James Traina Profile
James Traina

@EconTraina

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Economist @sffed | PhD @ChicagoBooth & @UChi_Economics | Competition, Productivity, & Technology

Joined December 2021
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@EconTraina
James Traina
2 years
Market power in US manufacturing: it's about wage markdowns, not price markups! Firms with market power in product markets restrict all variable inputs symmetrically. Firms with market power in labor markets restrict labor inputs *more* than other variable inputs like materials.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
Fun as can be, to dunk on Gen Z... It looks like the US result is an artifact of a huge outlier in 2022, after the sampling methodology changed. Here's what the young men time series looks like with 2022 dropped. Code available here:
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@jburnmurdoch
John Burn-Murdoch
5 months
NEW: an ideological divide is emerging between young men and women in many countries around the world. I think this one of the most important social trends unfolding today, and provides the answer to several puzzles.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Alice Wu was the first to quantify EJMR's toxicity *in her undergrad thesis.* I haven't seen it mentioned at all today. Which feels... Weird? I can't seem to find the words as to why. But I appreciate it so I'm tweeting it.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
You can see things really start to break in 2022.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
I thought you needed price instruments to estimate demandโ€ฆ ( @steventberry @philhaile ) โ€ฆ But you don't! ( @_amackay @NateHMiller )
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
Lots of warnings in the 2022 GSS Codebook.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
9 months
What role does structural change play in the fall of the US labor share? ๐Ÿงต 1/n Ben Bridgman ( @BenBridgmanEcon ) and Berthold Herrendorf offer an illuminating framework built on Input-Output links in their ๐Ÿšจ new draft ๐Ÿšจ!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
@GSS_NORC @FT @_alice_evans @Noahpinion @NateSilver538 @tylercowen @JustinWolfers Extra check on views for 18-29. Even with 2022, nothing jumps out!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
Caveat emptor, I made these on a plane yesterday because the article matched my prior a little *too* comfortably ๐Ÿ˜…
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
๐Ÿšจ Public-firm profit rates have fallen to *half* their 1980 values ๐Ÿšจ, which explains why financial market rates fell despite rising/steady *aggregate* profit rates. New draft with @ASollaci & @CarterDavisFin , & outstanding support from @TonBobrov ...๐Ÿงต
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Law of Iterated... Quantiles?? ๐Ÿšจ New draft up ๐Ÿšจ, economic theory with many applications by @kaihaoyang2020 and Alex Zentefis. #EconTwitter
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@EconTraina
James Traina
8 months
Super cool work on markups and economic profits! Micro + Aggregation = Macro Aggregation research is only going to get more important as we develop richer large-scale microdata. (But let's keep all our micro-macro jokes ๐Ÿ˜‚).
@BrianCAlbrecht
Brian Albrecht
8 months
More on aggregate markups ๐Ÿ‘€ โ€œThe profit share has been constant at 18% of GDP because the increase in monopoly rents has been completely offset by rising fixed costs and changes in technology.โ€ By Thomas Hasenzagl and Luis Pรฉrez
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
Tagging possibly interested parties. I'm happy to add more checks or figures. I'm also happy to be wrong! ๐Ÿ˜… @GSS_NORC @FT @_alice_evans @Noahpinion @NateSilver538 @tylercowen @JustinWolfers
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Network economics has the coolest figures.
@BruxConf2023
Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy
1 year
Bruno Pellegrino ( @BPellegrino_UMD ): Hybrid IO-macroeconomic view: need to look across many different sectors. Network theory of market power- an economy is a network made up of nodes (products). Distribution of centrality in the network indicates concentration @Caffar3Cristina
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@EconTraina
James Traina
2 years
OLS bias is small when estimating monetary policy rules! "Taylor rule estimation by OLS," by Carvalho, Nechio, & Tristรฃo (JME 2021). Gated: Ungated:
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@EconTraina
James Traina
9 months
Would this paper have been published if there wasn't a null result penalty? ๐Ÿค”
@EJ_RES
The Economic Journal
9 months
Recently accepted at EJ: โ€˜The Null Result Penaltyโ€™ by Felix Chopra, Ingar Haaland, Christopher Roth, Andreas Stegmann @Ingar30 @cp_roth @FelixChopra @RoyalEconSoc #EconTwitter
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@EconTraina
James Traina
9 months
I donโ€™t care if itโ€™s real analysis in particular. But one has to be deeply incurious not to take a proof-based math course before playing professional football.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
11 months
Why do we only have 1 candidate on the AEA presidential ballot? (Sorry for the naive question, I'm new!). @AEAjournals
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@EconTraina
James Traina
9 months
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@BrianCAlbrecht
Brian Albrecht
9 months
Saying "supply and demand" can explain any price movement. A parrot can do that. Unfortunately, the alternatives are worse! Ex: some inflation stories are "prices went up because people raised prices." Now that's a theory that can explain everything!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Ad share of sales has been remarkably stable at 1% since 1980. Source: My Sunday date night with Compustat.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Where we work is not where we buy! ๐Ÿšจ New working paper ๐Ÿšจ from the BEA develops *consumption* zones. The overlap with commuting zones is like 50/50!
