Hello Econtwitter (or whatever remains of it)! I'll be at ASSA Meeting next week, so hit me up if you want to drink coffee and chat research! And be sure to check out this excellent, inter-field session I've organized:

Awesome study by Alex MacKay and coauthors estimating markups across >100 product categories. The lesson is that the culprit for rising markups is not growing market power or oligopolistic concentration of sellers, but the declining price sensitivity of consumers.

3/ 📦 At the border: Nearly full pass-through of tariffs to US import prices. Foreign firms—especially in China—did not significantly lower prices to offset tariffs. The burden fell on US firms because the affected imports were mostly differentiated goods, for which substitutes

Earnings calls showing a huge spike in anticipated pressure from tariffs — and this is for data up to March 31, before “Liberation Day”! from Matteo Maggiori Antonio Coppola Christopher Clayton Jesse Schreger

A framework to analyze quotas and other quantity-based distortions, like the H-1B visa cap, Argentina's capital controls, and NYC taxicab medallions in general equilibrium, from @Dbaqaee and Kunal Sangani nber.org/papers/w33695

🧵How are the 2025 US tariffs affecting consumer prices? Our new paper with Paola and Franco Vazquez uses daily retail data linked to country-of-origin info to provide some evidence: 1️⃣ Rapid Pricing Responses: Prices adjusted quickly following major tariff announcements

Nearly a fourth of workers are now subject to occupational licensing in the US ht Adam Tooze, paper by Corollo, Hicks, Karch, Kleiner

Wrapped up the inaugural BU Junior Macro Conference with great discussions and an incredible group of researchers. Thanks to all who joined! Liyan shi Kunal Sangani Paolo Martellini Sean McCrary, Ryungha Oh, Daniel O’Connor, and Co-organizers Masao Fukui, Tarek Hassan BU Economics

Two Fed research economists have a paper modeling tariff passthrough from 2018-19 and Feb-March 2025 The results: "For the 2018-19 tariffs ... tariff changes were passed through fully and quickly—within two months of tariff implementation—to consumer goods prices." "For the

As inflation began rising in 2022, firms initially underreacted: short-term expectations rose more slowly than actual inflation. This gave way to persistent overshooting—firms expected more inflation than actually materialized, especially in the disinflation phase in 2023–2024.

One of many fascinating figures from Zachary Bleemer and Sarah Quincy on the falling college premium for low-income students. College majors and falling quality in teaching-oriented public schools account for over 1/2 of the relative decline.

Economists have widely varying opinions of how corporate taxation affects aggregate investment, output, and wages. This disagreement reflects a 60-year history of mis-application of the neoclassical theory of investment to interpret empirical work and guide policy analysis.

The Budget Lab • The price level from all 2025 tariffs rises by 1.5% in the short-run, the equivalent of an average per household income loss of $2,000 in 2025$. • Annual losses for households at the bottom of the income distribution are -2.8% ($1,100 in 2025$) v. -0.8% ($4,200) at top. 4/9

While liberals have moved almost a full scale point more supportive of free trade since the election (on a 7pt scale) conservatives are unmoved. A super interesting case for the role of elites in shaping mass attitudes. Data from the incredible Polarization Research Lab Political Pulse.

Can an AI model predict perfectly and still have a terrible world model? What would that even mean? Our new ICML paper formalizes these questions One result tells the story: A transformer trained on 10M solar systems nails planetary orbits. But it botches gravitational laws 🧵