I was an academic economist for over 10 yrs (UMinn, TrinityU, UChicago) now I'm a researcher specializing in macro-impact of currency+asset digitization.

Chicago, IL
Joined January 2016
1/Many/ This is a thread for those of you who to applying to Economics graduate degrees, MA or PhD. I just finished my first year on an MA applications committee and it’s clear there is a *lot* of hidden information harming people’s applications.
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
The Federal Reserve @stlouisfed now publishes 16 data sets from @tryramp about how businesses are adopting AI. As the entire world tries to understand the relationships between AI spend, productivity, job creation/loss, economic growth -- we are committed to being that source of data.
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This panel will be today during lunch time.
I will be moderating a virtual panel for #NABE #Chicago on #Stablecoins, #TokenizedDeposits and #payment innovations on Monday, October 5, noon-1pm. Oct 5 - New Rules New Landscapes share.google/ltWBSBj1W7kQfK7…
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I will be moderating a virtual panel for #NABE #Chicago on #Stablecoins, #TokenizedDeposits and #payment innovations on Monday, October 5, noon-1pm. Oct 5 - New Rules New Landscapes share.google/ltWBSBj1W7kQfK7…
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there’s a lot of people who say they are interested in economics but what they really are interested in is playing dolls with people and ideas that don’t matter anymore
John Maynard Keynes' General Theory still stands as the greatest economics book of all time. Meanwhile, Ludwig von Mises wrote 900 pages to explain that humans do things on purpose.
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
Is no one gonna talk about the fact that the surname in reverse reads "No Slop"
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The closest people get in discussing real estate and AI is usually data centers. #NABEChicago will host both the co-CEO and the Principal Economist of Cushman & Wake for an in-person luncheon in downtown Chicago to discuss Commericial Real Estate in the age of AI on **September 23**. Registration and details here: share.google/iipShnLvOcJt0uz…
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
"Why are runes always ancient, why'd we stop making new runes?" "Brother. we made runes so complex that sand started thinking"
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
Honestly, AI capabilities are (currently) at a sweet spot for economists. They are getting better and better at things that are not economics per se but represent 90% of our work — data cleaning, coding, proofs — and they are only somewhat useful when it comes to economic intuition. The ones I use (Fable for work, Grok here for chatting about tweets) are sufficiently good as para-economist assistants to help me think, but they regularly make fallacious arguments or have poor economic intuition.
My take on why AI is so bad at PhD level econ theory: the labs are focused on economically-valuable tasks
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
holy shit kimi was faking it’s performance by serving you claude you have been using claude all along
We're publishing our most detailed threat intelligence report to date. It covers how people tried to misuse Claude—for cyberattacks, influence operations, surveillance, biology, and building weapons—and how we found and stopped them. We disrupted every operation in the report, and used the lessons from them to strengthen our safeguards. Where appropriate, we also shared what we found with authorities and other AI companies. These cases are not typical: we’re highlighting some of the most sophisticated misuse we’ve seen. But they’re especially important to discuss, because they show us where AI misuse is headed, where our safeguards work, and where they need to improve. We’re publishing this report so others can spot the same activity on their own platforms, and so we can give the public a clearer view of how emerging threats develop. Read the report: anthropic.com/threat-intelli…
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
A paper w/ unsurprising, yet tweet-worthy findings: -Give AI to patent lawyers & their quality of work improves -Then take AI away & the most junior may see a slight decline -"Foundational expertise may be a prerequisite for extracting durable skill from AI-assisted practice"
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
>sam altman: "we tried this because there were rumor on the internet" >rumor: math professor close to solving navier-stokes >the professor: using codex for a year >openai: has all his logs >checked every codex session tagged to N-S >found the most promising one >spun up 10,000 agents to finish the proof where he couldn't >they got caught >told the guy if you say anything you'll destroy your own career >he ruins his career over this >openai: "we did not see his work" >also openai: "we cannot rule out that de-identified data from their usage helped improve our models" they stole it lmao
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
"AI has destroyed Kenyan jobs because American college students no longer hire them to write fake college essays" is not a framing I expected even the NYT to have
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Ive noticed an interesting shift in myself: When I see editors/referees complaining about an AI written paper my reaction now is "OK, but is it good? Is it providing insights and the level of work that wpuld have previously been gated to only people who could land a position with full time research support?" Because you're not saying it isn't good, you're just saying you refuse to consider it. And while that was a valid blanket approach to first generation AI's, its considerably less so now.
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
🚨 About to submit an Econ paper? I just updated the Econ Journal Matchmaker: 🔗 scholar-tools.com/ I incorporated some of the most requested features. #EconTwitter Please help spread the word by reposting. 🙏 More details below 👇
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There was a crime-solving TV show based on Ariely and his research. Scale. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ir…
Ariely is a much bigger issue than Arday ever was. Arday was an aberration, but nobody with a fully functioning brain takes any of that stuff seriously anyway. He was evolving in fields that are themselves aberrations. The real issue behind Arday was the people who hired him and their political agenda, as well as the fact that nobody dares to speak up against an obvious farce. Arday himself wasn’t the biggest issue in his own story. Ariely, on the other hand, was supposed to be a serious scholar and a real “academic star.” I actually took one of his online courses and was quite impressed. A lot of smart people not only took him seriously but also devoted years of their lives to studying behavioral economics without knowing they were building on quicksand. That’s a lot of resources and years wasted.
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
Oh look! Commerce Dept updated its scientific integrity policy, which covers Census & BEA. Was: "Scientific findings and products must not be suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and must not be subjected to inappropriate influence." No longer. (continues)
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
Consider the contrast to how we normally write heroes and villains: Syril is loyal, dedicated, diligent, eager, earnest, honest, unashamed of his beliefs, totally committed to justice, and willing to bear tragedy without giving up. He works for the evil Empire Cassian is paranoid, shiftless, disloyal, unreliable, selfish, jaded, ruthless, and compulsively deceitful. He's the hero That Andor not only pulls this off but makes it obvious to the viewer who's side we're on (and why) is an unparalleled feat of character framing, and we should all be taking notes
The development of Syril/Cassian as mirror image characters - without making either feel contrived or obvious - needs to be studied
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
Replying to @DAcemogluMIT
Like many others, I've greatly learned from your work. I will find out who wrote that Economist article. If they wear men's clothing, I will point out the small, inconsequential ways they are not adhering to 1950s standards to avenge your honor.
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Gina Pieters, PhD retweeted
Me: If you’re really confident about civil forfeiture, let’s have treble-damages recovery for innocent owners. Them: NFW! Me: If you’re really confident about Flock tech, let’s do mandatory prison sentences for cops who abuse it. Them: NFW! Me: If you’re really confident about mass plea bargaining, let’s make it presumptively career-ending to make a plea offer to someone who turns out to be innocent—just like we do for anyone in command of a Navy ship wrecked in peacetime. Them: NFW! Me: Yeah, that’s what I thought.
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