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@BenBridgmanEcon
Benjamin Bridgman
1 year
I'm excited to share a new working paper Consumption Zones, joint with three of my BEA colleagues. We use credit card data to calculate local areas of consumption for services that require physical presence.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
6 months
@I_Am_NickBloom Even more puzzling, seems also true for other downturns!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
3 months
@Econ_4_Everyone Give me the book and shirt, and then I'll answer. If I'm wrong, I'll give them back.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@danascoot Fill your life with people that remind you you're so much more than your work.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
@janzilinsky @AllenDowney Yep! It's specifically in the 18-23 range. Here's my test chart from yesterday's push.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
10 months
It is sobering to recall that the shape of Japan's Phillips curve almost perfectly shadows Japan.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@jondr44 Aggregation. e.g. how should we estimate a macro elasticity using micro data?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
Why our binscatter axes are wrong, and what to do about it.
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@AEAjournals
AEA Journals
5 months
Forthcoming in the AER: "On Binscatter" by Matias D. Cattaneo, Richard K. Crump, Max H. Farrell, and Yingjie Feng.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Life among the #EconTwitter (Leijonhufvud, 1973).
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Half the US does not use the internet at broadband speeds.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
@AllenDowney @janzilinsky Fwiw, I tried all the weight variables to no avail. It's something really weird about that specific data point. We might all just be puzzling over a tail draw!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Does concentration = market power? Quantitatively, how far away have we moved with richer models? I see dynamics as key. But lots of folks assume repeated static oligopoly, no entry threats etc. Is variation in concentration still de facto driving our collective inference?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Should IO revisit the product approach to demand estimation?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
2 years
Metrics musings on two-way fixed effects (TWFE) -- I've been sleeping. Is this just Simpson's paradox? Can we just use multilevel modeling? i.e. if you think the model is y_it = b_i*x_it + ... Use each panel to estimate b_i, then average?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
11 months
Public-firm profit rates have fallen a lot since 1980! w/ @CarterDavisFin and @ASollaci
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@pedrohcgs @jfiksel1 We really need to stop defining random effects as uncorrelated by default! Most econ students learn this definition and move on thinking fixed effects are nearly always better. Meanwhile...
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@EconTraina
James Traina
11 months
"All errors are mine" is going to come back in style.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
6 months
Post-pandemic, firms aren't just raising prices. They're strategically testing new pricing and customer capital strategies! "We may have prices changing more quickly than they have before." @_amackay from @HarvardHBS NK economists take note!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
8 months
Wonderful economist, wonderful human.
@Econ_4_Everyone
John A. List
8 months
Look what my good friend @AliHortacsu just brought to my office! Every economist should take a look. I know that I will learn a lot from it. Can't wait to dig in. On a personal note, Ali has long been one of my favorite colleagues and people. Always supportive and generous.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
This paper is above all *practical*: It solves a common problem without just saying โ€œget more dataโ€ or โ€œadd more structure.โ€ It's also highly educationalโ€”I strongly recommend giving it a look, and adding it to your IO course lists!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
10 months
It is sobering to recall t-hacking is everywhere:
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@LHSummers
Lawrence H. Summers
10 months
It is sobering to recall that the shape of the past decadeโ€™s inflation curve almost perfectly shadows its path from 1966 to 1976 before it accelerated in the late 1970s.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
9 months
@paulgp Why would you title the case with your first name? Is this AI-generated parody?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
5 months
@SEAsheltie @jburnmurdoch I'm also very confused! @jburnmurdoch or @ftdata , would y'all mind posting code? Or just quickly commenting on what might be different? Mine is here:
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@NateHMiller Sutton's endogenous sunk costs. More relevant than ever in contemporary economies!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
9 months
This was Berthold Herrendorf's final paper before his untimely passing. His contributions to economics were invaluable. I'm in awe of Ben Bridgman for continuing with the paper. It's a wonderful way to honor Berthold's memory and legacy. (). 10/10
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@EconTraina
James Traina
10 months
My personal favorite from Olley and Pakes (1996): Modern production-function estimators come from a dynamic model of firm behavior!
