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Jason Furman @jasonfurman
, 10 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
With two weeks left until labor day, a few book recommendations (and my reviews).

1. If you haven't yet read The Master and Margarita you really need to. Immediately. goodreads.com/review/show/24…
2. One of my favorite novels of the summer is @RosalieKnecht's Who Is Vera Kelley, an entertainment in the spirit of Graham Greene, alternating btwn a lesbian coming of age and light espionage in Argentina. goodreads.com/review/show/24…
3. If you like your science fiction very hard then Ball Lightning by Cixin Liu. Nowhere near The Three Body Problem trilogy, but mind blowing nonetheless. goodreads.com/review/show/21…
4. The most provocative and nearly mind blowing economics book has been Radical Markets by Eric Posner and @glenweyl goodreads.com/review/show/24…
5. The most sensible and comprehensive diagnosis of our current political situation was The People vs. Democracy by @Yascha_Mounk goodreads.com/review/show/23…
6. I have not read all of @AshokaMody's Euro Tragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts (thus the lack of a review), but the parts I have read are excellent and will eventually read all of it. amazon.com/EuroTragedy-Dr…
7. Closer to home, @AnnieLowrey tackles Universal Basic Income--a topic I thought I fully understood until I read her excellent combination of reporting, analysis and passion. goodreads.com/review/show/24…
8. The Book of Why is not for everyone (notwithstanding my mother's picking it up off the living room table and thinking it was a children's book), but an excellent history/analysis of causation in statistics--and manifesto for structural analysis. goodreads.com/review/show/24…
9. Finally, I don't normally read self-help books masquerading as novels, but my wife made me read Alain de Botton's The Course of Love and I found myself furiously underlining and, yes, even somewhat self helped. goodreads.com/review/show/24…
You can find more on my Goodreads page. All of the reviews are jotted down in a hurry, as much to remind myself as to benefit others--so apologies for what are often overly short discussions.
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CEA has released a "primer" on wage measurement. Much of the substance is reasonable (with one exception noted below). But it does almost nothing to change our understanding of wage growth. THREAD whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…
CEA focuses on four changes all of which raise the rate of real wage growth in the present but also raise it by a similar amount in the past and leave the overall pattern unchanged. Let me discuss them in turn.
FIRST, COMPOSITION EFFECTS. Headline wage growth measure suffers from a composition effect that artificially reduces wage growth as younger, lower-paid workers enter and aging affects the share of the workforce in peak earning years.
Read 20 tweets
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A thread summarizing my @WSJopinion argument for the Fed to increase the countercyclical capital buffer, requiring banks to hold more capital in good times. Is a powerful new tool that has not been used yet but should be. wsj.com/articles/the-f…
My conclusion: “Asking banks to lay more capital aside while the sun is still shining would strengthen their ability to withstand the next rainy day. It would lessen the risk of future bailouts. And... reduce the chances of another crisis in the first place.”
Background: the Fed effectively has three goals (maximum employment, price stability, and financial stability). And it mostly operates by varying one instrument with economic conditions (the interest rate). Hard to hit three goals with one instrument absent divine coincidence.
Read 16 tweets
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Unpeel the onion on @ernietedeschi's very thoughtful tweet thread on measuring slack through the unemployment rate vs. employment population rate first and if you still have any energy read this one too.
FIRST POINT: it is worth being aware/clear that PA EPOP is improving faster than UR lately. Everyone following these issues knows the level fact (EPOP not recovered while UR is), worth knowing the change one too.
You can see that in this graph which shows predicted changes in EPOP based on changed in UR. Most of the time changes in UR and changes in EPOP are effectively the same. In 2010-13 EPOP generally underperformed while in 2016-17 it has overperformed.
Read 16 tweets

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Last weekend of 2018 and time to update #santhireads2018
I had not met the numbers set for each of the challenges, but Oh BOY!! its has been a MARVELLOUS year of #reading - A Gentleman in Moscow, Circe, An American Marriage, Becoming-just to name a few that will stay with me
#litWorldGB2018 I think I am short of 2 countries but I am aiming to end with one more book set in N Africa - Tunisia. The list of books completed for this (Botswana is repeated and USA is not included ;))
#santhireads2018
goodreads.com/review/list/79…
#Booked2018 list of books read (few overlap with previous list obviously ;))
goodreads.com/review/list/79…

#santhireads2018 The prompts and completed books are as follows-
Read 9 tweets
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I’m about to go film, but as soon as I’m done I have uhhhhh 130+ books on my anticipated of 2019 shelf to talk about and I’m ready to be excited
We Cast A Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
-Sci-fi set in a post-post racial future south
-getting alllll the early hype
goodreads.com/book/show/4016…
2. The Woman at the Tower by Rachel Swirsky
-Retelling of Rapunzel
-feminist and super queer
-Rapunzel's "witch" is actually her lover, a female professor of anthropology
goodreads.com/book/show/3994…
Read 76 tweets
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1/n One of @gwern's best essays ever is a review of a book nobody has ever heard of.

It's about looking into the future, seeing exactly what awaits us, and being unable to capitalize on this knowledge, because you only know *what* will be and not *when* it will be.
2/n "one quickly realizes that yes, person X was 100% right about Y happening even when everyone thought it insane, but X was off by a few years & jumped the gun & so Z was the person who wound up taking all the spoils."
3/n "A good idea will draw overly-optimistic entrepreneurs to it like moths to a flame: all get immolated but the one with the dumb luck to kiss the flame at the perfect instant."
Read 11 tweets
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Let me just add a little personal color to this.

Every night for weeks upon weeks, my 71-year old mom has sat at her kitchen table addressing envelopes and putting on stamps she paid for out of her fixed income.

She has recruited helpers and become a supervisor of sorts.

1/
On Wednesdays, she drives over to her House Representative's office to protest.

On Mondays, she drives around the county getting supplies and new lists of names and dropping off her completed letters to inactive voters.

I'm incredibly proud of my mother.

2/
With only two weeks left until the midterms, this push to muster an Army of Us to volunteer and help and campaign isn't just about the election.

It's a chance for me to make my mother proud of me.

When I say I will be profoundly touched if you join me, I mean it deeply.

3/3
Read 3 tweets
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What are some books, videos, articles, papers, and essays you've revisited over and over, perhaps for many years?
For me, a few examples: Wilson Miner's "When We Build", which changed how I think about design: vimeo.com/34017777
Alex Roman's astonishing CG film "The Third and the Seventh": vimeo.com/7809605
Read 18 tweets
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Demonios. ¿Cómo llegó esto a mi Kindle? Ahora voy a tener que leerlo y dar mi opinión informada.
Puedo adelantar que un capítulo se llama "Pijadas", lo cual contribuye a crear una sensación de un mundo lejano y misterioso.
Comprado legalmente, eh. Lo cual no habría hecho, pero hay algo que me molesta personalmente y quiero confirmarlo o descartarlo.
Read 249 tweets

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