Ben Marrow

@ArchieHall cool plotting software

Here's some British housing nightmare fuel

Finishing 2025 with my latest edition of Things I Learned benmarrow.substack.com/p/things-i-lea…

Government debt insures households if repaid through progressive taxation. Rising debt levels alter future taxes, and thus household risks. This shifts demand for risky and safe assets, impacting bond prices. Read more: economics.uchicago.edu/directory/fili… #UChicago #EconJobMarket

@alz_zyd_ Matt Levine has written about this theme

This is a brilliant observation

Source: wsj.com/finance/invest…

Here’s a fun one: there are more American billionaires over the age of 100 than under the age of 30

@Birdyword sounds great

The very best first job in financial media (maybe news media full stop) is open again. The Marjorie Deane internship, launchpad of a lot of Economist journalists, is open to anyone either starting out or looking for a career change. No journalistic experience necessary.

@ArchieHall it was priced in

I can’t believe this is how I found out Taylor Swift was engaged

@elerianm @TheEconomist an associated figure

From the article in this week’s edition of @TheEconomist, “Economists diverge about everything. Don’t they?” “…those questions on which economists report great uncertainty. If there is a common thread here, it is novelty. Will AI lead to larger increases in GDP per person than did the internet? Will stablecoins account for a substantial share of payment flows in ten years’ time? Does the growth of private credit raise systemic financial risk?” #economy #economists

@mvbulutay Economists also respond with their confidence in the answer (presumably the experts in the field are more confident). You can construct weighted averages too; in practice they don’t change the point estimates all that much.

@benmarrow I suppose these are all academic economists specializing in different fields. It makes me wonder if it's a good idea to consider them all as "experts" on such a wide range of topics.

What do economists agree on?

@BigBreakfastLob check out question B kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/public…

I am more surprised about how much economists disagree about private equity returns!! I think past three years of research‘s resounding conclusion that they are at best high fees index funds??or imitates SCV in some manner with volatility laundering.

Cheap leverage is not what made elite universities elite, but it certainly helps them keep their lead economist.com/finance-and-ec…

Do former consultants actually make better CEOs? Based on the analysis by our own @benmarrow and @TomLeeDevlin, it looks like they do!

ah yes, the ever relatable "personal finance" section of the FT

Banks have retreated from directly lending to the real economy. But a lot of this predates the GFC! My latest for @TheEconomist

very cool data work by @DanRosenheck some price discrimination for solo vs. group flyers still exists on American and, to some extent, United, but not on Delta. Where it does exist, it appears to be a *discount* for group flyers, not a *markup* for solo ones.

levels/trends aside, why is Britain series so much more volatile? (also: US weekly earnings didn't drop during the recession 🤔 [even conditioning on employment])

"Student lending was once profitable for the federal government. Now it loses 25 cents on every dollar lent. All told, officials expect their student-loan portfolio to cost around $450bn in the next nine years." my latest for @TheEconomist