Giacomo Brusco

There is more empirical evidence that new construction benefits lower-income households through moving chains. This time, it comes from Switzerland! 🇨🇭 To read more about the evidence from Finland and the US 👇

The US wants to put a modest tariff ~10-15% to create a preference for domestically made stuff by making foreign stuff, incl domestic stuff made with foreign input, more expensive. Out of natsec reasons, the US wants to make Chinese made stuff esp less attractive. Bc production of most things these days is multinational and involve input from many different places at various stages, putting in such policies will cause production less efficient, there to be less trade btwn the US and the RoW, and things to be generally a bit more expensive than they would be otherwise, individual goods supply chain elasticities notwithstanding. Overall, when the dust settles, we’ll see the US trade a bit less, produce a bit more at home, collect some tariff revenues, and overall global economic activity to be a bit less than otherwise. I remember growing up I used to say stuff like “oh cars from Germany are more expensive bc they were tariffed.” So people accepted buying locally produced shittier but cheaper cars. That’s it. We’ll just have a bit more of that. What you gonna do. 🤷🏻‍♂️

NEW PAPER! (w/ Ed Fox) We study 1) how much the wealthy borrow, quantifying “buy-borrow-die” for the first time, and 2) how much unrealized gains impact their taxes. The results changed (some of) our thinking on how to tax those at the top. 🧵 w/ findings ⬇️

JUST IN: 🇺🇸🇪🇺 President Trump cancels EU tariffs after forming framework for a deal on Greenland.

I live by the Universal Girlfriend Theory which is my theory that everyone wants to be treated like a Girlfriend in the sense they just want to be taken on a fun date they didn’t plan and for you to buy them dinner. this applies to women, men, parents, in laws, grandparents, siblings, Everyone. When in doubt I just buy someone expensive flowers and chocolate and it literally has never failed me as a tactic to surprise and delight. huge life unlock

🚨 JUST IN: President Trump STUNS the experts, confirming a nearly 30% DROP in home prices from the Democrats' peak, per Lennar I voted for this 🔥

Finally, my favourite UK VAT rule is back for Christmas. Gregg's sausage rolls are 0% VAT, they just happen to come out of the oven at noon, in normal packaging, not hot food Those chicken are hot food, because there is a packaging that says "caution: hot"

From a conversation with a guy who did his PhD in the 90s: 1) in 90s they just went to petty cash for small receipts, 2) then they made you give them to the admin and get cut a check they mailed to you, 3) now it's "vendor management" hell. Who benefits here? Fire these people.