Marius Ring

Very happy to see that my paper on the effects of wealth taxation on saving has found its new home. Short summary thread below. Special thanks to @DimitrisPapan20, @AnthonyDeFusco, @ProfNoto for bearing with me while I turned a research idea into a JMP!

I’m sure I’m not the first one to say this, but Sergio Correia deserves a prize for his service to the profession. I bet if we added up just the amount of hours that reghdfe has saved economists since it came out, his contribution would be in the top 10 for applied research.

I'm very excited to join the NBER as a Faculty Research Fellow in the Public Economics program! I'm continuously inspired by the great economists I get to interact with at the public meetings. Many thanks to those who nominated me! @nberpubs nber.org/news/nber-appo…

@aniketapanjwani If Mythos or some tamed version of it will be released soonish, is it worth switching from Claude as the baseline? And do you think the new desktop app is (weakly) better than just using Claude on the terminal? Right now I’m struggling a bit with having 5+ terminal windows open

the new Claude Desktop application is a massive improvement. Here's what I like about it: > easy to see all your projects, whether a thread needs your attention, and which threads are in progress > much easier to parallelize work in worktrees than before > an in-app file editor! > built in PDF viewer > built in integrated terminal and web app viewer (which is quite easy to spin up) > just released Routines (which are the same as Codex automations) > significant improvements to the ease with which you can see available skills and what they do In fact the entire app is basically just the Codex app, along with the web app viewer, but in early testing all its features seem a bit nicer/smoother Does this move the needle for me in terms of recommending Claude over Codex? No, because Opus 4.6 is still significantly worse than GPT 5.4 for coding, and the Claude Code usage limits are much worse than Codex's I will use the desktop app for writing tasks, for which I prefer Claude Code, but I'll otherwise continue to use Claude Code from within the Codex desktop app in my worktrees' terminals But if you're set on Claude Code and Claude Code only, I highly recommend moving to the Desktop App Full overview/review in this YouTube video: youtu.be/FBPocfsmpfA

Now that there's a $100 ChatGPT Pro tier, it's a no brainer for any economist to choose ChatGPT over Claude at EVERY price point. 1. $100/mo now gets you access to Pro in the web UI, which is invaluable for academic work. See x.com/aniketapanjwan… for how to optimally use Pro. No Anthropic model compares 2. $20/mo usage with Claude Code is a joke. $20/mo usage with Codex is limiting but not that far off of $100/mo Claude Code usage. I've myself experienced getting capped within an hour at $100/mo with Claude Code with normal usage. With $100/mo with Codex, for the typical economist's usage, you'll never hit 5 hour or weekly limits. 3. GPT 5.4 itself is a much better model than Opus 4.6 for almost everything economists would care about. CC has a better developed plugin ecosystem, subagents in CC work better IMO, and CC IMO is by default a better writer. For anything else - helping you understand papers, write code, plan out structural estimation, think through identification arguments, choose between estimators - I'd prefer Codex. 4. Whenever OpenAI has an outage, they reset usage for everyone, and they keep extending the length to which you get double usage from your subscription (now until end of May!). Anthropic is crunched heavily for compute and seems to be both explicitly ( x.com/trq212/status/…) and perhaps surreptitiously (x.com/om_patel5/stat…) trying to restrict their compute provision. 5. The Codex Desktop app is hands down the best interface for agentic coding right now. The Claude desktop app is probably the worst way to use Claude Code (go to /r/claudecode to read about all the bugs people encounter). There's a dearth of educational material about the Codex Desktop App though (which I will be solving soon) I walk through each of these points in more detail in this YouTube video: youtu.be/_oKPa8_7w3Y?si… So, what are the switching costs from Claude Code to Codex? > The models feel different/act differently. You have to get used to it. > Skills are an open format, so you can just copy all your skills over to ~/.agents/skills from ~/.claude/skills . There are some CC specific skill features which don't port over 1 to 1 to Codex. > Subagents are configured differently and act differently in CC compared to Codex. > Hooks are experimental in Codex and you have fewer options of harness actions onto which you can configure hooks. I'd say if you haven't yet started with these tools, choose Codex for sure. If you're hitting your Claude Code session limits regularly, then also switch to Codex for sure. If you're not hitting your session limits, or you have a $200+ budget, I'd recommend getting a $20/mo Codex sub and just try it out/feel it out. Codex and CC pair well together anyway, for example by having one write a plan/code and having the other review the plan/code. I have Codex at a $200/mo subscription and CC at a $100/mo subscription - that works well for me, I use Codex 80% of the time and CC 20% of the time.

