Ryan Cummings

End/ While we can say what isn’t causing the gap, we don’t have a good answer for what is causing it. For a more informed take, we asked our friend @draliceevans.bsky.social
what she thought. We think examining this more deeply is a ripe area for future research.

4/ We then use individual-level data to see if demographic factors can help explain the gap. Surprisingly, we find that controls such as education, income, age, and political party explain little (<20%) of the gap.

3/ Interestingly, the gap—in both level and proportional terms—increases when a R is president. This largely reflects the fact that men are more likely to be Rs, and Rs are more optimistic when there is an R president.

2/ In what we call “The Gender Optimism Gap,” we use UMich Consumer Sentiment data and (consistent with others) find since the 70s (as far back as the data go), women are persistently less optimistic than men about the economy.

The Gender Optimism Gap Men are significantly and persistently more optimistic than women about the economic outlook

1/ Me and @nealemahoney.bsky.social are back to analyzing the vibecession. This time, We dug into the #s on how men vs. women experience the economy and found a striking result: women tend to be 10 points less optimistic about the economy than men nealemahoney.substack.com/p/the-gender...

There's a lot of bad happening in the world today. So take some time to read something good--dare I say, great!--from
@jaredb-econ.bsky.social and @nealemahoney.bsky.social who boil down the econ of "affordability" to a simple, three-legged framework. Good economics, good policy!

It’s actually quite unstrategic to abandon vulnerable people in your coalition. It doesn’t make you look tough, it makes you look like a coward.

Opinion | These Invisible Whales Could Sink the Economy (Published 2021)

In 2021, I warned that “family offices”—investment firms that manage the $ of tech titans & other billionaires—have more assets combined ($6TN) than all of private equity ($4TN).

Unlike PE, the public has NO insight into where they put that money. Zero.

www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/o...

Lol Miran also projecting GDP growth to stay at 2.6% a year through 2028 (ht @weakinstrument.bsky.social)

If this is true, this is the largest public corruption scandal in the history of the United States and it's not even close. It would amount to a **$2B** bribe to the President; the next closest scandal in terms of $ would be Teapot Dome, a measly ~$10M in today's $s

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

The jobs numbers are safe for now, but the labor market might not be The civil servants devoted to the mission of the BLS make U.S. economic statistics the envy of the world.

Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to replace her with a loyalist widely criticized by conservatives and liberal economists alike

Read how these 2,000+ civil servants are pushing back to protect the integrity of the agency @weakinstrument.bsky.social

What People Don't Know About The Economy

(2/5) The story cites Mahoney's research with SIEPR's Ryan Cummings @weakinstrument.bsky.social and Ben Harris of @brookings.edu on how Americans’ views on the #economy versus what the data show have diverged since the #Covid19 pandemic: tinyurl.com/333f777d

Crypto wants to bring you down with it The Trump administration is speedrunning government bailouts for the crypto industry.

Update
contrarian.substack.com/p/crypto-wan...
@weakinstrument.bsky.social puts in essay form the key mechanisms described in the 🧵: the crypto/stablecoin & Treasury markets feed on each other in a doom-loop; faced with economic damage the government bails out the miscreants, socialising the costs.

What the crypto industry wants is simple: insurance--paid for taxpayers--that essentially provides a price floor for their useless assets. It's not subtle, and it's not complicated.

Today, I'm in @contrariannews.org about the non-stop effort to shoehorn crytpo into the real economy so that when crypto prices decline, the gov is forced to bailout the industry or face a financial crisis.

contrarian.substack.com/p/crypto-wan...

Opinion | The Economy Is Starting to Pay for Trump’s Chaos

I'm in the NYT today (with @jaredb-econ.bsky.social ) arguing that the last time we had stagflation, we had oil shocks and a bad Fed. Now, we have no oil shocks and a good Fed. If we have stagflation this time, it will very much be by the President's own choosing.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/o...

Putting salt and sugar into water and calling it "electrolytes" is definitely one of the greatest marketing gimmicks of all time.

How can workers feel secure when the economic landscape is always shifting beneath their feet?

Regardless of politics, economists should make clear: we do not condone reckless attacks on our statistical agencies, including by our fellow economists.

The staff at these agencies work painstakingly to collect the data our democracy and economy depend on.

It’s Easy to Hate Traffic Cameras. But They Do Save Lives. They raise issues of fairness, and critics claim they’re only about revenue. More speed and red-light cameras, however, would prevent a lot of deaths and injuries.

Yes, traffic cameras work, but it's a myth that people hate them!

Survey after survey shows that most people support automatic enforcement (and often want more of it).

This is a false controversy, fed by a minority of disgruntled drivers & journalists seeking narratives with conflict.

Rig counts have become a less reliable signal of production over time because the efficiency of an individual rig has improved quite a bit, but OPEC+ production and tariffs on inputs like steel are going to give pause to both majors and independents trying to win market share with new production.

Most encountered gas price, according to President Buddy:

$1.98 (most common)
$0.00 (somehow also most common)
$6.00 (Joe Biden holdover counties)

Trump canceled the research grant for America’s — perhaps the world’s? — top mathematician (via @weakinstrument.bsky.social)

You got that J-PUBE money now

The WSJ after seeing Trump threaten Jerome Powell:

Excited to announce a new funding opportunity for research on "what works" in climate adaptation. We are specifically looking for strong causal designs that tell us what interventions work (or don't) to reduce impacts of a changing climate. Plz share + apply!
seedfunding.stanford.edu/apply/U5N4

Food Systems Resource Economics Fellow, Stanford Law School in School of Law, Stanford, California, United States *NOTE: This position has been deemed critical/has specific funding, has been approved by the Law School for posting, and is exempt from the hiring...

Are you a natural resource or agricultural economics PhD or postdoc interested in real world policy work? Come work with CEPP's growing food team on quantifying subsidies in the dairy and beef industry!

If not, pass the word!

careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/food-sy...

5. The decision comes exactly one week after Trump signed the OBBBA.

The CBO estimates that bill will strip 16 million people of their health insurance.

By allowing reporting of medical debt, the decision removes a financial safety net when it's more important than ever

Credit score creep A WSJ article on landlords tanking credit scores in rent disputes raises broader questions and reminds us why we need the CFPB

4. Debt collectors use medical debt reporting for leverage

If you don't pay up, they'll report your debt and tank your credit

Credit scores should be used to provide credit, not for this

nealemahoney.substack.com/p/credit-sco...

3. Removing medical debt does little to harm credit score accuracy

A 2014 CFPB report found medical debt was less predictive than non-medical debt of adverse outcomes

My understanding is that FICO subsequently down-weighted medical debt

files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201405_cfp...