@LeistenEcon
Matthew Leisten
10 months
Good thread, and consistent with my favorite slide deck in all of economics (from @PhilHaile ). Even "reduced form" estimating equations are (derived from) some theory! Anyway:
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
openai.Completion.create( model="text-davinci-003", prompt="Write an academic economics tweet about non-compete agreements that will get a lot of retweets.", temperature=0, max_tokens=4000, top_p=1, frequency_penalty=0, presence_penalty=0)
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Our research shows public-firm profit rates have halved since 1980โ€ฆ
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Nonfinancial domestic private-firm profit rates have doubled! So if we have high market power, it's probably in private firms.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
2 years
My most popular work in econometrics is with Stรฉphane Bonhomme. Very accessible, no proofs. Nothing is robust. Nothing is identified. Bonhomme ร  la Bresson #EconTwitter #metricstotheface
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
One really cool application is on the Nevo cereal dataset. Demand elasticities are the same, but the standard errors are halved!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@realChrisBrunet Gish gallop garbo no thanks.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
6 months
@PikettyWIL Excellent thread! In the spirit of open inquiry, since they don't really have a platform, if they write a reply, would y'all be up for tweeting it?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
10 months
@Jabaluck I parsed it a little differently: Should we ask questions that are only highly informative conditional on findings? These questions distort researcher incentives. We're agents, too!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
6 months
@gabriel_zucman OK, trying to follow seriously. In my first look at the Auten-Splinter work, it seems the biggest change is from measuring the tax base consistently through time. But this thread doesn't mention that at all? No โ€œsample,โ€ โ€œmarriage,โ€ โ€œdependent,โ€ or โ€œresident.โ€ What's going on?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@jmb112485 Warning shot.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
2 years
@wwwojtekk Yep! I'd be surprised if Walmart behaved differently. Contrarian view is Walmart might have more local monopolies: I'm surprised someone hasn't combined the two insights yet. Just check if average local concentration predicts firm pricing rules.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
We propose an alternative hypothesis: Aggregate profit rates track the return on capital for all firms, but financial market rates track the cost of capital for *public firms only*. (Private equity literature suggests private firm returns have *not* fallen).
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@ben_golub "Also Gauss did it first."
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
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@EconTraina
James Traina
9 months
@KhoaVuUmn From @shaikhecon 's 1974 @restatjournal paper, "Laws of Production and Laws of Algebra."
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
โ€ฆmatching trends in financial markets. So probably low market power in public firms.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
3 years
@doggonomics Doggos used to get two treats for every trick, but now they only get one. (Roborks bamboozle hoomans). ๐Ÿถ ๐Ÿถ
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Just noticed a ๐Ÿšจ new draft ๐Ÿšจ was posted, an excellent opportunity to start my New Year's resolution to tweet about papers I really like. Here's my sketch simplification, imprecise, but I hope accurateโ€ฆ
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
But we add another puzzle: Over the past 40 yrs, private & public firm profit rates have diverged. Why??
