Why do we dislike inflation?

🚨New paper for @BrookingsInst revisits this long-standing question, already asked by @RobertJShiller in 1997, with current data and survey methods. Some key findings:🧵 1/10
socialeconomicslab.org/research/worki… Inflation is most definitely not seen as just a “yardstick," but as causing tangible adverse effects. The predominant reason for aversion is clear: People believe that their wages are not keeping up with inflation and that that their living standards are declining. 2/10

Zero-sum thinking is a key mindset that shapes how we view the world. Excited to share a new paper on the roots and consequences of Zero-sum thinking with @sahilchinoy, @DrNathanNunn @SMGSequeira. A summary thread🧵1/23 scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche…
What is zero-sum thinking? It’s the belief that gains for one individual or group tend to come at the cost of others. It’s the belief in a “limited good”: if you get a bigger slice of the pie, it means that I must get a smaller one. 2/23

A fascinating and little-known fact about U.S. history🇺🇸: The U.S.once relied heavily on a tax system, strikingly similar to a wealth tax, that played a key role in fueling its growth and development. A thread diving into the intriguing history of the General Property Tax.🧵 2/24: A summary of this history, based on invaluable work by economic historians, is in our new paper with @landais_camille & @sachajdray here: . #EconTwitter https://t.co/JmTaRBki0Zscholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/fil…

1/19: Excited to share a paper on how people perceive & understand trade and trade policies!
Which factors shape the support for different trade policies? Thread below with the key takeaways #EconTwitter 🧵, and full paper here: scholar.harvard.edu/stantcheva/fil… 2/19: The study tackles two key questions: what do people know about the impacts of trade? And, how do they weigh trade-offs when forming their views on trade policy? We conducted large-scale surveys and experiments in the US at the Social Economics Lab socialeconomicslab.org

Are you interested in running your own surveys to answer important questions? I often get asked to share best practices & advice. So I decided to write a comprehensive "how to" guide covering the complete survey process from beginning to end: scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… Surveys are an essential approach for eliciting otherwise invisible factors such as perceptions, knowledge & beliefs, attitudes & reasoning. These factors are critical determinants of social, economic & political outcomes.

Why are we not doing more to fight climate change? New study surveys 40k people in 20 countries to understand 1/ what drives support/opposition to important climate policies 2/ how much people know about climate change & 3/ how info can change perceptions scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… Citizens are *very concerned* about climate change and supportive of taking action ⬇️. Yet, governments have set strong climate goals but struggle to implement them. This large-scale international survey sheds light on what matters for increased support 2/N

What are people's main concerns about taxes? In new paper w @bea_ferrario we provide answers and discuss new methods. We show how to design & analyze open-ended survey questions to elicit people's first-order concerns on issues. Thread ⬇️ scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… 1/N Surveys are a key tool for understanding people's views on public policies as they reveal otherwise invisible things such as attitudes, perceptions, reasoning, and beliefs. Our usual methods of using preferences revealed through behaviors face challenges on these issues 2/N

People across the world complain about a lack of *good jobs*. @rodrikdani and I discuss the need to revisit our conventional welfare state policies which, on their own, are inadequate to address today’s inclusion & inequality challenges. scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… Short thread [1/N] What are ‘good jobs’? It's hard to give a unique definition, but typically people say that good jobs provide a middle-class living standard, sufficiently high wages & benefits, good levels of personal autonomy, adequate economic security & stability & career ladders [2/N]

Do taxes affect innovation? Over the course of the 20th century, personal & corporate income taxes have significantly shaped innovation in the US, as we show in a paper with @ufukakcigit, Tom Nicholas & @JohnRGrigsby in @QJEHarvard. scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… A short thread🧵[1/17] It is hard to find data and provide empirical evidence on the long-term effects of taxes on innovation. Here we bridge this gap: our new data contains the universe of all inventors & personal & corporate tax data at the state level for the US from 1920 to 2000 [2/17]

[1/] My co-author Adrien Fabre @adrien_fabre is on the job market. He works on the political economy of climate change. In one of his papers (AEJ: Economic Policy (forthcoming)), he studies the acceptance of a fair carbon tax in France during the Yellow Vests movement. Thread 🧵 [2/] Adrien & Thomas conducted a survey on a representative sample of 3000 French people to understand their attitudes towards a carbon tax with cash transfers. Although a carbon tax alone is regressive, redistributing its revenues equally to each adult can make it progressive.

[1/15] 🚨New paper: trust in scientists played a key role during the COVID-19 pandemic. It improved support for & compliance with restrictions & vaccines. But it's also fragile. Summary Thread. Paper w @AlganYann D. Cohen @EvaDavoine @MartialFoucault scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… [2/15] We exploit large-scale, longitudinal, and representative surveys for 12 countries from March to December 2020 (n=54 000), and we complement the analysis with experimental data.

[1/20] Our new @nberpubs paper studies what Black & white Americans know about racial inequities, what they believe causes them & what, if anything, they think should be done to reduce them. Summary thread below. Paper w Alberto Alesina & @matteoferroni93: scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… [2/20] We focus on large samples of non-Hispanic Black & white respondents across the US. Importantly, we survey both adults and teenagers aged 13 to 17. Black respondents are oversampled & represent half of the sample.

[1/N] 📕✏️New paper! How well do people know their social position relative to others in society? How does their social position shape their views on fairness? Does their income history shape views? With @okoctk & @KBHvidberg Paper here: scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche…
Summary thread ⬇️ [2/N] We leverage a unique data combination, linking survey data to detailed administrative data for a large sample of prime-age people in Denmark.

[1/14]📕New Paper: Civil liberties are not viewed as sacred: exposure to a crisis like COVID-19 increases willingness to give up civil liberties, based on survey of more than 370 000 people from 15 countries. A thread ✏️ scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… [2/14] Joint with my wonderful colleagues and co-authors Marcella Alsan, Joyce Kim, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer @LMU_Muenchen and David Y. Yang @Kennedy_School @HarvardEcon @InequalityHKS

[1/20]”Understanding Tax Policy: How do people reason?” New working paper on how people understand, reason & learn about taxes. What are the mental models that people use to think about taxes? I want to uncover not just factual knowledge but also reasoning scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… [2/20] What ultimately drives our views on taxes? Do we perceive different economic costs & distortions from taxes? Do we disagree on how they impact the lives of different people?

[1/N] New paper reviewing "Dynamic Taxation." Summarizes the key approaches, provides intuition for their main findings (especially about capital taxation), and covers the basic techniques and methods. Thread below to summarize and comments welcome! dropbox.com/s/xca67zq04v03… [2/N] 3 main approaches are used to study dynamic taxation: i) the dynamic Mirrlees i) the parametric dynamic Ramsey ; iii) the dynamic sufficient statistics approach. These give different reasons for taxing capital and different answers to the question of how it should be taxed.

Emmanuel Saez starts his keynote on “the Triumph of Injustice” at @NatlTax @InequalityHKS. Here are the key points from the talk. Older series done by @PikettyLeMonde and Saez only captured fiscal income— but that’s not all income going to people. Distributional national accounts improve the series by attributing all national income (including non taxed income) to different groups

@mattyglesias @arindube As promised, optimal capital taxation in 7 tweets! Simplifying a lot, but here is the core logic. How much you (e.g., the government) want to tax anything (a given asset, or income from a capital asset or labor) depends to a first order on 2 factors: 1. How much you value transfers to the people who own this asset or income. Value them more? You should tax it less. Often, (but it's a matter of social judgement), societies value $1 given to a lower-income person more than $1 to a higher-income person.