About
I'm an Economics Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley focusing on public finance topics at the intersection of labor economics and macroeconomics. You can follow me on twitter @omzidar.
Homepage, CV, & Research
Tags
2012 Alan Auerbach Baumol's cost books Brad Delong College debt Economic Policy Education Emmanuel Saez Enrico Moretti Finance Fiscal Cliff Fiscal Policy Government Government Spending Great Recession Growth Hamilton Project Healthcare Healthcare Costs Housing Immigration inequality Investment Jobs Labor larry summers Laura Tyson Local Labor Markets Middle Class Monetary Policy NYTimes Obama Paul Krugman Productivity Raj Chetty Romney Spending States Stimulus Tax Cuts for Whom Taxes Tax Reform Wages-
Recent Posts
- Valuing The Vote: Evidence from the Voting Rights Act of 1965
- Great Questions from Paul Krugman
- Do Higher Corporate Taxes Reduce Wages? Micro Evidence from Germany
- Local Economic Development, Agglomeration Economies and the Big Push: 100 Years of Evidence from the Tennessee Valley Authority
- It Takes a Regime Shift: Recent Developments in Japan through the Lens of the Great Depression
- The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation
- Worker Flows Over the Business Cycle: the Role of Firm Quality
- Does Entrepreneurship Pay? The Michael Bloombergs, the Hot Dog Vendors, and the Returns to Self-Employment
Twitter Updates
- RT @MarkThoma: Bernanke: Economic Prospects for the Long Run bit.ly/10a0EZN 22 hours ago
- Valuing The Vote:⁰ Evidence from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 wp.me/p2otxR-m7 1 day ago
- Great Questions from Paul Krugman wp.me/p2otxR-m4 2 days ago
- RT @bobkocher: The highest price hospital in the US is in…NJ and run by ex-Blackstone guys. Not exactly Hopkins! nytimes.com/2013/05/17/bus… 2 days ago
- nytimes.com/2013/05/17/opi… 2 days ago
Archives
Blogroll
- Andrew Samwick
- Austin Goolsbee
- Brad Delong
- Calculated Risk
- Donald Marron
- Economist – Democracy in America
- Economist – Free Exchange
- Economix
- Ezra Klein
- Felix Salmon
- FiveThirtyEight
- Greg Mankiw
- Jared Bernstein
- Keith Hennessey
- Marginal Revolution
- Mark Thoma
- Matthew Yglesias
- Miles Kimball
- Noah Smith
- Paul Krugman
- The Caucus
- The Fix
Monthly Archives: February 2013
Labs of Democracy & Today’s Fiscal Policy Debates
Here’s my latest Economix column on the labs of democracy & today’s fiscal policy debates on uncertainty, spending, and spending vs taxes: Many of the fiercest disagreements about fiscal policy today stem from disagreements about the causes of the slow … Continue reading
Fiscal Policy and MPC Heterogeneity
Tullio Jappelli and Luigi Pistaferri have a recent paper called Fiscal Policy and MPC Heterogeneity. Here’s an interesting figure from it that shows how MPC varies by cash-on-hand: They aren’t the only ones who document MPC heterogeneity. Dynan, Skinner, Zeldes have a … Continue reading
The Types of Things that Congress Should be Considering
From the Hamilton Project (and recently highlighted by Dylan Matthews): An Enduring Social Safety Net Transitioning to Bundled Payments in Medicare Reforming Federal Support for Risky Development Restructuring Cost Sharing and Supplemental Insurance for Medicare An Evidence-Based Path to Disability Insurance … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Congress, Dylan Matthews, Government Spending, Hamilton Project, Sequester, Tax Reform
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Shrinking Revenue Offers
Jared Bernstein has a nice, but depressing chart on various revenue offers between Obama and Boehner.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Budget, Fiscal Cliff, Government Spending, Obama, Republicans, Revenues, Sequester, Taxes
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Accounting for the Cost of US Healthcare
I read Steven Brill’s healthcare piece recently and wanted to get a better high-level view of where dollars in the healthcare system are spent. I find aggregate data more informative than anecdotes about hospital bill line items (not that I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Baumol's cost, Baumol's Cost Disease, Healthcare, Healthcare Costs, MGI, Steven Brill
1 Comment
Fraud & Housing Finance:
A new paper from Tomasz Piskorski, Amit Seru, and James Witkin, which was recently featured in the economist. ABSTRACT: We contend that buyers received false information about the true quality of assets in contractual disclosures by intermediaries during the sale … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Amit Seru, Finance, Housing Finance, James Witkin, Tomasz Piskorski
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Crunch Time: Fiscal Crises and the Role of Monetary Policy
A nice chart from a new speech from Jerome Powell. What doesn’t follow is that we need to get the red line up by cutting spending to get the blue line down (based on the logic of Delong Summers and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged debt, Deficits, Fed, Fiscal Policy, Jerome Powell, Monetary Policy
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Do fixed patent terms distort innovation? Evidence from cancer clinical trials
A new paper from Heidi Williams, Eric Budish, and Benjamin N. Roin: ABSTRACT: Patents award innovators a fixed period of market exclusivity, e.g., 20 years in the United States. Yet, since in many industries firms file patents at the time of discovery … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Benjamin N. Roin, Eric Budish, Healthcare, Heidi Williams, Innovation, patents, Productivity
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Railroaded & The Effectiveness of Historical Government Infrastructure Investments
A historian recently recommended this book to me – it takes a pretty critical view of subsidies for infrastructure historically and sounds like a good book.