Very interesting paper on positive fiscal externalities from subsidizing job training programs

I’m on the #EconJobMarket! 🎓 The wealthy earn high returns from their entrepreneurial activities, should we tax them? My JMP shows a top wealth tax creates smaller distortions and stronger redistribution when high returns reflect market power, not just productivity. 👇 More

@KhoaVuUmn @BarbaraBiasi When it’s cold the ice keeps longer too

@Summers_AD @WouterLeenders @LevyAntoine @arunadvaniecon I'm not sure the Nov 29th 2022 announcement (can no longer escape CGT by spending 5 yrs abroad) was announced or "expected" earlier that year. Subseq changes were likely expected. Not clear to me how this would materially affect paper's interpretation (where data ends in 2022)

@WouterLeenders @LevyAntoine @arunadvaniecon Norway effectively pre-announced singificant tightening of exit tax, which incentivised immediate exits by those who anticipated leaving later. So may need to think of result wrt wealth tax in yr1 more like a stock elasticity.

Intéressant: une des premières estimations de l'effet (très élevé) sur l'exil fiscal de l'augmentation, en 2021, de l'impôt sur la fortune norvégien, de 0,85% a 1,1% au-dessus de 20 million de couronnes (20M NOK ~1,7 million d'euros). Court 🧵sur l'importance de ce résultat.

@LevyAntoine @WouterLeenders @arunadvaniecon @Roberto__Iacono Wasn't the main feature of exit tax (spending 5 yrs abroad doesn't erase unrealized CG) unexpected until it was announced as part of an agreement between the government majority coalition parties on Nov 29th 2022 (to be effective as of that date as well)?

@WouterLeenders @arunadvaniecon Those are joint reforms, but the capital gains deemed realization/exit tax was basically implemented as a response to the initial billionaire outflow

Finance dept at BI Norwegian Biz School in Norway is hiring! Excellent department that spans many fields, co-located w/ a great econ dept, attractive teaching load, unique admin data opportunities, and v. nice place to live. Job post below ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/j…

We are officially on the market this year with 3⃣ positions! Come work with us in 🇨🇦! I am happy to talk to anyone about our department, DMs open! Please share widely and let your students know. PS: You can visit our department if you are coming to this year CSMG, Nov 14-15!

The Veneto Workers Histories (1975–2001) is probably the easiest-to-access population-level employer–employee dataset there is. I’ve put together a page with practical user tips beyond the sparse official docs. 1/3 🧵

New CEPR Discussion Paper - DP20632 Insuring Labor Income Shocks: The Role of the Dynasty @AndreasFagereng, Luigi Guiso @EIEF_Rome, Luigi Pistaferri @SIEPR @Stanford, @mariusring @UTexasMcCombs @UTAustin ow.ly/eQFp50WUmJm #CEPR_HF #EconTwitter

Over the entire past century, Switzerland's wealth was worth ~5x national income. Now wealth is worth 8x NNI. In the July issue, by Enea Baselgia (@eneabaselgia) and Isabel Z. Martínez (@IZMartinez86) zurl.co/Wmbup

@LeistenEcon How can you ever be real if you don’t know how construct the reals..

@mariusring The father, the son, and the holy Dedekind Cut

Wrong. The enemy is people who don't learn real analysis

🧵1/11 My paper "Default Options and Retirement Saving Dynamics" is forthcoming in the AER! Auto-enrollment is often hailed as behavioral economics' greatest policy success and now covers 100M+ workers worldwide. But: does it actually increase lifetime wealth and welfare?

A few days ago, I told you about the public finance research of the newest John Bates Clark medalist 🏅 Stefanie Stantcheva. There are important open questions in that research, such as, what are the best retirement policies? My paper with Zhixiu YU answers that question. A 🧵

Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics: "The Long-Term Impacts of Mixing the Rich and Poor: Evidence from Conscript Dorms" by Elias Einiö. aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…

My new paper, now in print, examines how the 2005 Pakistan earthquake triggered firm-level over-adaptation in response to policy uncertainty. Fragile intermediaries, dependent on both capital and labour, suffered the greatest productivity losses as firms, operating amid weak state support, rationally prioritised short-term survival over long-term investment. (1/n) Link: link.springer.com/article/10.100…