I enjoy intellectual pursuits. I like people. Everything I do is a function of the two.
May 20, 2022 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
A thread on this data, which is doing the rounds.
I mistook this for Luxembourg Income Study data initially, but it's actually from the World Inequality Database (Piketty et al). I have gone into the sources to figure out some critical thresholds, so you don't have to! <RTFM> 1/
First, it's for 2021, at current prices. So fairly recent.
Second, that table, it presents means of specific portions of the distribution, which enables the 'top x% have y% share' type comparisons, but does not tell you thresholds for 50th, 90th etc percentiles.
2/
May 18, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Due to COVID fiscal action, G10 esp US finally got a decent mon/fisc mix. The CBs esp Fed needed to go back to old Keynes-Wicksell principles and not depress real rates too long.
And not have so much liquidity that various short rates drop below the policy floor.
1/
That's more or less all there is to the macro here.
Wa, commodity shocks, China zero Covid madness etc determine whether it's inflationary growth or stagflation. But the inflation itself is a macro policy thing.
2/
1. ~20% reduction in hazard rates i.e. hosp/infection ratio for Omi vs Delta 2. ~40% reduction for hospitalisations lasting longer than a day i.e. excluding incidentals
....1/
3. ~70% reduction in hosp/infection rate if case is a reinfection vs. a primary case. 4. 1,2 and 3 unadjusted for vaxxed status. Adjusting for vax - hazard rate for Omi same as Delta for mRNA, reduced for AZ (basically offsetting the greater decrease in infection protection!)..2/
Dec 7, 2021 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
It may be a case of hoping more than anything else, but I'm going to put my thoughts on Omicron out there, just for the record. stylised, no deep analysis. 1. A lot of evidence seems to point towards immune evasion - reinfection rates, neutralisation titres, superspreading...1/
..events with % infected ranging in 50-70% despite being vaccinated etc. 2. But immune evasion for infection or even symptomatic disease does not mean immune evasion for severity. Every year our bodies get exposed to new versions of old respiratory viruses. We get sick but....2/
Sep 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Sajid Javid is right about masks in parliament as MPs are not strangers, and it's the same reason why total cases may not rise and may even fall when schools reopen.
Populations are highly structured, basically many small world networks. With 90%+ antibodies in nearly every....
..age group above 16, that means many of those small world networks are actually at the herd immunity threshold - and indeed that's the only level at which the concept is coherent. There's no such thing as 'herd immunity for London'
When these small world networks mix, like....
Mar 15, 2021 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Because NZ is thinking of including house prices into its central bank's objectives, and because @tragicbios is taking the GRRM approach, a thread on Ch. 17 ("The Essential Properties of Interest and Money") of the General Theory. 1/
Ch 17 is where Keynes 'closes' his model, the truly 'general' part of the GT and is many things to many people. The framework of own rates of interest and spot/future arb in all commodities has both neoclassical finance types and Sraffa-Robinson types declaring victory. 2/
Feb 11, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Having seen the clip, and as someone with, let's say, an unhealthy level of interest in the life and times of JMK, I can safely say that what Hayek is saying has been mis-editorialised very badly by most twitterati. 1/
Hayek says a few very specific things: 1. That JMK's concept of the extant body of Econ thought was insular and limited to Cambridge and Marshall (any maybe some Ricardo). This is a very common charge levelled against JMK and many other Marshallians by the continentals 2/