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@EconTraina
James Traina
10 months
#Caturday memories with the kiddos.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Our results indicate estimates of economic profits and aggregate markups *using public-firm data* might be substantially biased. e.g., Compustat, or mixing national accounts with financial markets dataโ€ฆ
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@EconTraina
James Traina
2 years
New batch of True Citrus arrived. These things increased my daily water threefold. Here's what 2000 packets looks like. @BrianCAlbrecht @truelemon
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@EconTraina
James Traina
10 months
Law v. Economics
@nytimes
The New York Times
10 months
In Opinion โ€œAmericans have been living as subjects in a large-scale experiment in letting big companies do as they please, and the consequences are increasingly apparent in daily life,โ€ the editorial board writes.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
10 months
@nominalthoughts I'd only trust @Econ_Sandy for this decision.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
2 years
@wwwojtekk Possibly related: Walmart isn't in the Nielsen retail scanner data.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
9 months
@ChadSyverson on the macroeconomics of antitrust enforcement at the @StiglerCenter competition conference this summer--- ๐Ÿšจ๐Ÿ‘‡๐Ÿงต 2 remarks at the end of the thread!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@mjmill611 @momin_rayhan @Blair_Vorsatz The original cat dad economist: Zvi Griliches.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@ellliottt @DAcemogluMIT @rodrikdani Very cool, added to my reading list! Looks like a close complement to my classmate's dissertation:
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@EconTraina
James Traina
9 months
Two remarks: A big rise in markups would imply an implausibly big fall in the aggregate labor share, cf. discussion in Barkai and Benzell ( @SBenzell ): 2. Might be labor markdowns, not product markups ๐Ÿ˜()! 8/n
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@EconTraina
James Traina
6 months
@TDeryugina How do general interest journals balance editorial leniency differences across fields?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
3 months
@Lprochon This tweet influenced me, so #8 is false and markets don't clear.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
10 months
Having known @skominers for over a decade, there is zero chance that @skominers would perpetuate any eigenmeme at all. It is absolutely clear that the anomalous eigentweets are part of an elaborate eigeneigen scam. @kaihaoyang2020 @ElliotLip @BrianCAlbrecht
@skominers
Scott Kominers
10 months
Having known @0xMojojo for over a decade, there is zero chance that @0xMojojo would be able to explain what an eigenvalue is. It is absolutely clear that the anomalous eigenvalues do not match his character, which is very stable @0xMojojo @allsee @1MrPapi @0xleefoundation
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@Andrew___Baker @momin_rayhan @achenfinance Here's another fun one from the accounting literature: Compustat itself makes a lot of iffy standardization choices. And they're big enough to drive key results behind highly cited papers. But at least we're all using it so that's good I think?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@mfariacastro Or maybe daylight saving time is messed up.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
2 years
@BrianCAlbrecht @HasvanVlokhoven For a slight wrinkle, theory doesn't tell you which weight to use. The EMX result suggests cost weights, but that's for a model with homogenous production technology, which isn't how we estimate it in the microdata!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@BrianCAlbrecht @ArshiaHashemi @BasilHalperin @luiscanyamel @jamesbrandecon Rents: Payments Without Production Market Power: Markups, Markdowns, etc.* *You can add qualifications here. For example, does a firm "have low market power" if it sells at a low markup today to cause a high markup tomorrow? cf. Viner (1932) on marginal costs.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
I know a few classic arguments for the characteristics approach, like dimensionality and heterogeneity. But it also seems like we've got much better data and tricks now.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@BrianCAlbrecht You need an input wedge to rationalize the data! Non-neutral productivity, adjustment costs, or (my own view) input market power. Excellent paper and post.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Non-compete agreements can have a significant impact on labor markets, leading to reduced wages and fewer job opportunities. #econ #labor #noncompete
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Suppose you have a model of demand and supply: s = f(p) + e c = g(x) + u Market shares s, prices p, marginal costs c, and covariates x.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
11 months
@gp_mihalache @AEAjournals Arrow's Possibility Theorem, the lesser known of the two.
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
The gap is a โ€œprofit puzzleโ€: Why don't they profit by borrowing at the lower rate and investing at the higher rate? Markups? Risk? Intangible capital?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
This paper shows you could instead use the moment E[eu] = 0. Simple and effective!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@florianederer @NateHMiller @conlon_chris Yes, though I believe if DLEU markups are estimated with a national price index, we mechanically shouldn't expect any subnational (i.e. industry) correlation with prices. Directly follows from Klette & Griliches (1996) or Bond et al. (2021), right @ArshiaHashemi ?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
Have you ever wondered why aggregate profit rates went up a little, while financial market rates like Treasury or bond yields went down *a lot*?
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@EconTraina
James Traina
1 year
@xftrebbi Each first-order condition gives you a joint wedge -- output and input. (e.g. markup and markdown). If you assume input wedges for two different inputs are both zero, they should recover the same output wedge. Devesh's excellent work shows that assumption is bunk!
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@EconTraina
James Traina
2 years
@florianederer @steventberry Berry (2022) - "Estimation of a model of entry in the airline book industry"
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