Benedikt Heid

Are Economists Architects or Auditors? Ricardo Hausmann laments how the field’s appetite for imaginative problem-solving has given way to narrow, testable hypotheses.

Must read by @ricardohausmann.bsky.social

www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/w...

AEA Statement on Dismissal of BLS Comm.

"The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely, and impartial statistics are the foundation upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions."

Percentages, how do they work?

Mr. Digre's company has long manufactured speakers in Minnesota for export, including to a major customer in Canada. His firm relies on certain materials from China, the only place to get many small components needed for speakers. But Mr. Digre must now pay a 55 percent tariff on those Chinese imports. As a result, manufacturing for that customer from the United States no longer makes sense. So Mr. Digre has shifted speaker production to a factory in China, where he will export directly to Canada and bypass the United States entirely.

Read this paragraph, please.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/b...

By the way, neither for a "lex Netanyahu".

If not, the deal would go against WTO rules. We should not throw out the international legal order for a "lex Trump".

Spot on thoughts by Sam. Fully agree with "my guess is that the EU will pretend any US-only tariff reductions are part of a staged “interim” deal ahead of the conclusion of a full FTA at some point in the future. All of the trade lawyers will be upset (sorry, trade lawyers)."

I Coulda Made a Better Deal What, exactly, did Trump get from Europe?

"You won’t get anywhere in understanding the trade war if you insist on believing that Trump’s tariffs are a response to any legitimate grievances. And he failed to gain any significant concessions, mainly because Europe was already behaving well and had nothing to concede."

EU-US trade deal explained On 27 July 2025, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald J. Trump agreed a deal on tariffs and trade.

EU/US Trade Deal

"The political agreement of 27 July 2025 is not legally binding. Beyond taking the immediate actions committed, the EU and the US will further negotiate, in line with their relevant internal procedures, to fully implement the political agreement."

ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

The graph and clip you shared failed to point out that the administration's unilateral executive action claiming it has power to impose taxes (tariffs) on Americans are without basis in law and the Constitution. Congress and most media fail to state facts. roberthubbell.substack.com/p/major-erro...

Vorläufiges Ende des Zollstreits: Adieu, regelbasierte Handelspolitik Die Einigung im Zollstreit geht eindeutig zu Lasten der EU. Damit hat Trump Europa seine verquere Dealmaker-Logik aufgezwungen.

Vorläufiges Ende des Zollstreits: Adieu, regelbasierte Handelspolitik taz.de/Vorlaeufiges...

🚨 Tariffs on inputs = tax on downstream products.🚨

Here’s cement’s granular production network. A 50% duty on key inputs propagates costs through roads, buildings, data-centres, and renewable infrastructure.

Public data, method & our paper in thread 🧵 0/8

It is now clear that average tariffs on August 1 are set to be higher than they were on "Liberation Day." Only a fool would look back to the chaos of early April and conclude that the problem was that the announced tariffs were too small.

If you're not worried, you're not paying attention.

Trump genuinely believes that tariffs are a free money hack that everyone except him just never noticed.

Trump verhängt (ab 1 August) 50% Zölle auf Importe aus Brasilien. Der Brief unterscheidet sich von den bisherigen und es geht auch um Jair Bolsonaro. #TrumpTariffs

"the President has a pronoun problem."

People always ask me : “Cristi, how do you manage parenting a baby while going up for tenure?”

It’s easy. The secret is *flow-based-scheduling*. Here are its three core strategies for new academic parents:

Sleep when the baby sleeps
Cry when the baby cries
Publish when the baby publishes

My regular "my colleagues are brilliant and it's such a privilege to work alongside them" post.

Extremely timely paper by Michael and Irene on the effects of the political conflict on tariffs:

"Has Trade Policy Uncertainty Decreased a Lot?" econbrowser.com/archives/202...
"Yes, but only because it was so extremely high recently."

mood

Durbin to Bhattacharya: "I can't understand it. I disagree w/ this admin on so many things. But this is the one that really gets to me personally. To think this nation would walk away from medical research. For God's sake...cancer, your budget requests a 38% cut to the National Cancer Institute"

THREE full professorships in Data Science, Microeconomics & Behavioral Econ — great colleagues, excellent research conditions and a spectacular setting in the Alps.

Please share! 📈📉

Incorporating informative Bayesian priors offers the ability to learn more from experiments. @leoiacovone.bsky.social , @economeager.bsky.social & @dmckenzie.bsky.social demonstrate how to do this in the context of a Colombian exporting experiment. buff.ly/CwdGmKE

How international prices are made.

The rule of law is not decorative, the Court of International Trade finds, in response to months of unchecked executive authority to use U.S. laws to impose discriminatory tariffs at will.

Opinion | The Real Story of the ‘China Shock’ The jobs harm was largely local and temporary, while overall jobs and consumer welfare increased.

www.wsj.com/opinion/the-...

Lemme explain what bilateral trade deficits are, so that you can better understand -- and perhaps be infuriated by -- the intellectual error that's transforming our economy. #TeachEcon

Chinn-Ito financial openness (de jure) index updated to 2022 #econsky
econbrowser.com/archives/202...

I feel seen.

This is potentially very costly for Israel. The EU accounts for 32% of its trade in goods. The EU-Israel AA could be suspended if the @ec.europa.eu concludes that an essential element is violated due to a lack of 'respect for human rights' which 'guides their internal and int'l policy' (Art. 2).