SIEPR

Opinion | Trump Wants You to Believe Climate Change Isn’t Dangerous A Trump administration proposal runs counter to both basic logic and a growing mountain of science documenting direct harms from climate change.

tinyurl.com/54237ctx

An evidence-based call to action, from SIEPR’s @marshallburke.bsky.social and Solomon Hsiang, his @stanforddoerr.bsky.social colleague, as President Trump takes his biggest step yet to undo climate change policy.

Job Creation Slows To A Crawl: Monthly Avg: 35,000 over Past 3 Months Unemployment ticks up, manufacturing slumping, and participation rates and down. It's not break glass yet, but it's remind yourself where you put the hammer.

tinyurl.com/uuzs5te2

‪Some red flags in today's jobs report. Jared Bernstein
@jaredb-econ.bsky.social‬, SIEPR policy fellow and former Council of Economic Advisers chairman, breaks it all down here:

Great roundup of the important work that SIEPR's @marshallburke.bsky.social is doing.

What economics can teach foreign-policy types Hegemons should care about even puny countries

Story: tinyurl.com/t28xhdkw

The Economist: “Three years ago people asked the authors what geoeconomics was. Now they are asked not to go on about Mr Trump too much.”

Terrific summary in @economist.com of ongoing work by SIEPR’s Matteo Maggiori @mmaggiori.bsky.social, along with his @gcaproject.bsky.social ‪co-founder @chris-d-clayton.bsky.social ‪and @jesseschreger.bsky.social into how the U.S. and China use economic coercion #geoeconomics. Story link follows.

Managing remote workers is tricky. Among other insights, study from SIEPR Senior Fellows @nickbloom.bsky.social and Steven Davis speaks to the value of starting off with in-person training.

Opinion | The Cities and States That Are Getting It Right Trump’s budget cuts mean that local governments must work smarter.

San Francisco is reinventing city government, with help from SIEPR's Dan Ho and his AI work with @stanfordlaw.bsky.social RegLab. @pahlkadot.bsky.social and Robert Gordon write in today’s @nytimes.com about this and other city and state efforts to modernize the public sector.
bit.ly/46S13Lu

Grateful to @morganemrichard, 2024-25 SIEPR postdoc, for her evidence into how #WFH #RemoteWork drive up #HousingMarket prices, increasing inequality over time.

Click-to-cancel is canceled — and only a glimmer of hope remains for its revival The FTC's rule to make canceling subscriptions as easy as they were to sign up was blocked just days before it was set to go into effect.

Spoke with @ayeletsheffey.bsky.social at @businessinsider.com about how the cancellation of "click to cancel" will waste people's time, increase switching costs, and make markets less competitive.

www.businessinsider.com/ftc-blocks-s...

YouTube video by SAReserveBank #G20SouthAfrica Side event — The implications of Al on the organisation of industry and work

Watch @Susan_Athey’s talk on the implications of AI on the organisation of industry and work at #G20SouthAfrica

www.youtube.com/watch?v=okDG...

Debt collectors win, medical debtor holders lose, as SIEPR Director @nealemahoney.bsky.social explains. #EconSky

Three Theories of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) Loans BNPL is rapidly growing in practice, but how does it work in theory?

Check out Mahoney & Shaw’s take on BNPL trends:
bit.ly/4lTPcka
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Policymakers should be paying close attention, they say. Their analysis cites one of the few studies of BNPL loans, from SIEPR’s ‪@ed-dehaan.bsky.social‬, which finds evidence that they increase bank overdraft charges and credit card interest and fees.
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Mahoney and Shaw’s Substack analysis explores intriguing questions:
🏷️ Do consumers love BNPL loans because they soothe the sting of sticker shock?
💰 Are these loans a smart way to play interest-rate arbitrage?
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Risk to the U.S. economy or healthy innovation?

With the rapid rise of Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) loans, SIEPR’s @nealemahoney.bsky.social and Adam Shaw take a deeper look and offer 3 theories as to why they’ve grown in popularity and who benefits the most from them. (link at end)
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Allcott’s study, coauthored by @justin-katz.bsky.social was released as a working paper today by @nber.org
www.nber.org/papers/w34028
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#EconSky

Study: What happens if Meta is forced to sell Instagram

What if Meta had to sell Instagram? SIEPR scholar Hunt Allcott has new research on what might happen for Facebook and Instagram users and advertisers if the Federal Trade Commission wins its antitrust case against Meta, forcing a breakup of the social media platforms. Our story 👇
bit.ly/3GrbQ4F

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💵Damage to the fiscal outlook from the GOP budget bill brings into focus the strain that deficit-financed tax cuts will put on the federal debt.
🏦The analysis reveals the possible future need for the U.S. to require an "ahistorical adjustment" to its spending and taxation levels.

🔍 Key Takeaways from the policy brief:
⚠️The combination of higher interest rates, slower growth, and large deficits spells danger for the U.S. fiscal situation.
📈 The interest rate is no longer lower than the growth rate. If that persists, future debt servicing becomes a much heavier lift.

Opinion | Biden’s Chief Economist: The Chart That Convinced Me Our Debt Is a Serious Problem I’m no longer sanguine about the threats posed by the nation’s deficits.

Bernstein also summarizes some of his findings in this Guest Essay for @nytimes.com . ⤵️
“Our nation’s budget math just got a lot more dangerous,” he writes.
bit.ly/4kqZWWb

Now's the time to worry about a fiscal debt crisis, says @jaredb-econ.bsky.social, a Distinguished Policy Fellow at SIEPR. In our latest Policy Brief, the former chief economist for Biden and SIEPR’s Adam Shaw & Daniel Posthumus break down the budget math that point to trouble ahead.
bit.ly/45Vtl7s

🚨New research insights as Congress debates tax cuts

A study by SIEPR's Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato sheds light on how a cost-shifting maneuver used by U.S. multinationals to reduce taxes ends up inadvertently boosting R&D investments.
Read more about it here:
👇
bit.ly/44bS2vf
#EconSky #TaxStrategy

Developed by researchers @SIEPR.bsky.social
and ‪@mitceepr.bsky.social, the IDN provides an easier way to track patterns and understand the dynamics between different aspects of the U.S. economy across a range of industries.
🔍 Explore and read about it here: bit.ly/4n8W5j0
#EconSky #AcademicSky

📣Introducing the Industry Data Navigator … an app for sizing up the U.S. economy.
In the crowded landscape of U.S. government reports on labor, capital investment, manufacturing and trade, the IDN is a new tool to help policymakers and researchers turn heaps of complex data into useful insights.

🚨New research from SIEPR Senior Fellow @tomdee.bsky.social finds that student absences rose amid intensified immigration enforcement, indicating lost learning opportunities. 👇
bit.ly/3I1vGDJ

Lester and her co-authors put it this way: “Failure to act risks ceding America’s innovation leadership.”