Scott Ashworth

@ben_golub They're so good.

@spydermed @ben_golub economics.mit.edu/sites/default/…

@ben_golub 😍

@ethanbdm Can I use this tweet in slides for the mpps?

Just a humble dean, tutoring a family member at another university in intermediate micro, begging micro teachers to stop calling the value of a utility function the agent's "happiness" in questions whose point is that monotone transformations represent the same preferences.

@p_ganong @cblatts Me too.

@cblatts Glad that you were paying attention at the faculty retreat!

Jeez. Latest version of ChatGPT completely solves my MA-level game theory problem set and writes a B+/A- version of a reading reflection on most course books. Can apply a book or article to a novel context. the improvement in 1 year is significant and in 2 years is astounding.

@arindube I was unaware correct statements about price theory were allowed on this platform.

Some think this figure is the way to understand just about all price interventions in markets. Other people think this figure is essentially never useful to understand any price interventions in markets. I think both perspectives are wrong. It's a case-by-case empirical Q.

@spydermed You can download their newish intermediate* micro book in either of two versions, 'he' or 'she'. * according to Ariel

Coase theorem For The DEI Win!

@ben_golub I gave it part of Enderton's Set Theory and learned that you and I are sets, because of the axiom of extentionality.

@itaisher From Korner's excellent Companion to Analysis:

Seems likely to me that the counterfactual history in which there were no philosophers would be much worse for science

@JustinGrimmer lol nate's mad

I wonder what part of the argument you agree or disagree with? Our arguments about calibration are directly applicable to your "bet" standard. Regardless of who won that bet we still wouldn't know who was a better forecaster, which is our point!

@JustinGrimmer @dean_c_knox @seanjwestwood Thank you for writing this.

Forecasts of US presidential elections are everywhere, and they’re discussed obsessively by journalists and the public. But are they any good? @dean_c_knox, @seanjwestwood, and I show we’re decades, centuries, or (sometimes) millenia away from evidence that they are any better than random guessing, let alone which forecast is most accurate. osf.io/preprints/osf/…

@spydermed I'm toying with assigning Schumpeter's presidential address for the concluding meeting of my MPP micro course this fall.

@soashworth This was not lost on me.

I am dumbfounded by the number of economists on this site who seem to be suggesting that economics tells us that price regulations are “bad” (or some synonym).

@ben_golub It's a good way of teaching ideology.

Since this is picking up some steam, here's the article for those curious. bengolub.net/landsburg/ and a nerdy postscript: Landsburg's answer, to be clear, is that the resource-conscious consumer should buy from the monopolist, because at the same retail price the marginal cost is lower (the monopolist takes a markup). When I say the mention of competitive markets is incoherent, I'm noticing that there's a monopolist in the problem... what is this competitive economy with some monopolies? And that can be used to give a quick argument against the problem: the whole message of the problem is that prices do not reveal social costs, at the apple/pear choice. But somehow once we get one step upstream to the firms' marginal costs (which are partly just prices charged by other firms) we are supposed to treat them as a perfect gauge of the value of social resources used. (This all assumes no externalities anywhere, also wrong, though fine if you say that.) And then, after all that, adding to firm profit is treated as neutral for resource consumption, which I simply don't understand. Landsburg could, I suppose, tie himself in knots at this point saying that the implications of those profits for social welfare are netural or positive. But at this point whoever took us down this path should just admit that this question, presented this way, wasn't a good way of teaching anything.

@ben_golub @ElliotLip Thanks! (the other place is still where I hang out though)

@soashworth @ElliotLip Welcome back!

@itaisher And UPenn alumni

Progressives and Republicans will be happy today

Tenure isn't about free speech. It's about self-governance: where the standards for success are set by people who live and understand the relevant kind of success.

@JustinGrimmer Clicks.

Then why are we making forecasts?

@ethanbdm Good lord what is happening on this website.

Just here to point out that risk aversion is neither here nor there with respect to whether you get Pareto inferior outcomes in collective action problems.

@economeager @ethanbdm I’m getting close to being a consume-only social media user, with the only platforms being TikTok and Substack

@soashworth @ethanbdm i wish bsky was better but it's not :( in terms of the experience i mean. bah.

@ethanbdm OMG EVIL ALL ALONG