, and follow-up after to see if their views changed, and also collect quantitative data before and after to see if their actions

Ricardian Equivalence says if the government sends you $1,000, you should save it — deficits today mean higher taxes tomorrow. But @EichMartin, Guerreiro & Obradovic survey households and find they don't. People spend government transfers the same way they spend any other income.