@DBaqaee

Economist at UCLA

Los Angeles, CA
Joined April 2020
Replying to @alz_zyd_
There’s no such thing as “social welfare”
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David Baqaee retweeted
GW Economics Department is recruiting for four (!) tenure-track positions: • Macro (junior): aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J… • Trade (2 positions; mid-level/senior AP strongly considered): aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J… • Applied micro (junior): aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J… Come join us!
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David Baqaee retweeted
We're hiring an Asst Prof in Macro at NC State, preferably overlapping adjacent fields (international, labor, IO etc). Ideally experienced; fresh PhDs welcome. Great Duke/UNC interactions in Research Triangle. Review begins Sept 28. Let me know if you have questions. Links below.
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David Baqaee retweeted
I'm not upping my p(doom), but this is a catchy tune.
Claude Opus 5.5 has the best visual design of any model I have tested so far
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David Baqaee retweeted
Holy shit now it’s my turn to say FSD just saved my family tonight. It’s on the 71 freeway in California. $TSLA @Tesla_AI
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David Baqaee retweeted
This is the per-pupil funding for the elementary school Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to. If you subscribe to the funding theory of education, how much would have been enough? It's already crossed the average per capita annual income threshold. Maybe $100k? $200k?
Notice the sleight of hand. Nationally this may be true, but in NYC the Fair Student Funding gives extra funding to schools with disadvantaged students. The school that Hannah Jones' daughter attends almost certainly is better funded than predominately white or Asian schools.
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Next week, @SakiBigio (@UCLA) will present his paper "The heterogeneous bank lending channel of monetary policy" @vimacro_org Registration: vimacro.org/attend Info/Paper: vimacro.org/saki-bigio-heter… #OnlineSeminar #Economics #Research #Banks #MonetaryPolicy #Heterogeneity
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David Baqaee retweeted
Data-based social science using text data is going to become as subjective as the humanities when we realize you can get whatever conclusion you want by coding the LLM-text extraction a certain way
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David Baqaee retweeted
> colleges give A's to everyone. > firms need to scale up intensive interviews and assessments, to figure out who is good. > students spend all their time preparing for firm interviews and assessments, and none of it on classes. > profs: Why don't my students work anymore?
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David Baqaee retweeted
Excited to see this paper finally out in ReStud! 🎉 See the original thread about the paper by Hannes below. nitter.cf/HannesMalmberg1/status…
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David Baqaee retweeted
Another incredibly creative paper from Jacob Moscona. Patents on plants didn't exist until 1985. You can test their effect by comparing hybrid and non-hybrid plants—hybrids have de facto IP protection because they are very difficult to copy. IP helps innovation AND farmers.
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If you want a mini-break from The Doom, check out how much more prosperous these nine African countries got over about one generation. There's a lot of happiness and flourishing (and avoided misery) represented in these charts.
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David Baqaee retweeted
When we were the only intelligent things on earth, we made intelligence part of our identity. Those of us in academia perhaps did this most of all. Time to start identifying more strongly with thumbs.
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David Baqaee retweeted
Interesting question: Who is taking the other side in a P(doom) bet? What Jakob is saying: if we ever see liquid prediction markets with implied P(doom) substantially >0 (after adjusting for fees etc), THEN that’s when we should be really worried because the counterparty is likely AI
Prediction markets usually break down for existential risks - e.g. if everyone gets wiped out by a comet then nobody is there to win the bet (and therefore nobody will take the other side). P(doom) is different: once there is an entity meanfigfully taking the other side of the bet that becomes informative in its own right: manifold.markets/MartinRanda…
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David Baqaee retweeted
some advice for the current moment
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David Baqaee retweeted
$10.2 million in Iowa vs $10.9 million in Palo Alto
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Two extraordinary charts from today’s PISA test results: 1) School test scores continue to collapse internationally, underscoring how this is no longer a Covid effect but sustained decline. Those falls in reading and maths are equivalent to about two years of lost schooling.
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David Baqaee retweeted
Please, friends in academia, stop doing this. We need to maintain trust: kevinbryanecon.com/trust.htm…
This editorial is appalling. It omits any mention of Arday's serial fabulism or his attempt to intimidate -- and direct law enforcement against -- a journalist investigating his misconduct. It appears to characterize his fabrication of academic credentials and biographical details as aspects of "how Arday conducted aspects of his personal life." The editorial also ignores that his plagiarism is an established fact that any truth-seeking publication could itself confirm by referencing publicly available documents. Instead, Nature chooses to ignore the observable realities, while inviting readers to conclude that the charges were trivial or false. The British tabloid press is disgraceful. This story was grossly over-covered and the attention it attracted surely reflected racial resentments. But it's crazy that the editorial leadership of a flagship scientific journal would publish a willfully dishonest polemic on a culture war controversy. Nature is effectively advertising a willingness to prioritize its political sympathies over factual accuracy. That undermines its own more essential work -- along with the broader project of cultivating public trust in, and agreement upon, scientific truths.
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David Baqaee retweeted
The Islamic Republic shot out his eye. Now it wants to take his life. Branch 23 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court has sentenced Ali Zarei, a survivor of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, to death on the charge of “corruption on earth.” The sentence was reportedly communicated to him in recent days. He is now being held in Qezel Hesar Prison. His social media bio later read: “I sacrificed my eye for the freedom of my country.” According to Ali, an interrogator told him: “We shot you in the eye, and we’re happy about it.” The Islamic Republic took his eye for demanding freedom. Now it wants to put a rope around his neck for refusing to be silent. Ali Zarei needs the world’s attention now before it is too late. Be his voice.
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almost 15% of gdp is gov+npish wages, 8% is owner-occupied imputed housing rents, and many other categories aren’t recorded at market values. the fast-growth people might need 20% growth in corp sector valueadded to win
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