Economists: Value Added Taxes are the best taxes because they are “efficient” & stupid poor countries should all adopt VAT+lower/simplify all other tax codes. Regressive? 🤷🏽‍♀️

Also, Economists: student debt cancellation is regressive & we need a complicated limited reform instead Basically, Economists make a hell of a lot of other policy recommendations that care less about whether a policy is regressive or not. There’s a lot of other reasons why student debt cancellation would be a good idea in the US.

This year saw many central banks arriving at swap agreements with the Federal Reserve. What determines which countries are able to access $ swap lines and (before 2002) emergency $ loans from the U.S Treasury? I explore this question in my job market paper (now updated). Thread🧵 You can read it here: devikadutt.github.io/JMP/. It's got some history, some theory weaved into the narrative, lots of descriptive stats, and some econometrics. The evolution of the global monetary system into a USD key currency system has meant that the issuers of USD have +

I’m going to do a magic trick: make my follower count drop. Today’s Sverigs Riksbank Prize Announcement exemplifies everything wrong with it. Economics is in crisis, and to award the prize to old US white men from the same Ivy League uni. Could there be anything more predictable?

https://twitter.com/nobelprize/status/1315589975002550272

The details change, but its the same thing over and over. We are in a moment of reckoning as regards structural discrimination, generalised Econ depression, and a global pandemic. This is when we need to celebrate improvements in auction theory.

I’m happy that the Economics Profession is waking up to the realities of structural violence against Black people in the United States. I am however skeptical about whether this is a long lasting change. Thread 🧵 For the longest time the mainstream discussion of race in theory has been about how racial preferences are endogenous and perhaps the belief that free markets should eliminate racism, and if it doesn’t, it’s because of preferences

My twitter is full of people, and fairly progressive Indians, celebrating Abhijit Bannerjee’s Economics “Nobel”. And drawing back to his education at institutions, especially my alma mater JNU, that are being attacked and demonized by the current government. So a few thoughts. People who graduate from JNU, and especially economists, contrary to popular perception go on to do great things by all accounts. This is not necessarily one of those instances. And yeah it is definitely great political ammunition and should be used as such.