David Munro

Dr. Erika McEntarfer has devoted her career to public service. She has conducted herself as BLS Commissioner with great integrity. There is no evidence whatsoever that BLS data are politically biased.

#econsky

But it's a super interesting question to explore further if data is detailed enough to run out competing mechanisms.

Eliminating parking requirements was an important component of the 2040 plan. You should view our paper as treating the 2040 plan as a bundled intervention - it's a little hard to convincingly argue that the effects are parking vs. upzoning, etc.

This is definitely a possible mechanism, and an interpretation that I'm warming up to. But it's hard to show that in the data. In an ideal world you'd have transaction level data which could distinguish institutional investors. This might be gettable from sale records, but not something we do, yet.

It's hard to disentangle these stories in the data, though. But I think it's an important question worthy of more exploration.

Yes, definitely possible. E.g. higher density, changing aesthetics with more units/lot (though reform was designed to preserve neighborhood characteristics). But I think there are other candidates: expectations of future building, reducing speculative behavior if supply is more elastic, etc.

Data is suggestive of a weakening in demand. e.g. relative increase in inventory, relative decline in list-to-sale post-2020 (but not huge). Why? Hard to know for sure. Reform could have reduced speculative behavior, and/or reduced amenity values (more density, etc.) Somewhat open question... N/N

We don't find evidence of an increase in housing supply (building permits). If anything, the data suggests a relative decline in building permits. (Possible cause was legal dispute on 2040 plan in 2023/24). Regardless, housing prices declined without a noticeable supply increase.

The effects for Minneapolis are quite significant. Here's the placebo test for rental prices (similar for home prices):

The results from the synthetic control are robust to different criteria for cities in the donor pool: Midwest cities only, <1 million population, similar income levels, similar post covid population growth:

And rental prices:

🚨 Excited to share a new working paper with an exceptional former student of mine, Helena Gu. The paper looks at the impact of one of the largest zoning reforms in US history: the Minneapolis 2040 plan. We find significant impacts on home prices:
(1/N)
ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/glodps...

Column on the Responsibility of Israelis to Speak Up Against Mass Starvation in Gaza I generally restrict my comments here to economic issues, but some things are hard to ignore.

This piece is very moving, and reflects how I am feeling about the Israel/Gaza calamity.

Silence in the Face of Gaza's Starvation is Absolute Betrayal of Holocaust Victims
By Orit Kamir
Originally published in Haaretz

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Thanks to @deanbaker13.bsky.social for posting it.

A D.O.J. Whistleblower Speaks Out In a complaint, a former Justice Department lawyer said his former colleagues were being forced to choose between the president’s agenda and their ethical obligations as attorneys.

An explosive whistle-blower report claims that the Justice Department is asking government lawyers to lie to the courts, and that this has forced career officials to chose between upholding the Constitution and pledging loyalty to the president.

Listen to today's episode of "The Daily."

Not sure if it's interesting, but this is essentially the asset bubble experiments: trade an asset with known dividend and the ability to sell it to others. Main early result was major deviations from fundamentals. But very related, what I pay now is a function who I think I'll sell it to next.

Ah the joys of peer review. One referee: "this result is not interesting, you should remove it from the paper." Another referee: "this is the most interesting result in the paper, you should do more here." Convex combination= leave as is?

When I was a master's student, someone was marveling to Vernon Smith about how much time someone else spent working in their office and he remarked "it's not about input, it's about output!"

The cover of Raffi’s bananaphone album

Canadians have been threatening our essential telecommunications infrastructure for decades

Ya, paper with Curtis.

Two are few and four are many: number effects in experimental oligopolies In this paper we investigate how the competitiveness of Cournot markets varies with the number of firms in an industry. We review previous Cournot exp…

Here's the classic paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I have a random paper looking at price dynamics (instead of how close they are to Nash, as above). i.e. how is price adjustment to a shock different conditional on number of firms.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Interesting result in the experimental price competition literature is "two is few, four is many"

There's something about the "preferred habitat" argument that leaves me craving more, I guess! But overall, it seems like a fundamental issue that deserves more attention.

Great post. The cause of the ratcheting up in reserves is something I've been curious about for awhile. Though, the precise mechanism still feels nebulous to me. A liquidity risk story seems problematic since big banks (who dominate the market) face LCR. Can small banks move the needle this much?

DCCC 2026 DISTRICTS IN PLAY NICK BEGICH AK-AL DAVID SCHWEIKERT AZ-OI ELI CRANE AZ-02 JUAN CISCOMANI AZ-06 DAVID VALADAO CA-22 YOUNG KIM CA-40 KEN CALVERT CA-41 GABE EVANS CO-08 CORY MILLS FL-07 ANNA PAULINA LUNA FL-13 MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR FL-27 MARIANNETTE MILLER-MEEKS IA-OI ASHLEY HINSON IA-02 ZACH NUNN 1A-03 ANDY BARR KY-06 BILL HUIZENGA MI-04 TOM BARRETT MI-07 MIKE LAWLER NY-17 MAX MILLER OH-07 MIKE TURNER OH-10 OPEN SEAT MI-IO MIKE CAREY 0H-15 ANN WAGNER MO-02 DON BACON NE-02 TOM KEAN JR. NJ-07 BRIAN FITZPATRICK PA-OI RYAN MACKENZIE PA-07 ROB BRESNAHAN PA-08 SCOTT PERRY PA-10 ANDY OGLES TN-05 MONICA DE LA CRUZ TX-15 ROB WITTMAN VA-O1 JEN KIGGANS VA-02 BRYAN STEIL WI-OI DERRICK VAN ORDEN WI-03

IF YOU ARE IN ONE OF THESE DISTRICTS PLEASE MAKE A CALL RIGHT NOW

DOES NOT MATTER IF YOUR VOICE SHAKES

CALL AND SAY YOU OPPOSE BBB

Scripts here: 5calls.org

Today is my first official day as Associate Professor of Economics with tenure! Super thankful for the support from family, friends, and colleagues helping make this dream a reality.

Wow. Put all in one place and . . . Wow.

Opinion | Raise the debt ceiling by $24 trillion — or kill the bill The GOP budget bill simultaneously requires more borrowing — and also prohibits that borrowing.

Wendy Edelberg of @brookings.edu: If One Beautiful Bill passes, US will add $24 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years (past promises + new tax cuts). If Congress were honest, it'd be willing to raise the debt ceiling by $24 trillion, not the $4 trillion in the bill wapo.st/4kTSxiL

Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.

Influenza vaccination reduces respiratory-illness doctor visits by over 25 percent in young children, from Michael L. Anderson, Carlos Dobkin, Devon Gorry, and Hung-Fu Tseng https://www.nber.org/papers/w33856

The $1tn shadow bank lending boom ‘This is a sensitive trade-off that has not always been well managed in the banking industry’

The $1tn shadow bank lending boom

https://www.ft.com/content/b7729107-afb1-4fd7-bfd2-434d1ef7edbb