
Professor @ProvidenceCol, Health Economist, two-bit hedge wizard. Formerly @1ArmedEconomist
Providence
Joined May 2010
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I have lots of ideas for economics papers I'd like to write but not so much time to write them. So I decided to just post many of them publicly to see if anyone else wants to write them:
economistwritingeveryday.com…
James Bailey retweeted
Tyler Cowen’s Strongest Book Recommendations, 2003-2026 marginalrevolution.com/margi…
““One Stay, One Bill" proposal, which would require hospitals to send a single bill within 30 days of discharge that covers every charge from every provider during that stay.”
RI's problems are fixable. Leadership has been the missing ingredient. We cannot solve problems unless someone is working on the solutions. We cannot solve problems if our governor literally doesn't know what to do, or even how to think about it.
We have a unique chance, right now, to elect a different type of governor. Someone dedicated to solving our toughest problems.
No other candidate has proposed sweeping tax policy changes to remove the regressive taxes hidden in our utility bills.
No other candidate has proposed truly out-of-the-box solutions like a regional health insurance marketplace or my "One Stay, One Bill" proposal, which would require hospitals to send a single bill within 30 days of discharge that covers every charge from every provider during that stay.
No other candidate has proposed slowing our rush to meet a green energy goal that no other state comes close to matching, which could cost us up to a billion more than if we moved our goals to where other states have theirs.
No other candidate, and certainly no other governor, has tackled poor educational outcomes in our state.
Our government has been a reactive mess for decades. Everyone is feeling it - state workers, the public who has to interact with our government, taxpayers, businesses, and cities and towns.
Our government has let hackers make off with the confidential information of more than half of us. They have thrown money at terrible proposals. They have failed to keep businesses here and made little progress in attracting new ones.
Too many of our governors have not had what it takes. To compensate for their shortcomings, they hide behind the money and power wielded by RI's special interests.
We have all seen the cost of special interest-driven policymaking. Look no further than the Washington Bridge.
We can shake off our governmental stupor.
Vote for real change. Vote to eject special interests from the governor's office and your checkbooks.
Let's get this done. We are so close.
James Bailey retweeted
Econ of science folks - this position via FAS is really interesting if you want policy impact. Essentially, it's a metascience/econ of science position embedded quite high up at places like DOE. They allocate *billions* to R&D, w/ big changes due to AI/Genesis/OSTP doc/etc.
Rhode Island is one of only 3 states with no Costco, despite our previous Gov Raimondo and likely next Gov Foulkes sitting on its board. That might finally change:
The wait for $4.99 rotisserie chickens in RI may soon be over
Costco to open a store in Smithfield in 2028
providencejournal.com/story/…
New paper: Certificate of Need repeals reduce the burden of health care spending onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…
If you can’t see a pattern, it may not be there, but you may just need to look harder:
interpretability might be the most important scientific problem in the world right now, as I don't think we can solve alignment if we don't know what we're building. I think I have good news about it. I co-authored early work in mechanistic interpretability at OpenAI and came away pessimistic, because neural networks appeared to fold into arbitrary tangled knots. years later, I started openai's first large-scale automated interpretability project, finding about 2% of neurons legible with the primitive tools we had
with modern agentic tools and a much closer look, the picture looks totally different. the vast majority in models up to trillions of parameters are legible, and their circuits beautiful. many famous examples of tangled neurons turned out to be misunderstood. The roadblocks I expected mostly aren't there. I now think ambitious interpretability will be solved by the time we need it most, and possibly quite soon, as automated scientists keep improving. it may be a bitter lesson for interpretability: the simple thing, at absurd scale, works
already-clean.goodfire.com/
I assume flight credits are good for a year, but apparently on @BreezeAirways they expire after.... 8 months and 22 days?
James Bailey retweeted
Political scientists and economists: we're looking for researchers with deep expertise to come work with us for a unique 4-month fellowship at @AnthropicAI. You'll work closely with us to evaluate, improve, and apply Claude's capabilities in your field. It's going to be extremely fun and interesting work, and definitely worth taking a short leave from your university for if you need to!
More info here:
job-boards.greenhouse.io/ant…
Every country with a GDP per capita over $50k has above-average economic freedom; every country with an economic freedom rating over 8 has a GDP per capita over $50k: economistwritingeveryday.com…
The name of the guy I just met went in one ear and out the other.
“I’m bad with names”
Yet I remember his dogs name just fine
It's now JOE official. We're hiring two Assistant Professors, one Macro, one Applied Micro (Labor/Public/Sports): aeaweb.org/joe/listing.php?J…
James Bailey retweeted
The latest Economic Freedom of the World report is out: fraserinstitute.org/studies/…
James Bailey retweeted
FIGURES: A West Virginia researcher crunching state betting numbers finds 43M bets placed by just ~16K bettors. And when does demand spike for slots? Every second, third and fourth Wednesday — Social Security payday. @MyBuckhannon mybuckhannon.com/high-roller…
James Bailey retweeted
1/ I am on the #EconJobMarket! A (brief) 🧵on my research covering housing, state and local government performance, and regulation.
Replying to @UCSDEcon
Who wins with up-zoning? @phoxie58 shows how deregulation for ADUs capitalizes into land values, benefitting home owners and increasing property tax collections, even with low take-up. Check out his JMP, publications, and working papers at: philiphoxie.com/
#EconJobMarket
We're hiring two tenure-track Assistant Professors at Providence College, one in macro and one in applied micro (labor/public/sports). 3-3 teaching load with good students in small classes:
schooljobs.com/careers/provi…
Music is a smaller share of consumer spending than it was in 1999, but the real dollars flowing to the music industry are higher than ever: economistwritingeveryday.com…















