Prof of Economics at Stanford. Coeditor of AEJ Applied.
Mar 24 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
Thread with some of my favorite charts from the 2024 Economic Report of the President
Huge props to @econjared46, @HBoushey, @KiraboJackson, and the tireless @WhiteHouseCEA staff for deepening our economic understanding
And for the beautiful charts 😍📊
Shrinking race gaps
Jul 7, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Today, @CFPB, @HHSGov, and @USTreasury released a request for information (RFI) on medical credit cards and related products:
A 🧵 on:
1. What are medical credit cards? 2. Why should we be concerned?
1/6consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsr…
Medical credit cards were historically offered by a narrow set of providers, typically for elective services
Now, they are offered by a broader set of providers, including primary care providers and ERs
CareCredit has 12.7M cardholders and 250K providers in its network
2/6
Mar 18, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Today the big three credit reporting agencies announced they will remove most medical debt in collections from credit reports.
A short 🧵on the economics of this decision:
wsj.com/articles/most-…
Credit reporting involves a tradeoff between providing info that improves credit market functioning vs. avoiding punishing people for bad luck.
We should report info with high predictive power. We should limit reporting of info that reflects unlucky circumstances.
Jan 27, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
CFPB is proposing to crack down on "junk fees", such as hotel resort fees, concert ticket convenience fees, debit card overdraft fees, and credit card late fees.
Link to the paper: jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…
The 4 of us have been studying medical debt for 5+ years, including an exciting debt forgiveness experiment with @RIPMedicalDebt. Our initial goal with this paper was to establish a set of facts on medical debt that could inform policy and lay a foundation for future research.
Jul 19, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
New working paper: The IO of Selection Markets (joint with @liraneinav and Amy Finkelstein)
Prepared for Volume 4 of The Handbook of Industrial Organization
Ungated version: stanford.io/3wRFqFA
In writing the chapter, we tried to put ourselves in the shoes of a 2nd year PhD student who is interested in learning about -- and potentially doing research on -- selection markets.
Jul 9, 2020 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
@zackcooperYale and I wrote a piece on “Economic Principles To Guide The Allocation Of COVID-19 Provider Relief Funds” in @Health_Affairs:
/Begin thread
This spring, Congress set up a $175 billion Provider Relief Fund to provide support for hospitals, physician groups, nursing homes, and other health care providers. To date, HHS has allocated roughly $75 billion of these funds, with additional distributions in progress.
Mar 24, 2020 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
A (longish) thread on tradeoffs and false tradeoffs during the COVID-19 crisis
With the unrelenting drop in the stock market and off-the-charts UI claims, there are growing concerns that the economic costs of the “cure” are worse than the health costs of the “problem”
Tradeoffs are central to economics. Many of our canonical models are designed to illustrate tradeoffs and we are quick to point out tradeoffs (aka unintended consequences) when they are ignored
Dec 15, 2018 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Read @nicholas_bagley's piece on the judicial activism behind the latest – but certainly not last -- ACA ruling.
Rs seem to be finally acknowledging that a broad set of the electorate wants affordable health insurance, coverage for pre-existing conditions, low drug prices, etc.
