David Argente

Growth in data centers—driven in part by rising AI demand—boosts local employment, wages, income, and house prices, while also increasing electricity prices, from Fernando E. Alvarez, @dargente05, Joyce Chow, and @dianavanpatten nber.org/papers/w35194

🚨Send us your best work!🚨 Co-organized with Mark Aguiar and Manuel Amador The conference will bring together work on emerging markets: trade policy, fragmentation, debt, FDI, k-flows, crises, x-rates, climate risk And...it’s in Costa Rica in December🌴 Deadline Sept 8th

Cash acts as a fallback when outages and natural disasters disrupt digital payments. Using data, surveys, and a randomized controlled trial to show cash improves resilience, from Fernando E. Alvarez, @dargente05, and @dianavanpatten nber.org/papers/w35115

🚨 New NBER WP 🚨 We study how new product varieties enter markets. When consumers discover and try new products via direct-to-consumer imports, does that information remain confined to those shoppers, or can it spread and ultimately reshape what is available locally? 1/N

Social ties spread demand for new products; retailers learn from early buyers and expand offerings, amplifying access to global varieties through local demand spillovers, from @dargente05, Esteban Méndez, and @dianavanpatten nber.org/papers/w35104

"This paper studies how new varieties enter markets and become locally available. We provide causal evidence of demand externalities that operate in two steps." NEW in @nberpubs by David Argente, Esteban Méndez, & Diana Van Patten: nber.org/papers/w35104

🗣️ "IMAGINÉ TANTO ESTE MOMENTO. ESTOY TAN ORGULLOSA" 🏀 🥹 ¡LAS LÁGRIMAS DE LA MEXICANA GABRIELA JÁQUEZ TRAS GANAR SER CAMPEONA CON UCLA! 🇲🇽 ❤️ LA FELICIDAD DE SU FAMILIA NO TIENE PRECIO 🏆

Did inflation run higher than policymakers believed? A new methodology for constructing an aggregate price index suggests a widely used measure understated annual inflation by 0.3–1.0 percentage points on average (1959–2019).

Fun article in the @WSJ today from the wonderful @jasongay! Coach Mike is doing a brilliant job with the @UChicago basketball team. Go Maroons! wsj.com/sports/basketb…

¡ARANDA! HR de tres carreras del tijuanense y México toma la delantera.

New CEPR Discussion Paper - DP21211 Strategic Complementarities in a Dynamic Model of Technology Adoption: P2P Digital Payments @alvafer64 @UChi_Economics, @dargente05 @YaleEconomics, Francesco Lippi @UniLUISS @EIEF_Rome, Esteban Méndez-Chacón @BancoCentralCR, @DianaVanPatten @YaleSOM ow.ly/vrVI50YmQr0 #CEPR_IMF #CEPR_MEF #EconTwitter

Great presenting joint work with @dargente05 at @penn_state and @PittTweet this week. Thanks to the faculty and students for the helpful comments and discussion.

Expenditure shares can be used to measure aggregate inflation while correcting for quality change, new varieties, and misweighting. Applied to BEA data, inflation is understated, from @dargente05, Chang-Tai Hsieh, and @munseoblee nber.org/papers/w34803

Motivated by evidence on payment linkages in supply chains, we introduce an endogenous payment-chain network in a business-cycle model where delays slow production and reduce TFP, from @SakiBigio, Esteban Méndez, and @dianavanpatten nber.org/papers/w34631

While more than half of product innovations originate from non-patenting firms, patent filings are on average followed by subsequent product introductions. This relationship weakens with firm size, from @dargente05, Salomé Baslandze, Douglas Hanley, and @sarapfmoreira nber.org/papers/w34592

Nuestra investigación con Fernando muestra que prohibir el uso del efectivo afecta importante y negativamente el bienestar academic.oup.com/restud/article… Además, concluimos que los costos de un impuesto sobre el uso del efectivo son mayores que los beneficios sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

The @YaleEconomics Department and Tobin Center are hiring several Pre-Doctoral Fellows starting in Summer 2026. Come join our vibrant program! Learn more and apply here: tobin.yale.edu/programs/pre-d… #EconTwitter @econ_ra @predoc_org @Econ_jobs_ @weconpol

Digital payments can displace cash and extend access, but success hinges on rapid diffusion to low-income groups. Brazil's Pix and Costa Rica's Sinpe Móvil achieved this, but Mexico's CoDi has not, from @dargente05, Paula Gonzalez Alvarez, Esteban Méndez, and @dianavanpatten nber.org/papers/w34280

Finally happening! We’ve been restlessly organizing this conference to honor the great Fernando Alvarez (my PhD advisor). Should be great fun! bfi.uchicago.edu/events/event/f…

NEW in @nberpubs: "Drivers of Digital Payment Adoption: Lessons from Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico" By David Argente, Paula Gonzalez Alvarez, Esteban Méndez, and Diana Van Patten: nber.org/papers/w34280