Economist at UCLA
Los Angeles, CA
Joined April 2020
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David Baqaee retweeted
Come join us! Great school in a great university in a great city. I moved here 18 months ago and am happy to answer any questions!
📢 We're hiring!
The School of Economics at the University of Queensland (UQ) is hiring two Lecturer / Senior Lecturer positions (Assistant / Associate Prof equiv).
✅ Any field in #Economics
📍 Brisbane, Australia
📅 Deadline: 1 Nov 2026
Apply here: aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J…
David Baqaee retweeted
Wow… The Babies are No Longer Protected Against Measles
Moms antibodies used to give 6-9 months of Ab protection to infants
Now, protection is gone by ~4 months
Neutralizing Ab titers = 0 by 6m
And… if we give MMR early to fill the gap it can drive a long-term problem
1/
David Baqaee retweeted
Imagine this logic applied to public debt.
California defaults on its debt, just this once, and promises never to do it again. Proponents say it will keep borrowing at the same rate as before.
Rauh would say: "No. Lenders won't believe you, so you'll pay a higher rate on everything you borrow from now on. That will cost us dearly in the long run."
Zucman would reply: "Fallacy. Why would lenders charge more unless you default again? And if you default again, you save money again... by virtue of, well, defaulting."
The key problem is this:
Why would billionaires permanently leave California in response to a one-time tax owed if they lived there on January 1, 2026?
It would only make sense for them to leave if the tax becomes annual.
But if the tax becomes annual, it would also generate revenue annually — by virtue of, well, being annual.
David Baqaee retweeted
Washington currently spends $43,700 per senior - vs. $4,300 per person under 26.
So if we're going to max-out on taxing the rich and also cut other spending, do we really want to give 100% of the savings to SocSec and Medicare benefits instead of kids & working families?
David Baqaee retweeted
Btw, Arnold Harberger could still win this year. And he should. At one, we should honor the guy whose point is included in all textbooks. Everyone. Of. Them. To quote Gary Oldman in Leon the Professional
David Baqaee retweeted
Claude: proves the Jacobian conjecture.
GPT6: solves Navier-Stokes and 100 other advanced theorems.
Siri: "Sure, I'll add 'set a five minute timer' to your contacts"
David Baqaee retweeted
Maintaining full Social Security benefits would mean raising the payroll tax from 12.4% to nearly 17%.
Also fully funding Medicare would require adding another 9pp, or perhaps adding a 25% VAT.
So that (often wealthy) seniors can keep getting back far more than they paid in. 🙄
89% of seniors (age 65+) believe current retirees’ Social Security benefits should be protected, even if that means higher taxes on younger workers.
Gen Z (Americans under 30) are 8x more likely than seniors to support reducing benefits for current and future retirees to address Social Security’s financial problems.
cato.org/survey-reports/new-…
David Baqaee retweeted
Quasi-RH?!?!???! Are you kidding me? If a human did this, it would be an instant Fields Medal, no questions asked.
RH says zeta has no zeros in Re(s)>1/2. The best we had until a second ago was a region that got thinner and thinner the higher up the imaginary axis you go. I thought maybe they’d fatten that up a bit, that’d be a massive breakthrough. But no. They got a zero free strip!!!! Insane
We’re releasing a broad range of new mathematical results produced by an internal frontier model.
We’ve been consulting with the independent Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence at the Institute for Advanced Study, and we have drawn on their advice and public recommendations to inform how we release these results.
github.com/openai/math
David Baqaee retweeted
They also have the least poverty, the least personal debt, the least expenses, the highest financial satisfaction, and highest share of millionaires.
Yet they receive 10x as much federal spending (per capita) as those ages 25 and younger. That seems sub-optimal.
David Baqaee retweeted
If this was one-shotted by Claude (and I think it was), just entirely insane. A Broadway style song about how AI-as-normal-technology, bottlenecks-in-production is wrong where the content is just dead on. Incredible.
David Baqaee retweeted
@UNC_econ is hiring this year.
We have two tenure-track openings (1 Assistant, 1 Assistant or Associate) in any field of economics, plus a Teaching Assistant Professor position with particular interest in macro.
Excellent research environment and a beautiful college town in the Research Triangle.
Apply here:
aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J…
aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J…
#EconTwitter #EconJobMarket
David Baqaee retweeted
I recently asked ChatGPT to improve the efficiency of some simulations from a few years ago. To my amazement, its code ran in a few seconds instead of 3 hours.
It turns out it went into the GitHub repository, downloaded my final results, and used it as a starting guess in the optimization.
I then tried running it on a new set of parameters. It’s been 15 hours.
David Baqaee retweeted
GW Economics Department is recruiting for four (!) tenure-track positions:
• Macro (junior): aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J…
• Trade (2 positions; mid-level/senior AP strongly considered): aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J…
• Applied micro (junior): aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J…
Come join us!
David Baqaee retweeted
We're hiring an Asst Prof in Macro at NC State, preferably overlapping adjacent fields (international, labor, IO etc). Ideally experienced; fresh PhDs welcome. Great Duke/UNC interactions in Research Triangle. Review begins Sept 28. Let me know if you have questions. Links below.
David Baqaee retweeted
This is the per-pupil funding for the elementary school Nikole Hannah-Jones sent her daughter to.
If you subscribe to the funding theory of education, how much would have been enough? It's already crossed the average per capita annual income threshold. Maybe $100k? $200k?
David Baqaee retweeted
Next week, @SakiBigio (@UCLA) will present his paper "The heterogeneous bank lending channel of monetary policy" @vimacro_org
Registration: vimacro.org/attend
Info/Paper: vimacro.org/saki-bigio-heter…
#OnlineSeminar #Economics #Research #Banks #MonetaryPolicy #Heterogeneity
David Baqaee retweeted
Current estimate for Taiwan is 15.4% eng.stat.gov.tw/News_Content…