Taxation & Regulation & the city of Chicago
Chicago, IL
Joined March 2012
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Lucy Msall retweeted
Yesterday’s election for school board president was the first citywide race for a Chicago city office held in November since the 1870s.
The results show how much Chicago’s freakish municipal election timing (February of odd years) suppresses voter turnout.
For example, third-place finisher for school board president Victor Henderson will end up receiving 100K+ votes (18%).
That is more votes than almost any Chicago mayoral candidate will receive in February and could be enough to make the runoff. It’s more than any single mayoral candidate received in February 2019.
A mayoral candidate with Dominguez’s vote total would likely finish first going into a runoff. And a candidate with Biggs’ vote total would come close to avoiding a runoff altogether.
Chicago is the only big city in the country to hold its municipal elections in February following November statewide elections.
WATCH: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker says Chicago’s February election timing suppresses voter turnout.
“I think it suppresses turnout,” he told @tahmanbradley.
The governor is correct.
Chicago Policy Center research shows municipal election timing reduces Chicago voter turnout by 40% in local elections.
Lucy Msall retweeted
My JMP studies the effects of tipping on workers and firms.
Tips reward effort: tipped workers earn more by serving more customers. Tipping benefits both workers and their firms!
🧵Thread below
Link here pdfs.isaacnorwich.com/Norwic…
Who benefits from tipping? Tracing customer tips to paychecks, @IsaacNorwich's JMP finds workers keep about 77% as a raise. Firms gain from higher productivity, not just lower wages, because tips reward effort. Read Isaac's paper: economics.uchicago.edu/direc…
#EconJobMarket
ALT Graphic announcing University of Chicago Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics job market candidate Isaac Norwich. His job market paper is "The Effects of Tipping on Workers and Firms". His research focuses on labor and public economics.
Lucy Msall retweeted
A signature feature of academic AI writing is (currently) that it is has bad judgment on what is important and what is not important, even refine.ink.
This is one of the most damaging AI "tells", b/c it reflects bad judgment on the part of the author as well. 1/
Lucy Msall retweeted
“I don't think I ever met an Illinois native who was a White Sox fan”
My first job after undergrad was as a CBO Assistant Analyst! Great preparation for research, policy, & learning how our government works in general. It's where I first got interested in tax policy! Also an incredibly friendly work environment.
Recently read a debate in a foreign newspaper where a grad student's unpublished paper was cited as "paper from [prestigious university]" and when questioned on the merits, the advocate responded with "well [prestigious university] is a very respected institution".
This matters!
Lucy Msall retweeted
I don’t get it. Research papers will disappear once we have solved all important research questions. How to design monetary policy, tax policy, social security. Does anybody think AI will do that? If so, great! And cure all human diseases in the process, so medical publications disappear too? I think this anxiety about AI killing “research papers” is mostly anxiety that certain exercises with ill-defined scientific or practical value may disappear. I see no reason to expect AI to resolve all major scientific questions that remain unresolved. But pretty sure it will accelerate discovery. Which is great.
When will "the research paper" disappear in economics? marginalrevolution.com/margi…
Lucy Msall retweeted
Refine is a tool that my team and I developed for world-class feedback on, well, any reasonably complicated document.
We have a new product for law - if you're a lawyer and are willing to give our alpha a spin, please DM me!
(and please RT if lawyers follow you - thanks!)
Great piece by @SoumayaKeynes on AI in economics in today’s FT (link at end) mentioning @RefineInk.
Indeed, @RefineInk regularly catches issues that need correcting but are missed by even the most rigorous current review processes.
a short 🧵
1/
Lucy Msall retweeted
This is a tight finding worth knowing to any economist and business lawyer: "A typical private firm minority interest is worth roughly twice as much for appraisal purposes as for gift tax purposes. Bankruptcy Court methods...are so unspecified as to be unreconstructible"
Lucy Msall retweeted
If Chicago's pension funds were passively managed in 2024 (instead of spread across 80+ management firms), the city would have saved ~$40,000,000 in management fees.
And returns would have been about 25% better.
Lucy Msall retweeted
🚨 wow 🚨 - CBO finds OBBBA will cost $300 billion more on a dynamic basis.
It’s not only not paying for all of itself, it’s not paying for any of itself
cbo.gov/publication/61486
Lucy Msall retweeted
The Chicago Sun-Times found a photo of Pope Leo, Robert Prevost, at the 2005 World Series against the Astros
Now that I've defended my PhD, I want to take a moment to publicize my gratitude to my family, friends, and the @uchicago faculty who served as accomplices to my crazy plan to (1) have a baby in late June and (2) immediately go on the academic job market.
Other Chicago faculty, some of whom I knew well and many of whom I did not, similarly went out of their way to offer up support and encouragement. Particular love to the faculty directors of the Booth Econ PhD program @prof_noto and Eric Budish (for this & all they do).
Women’s ability to reconcile their biological clocks & the tenure clock strikes me as the main gender equity issue in econ academia right now. I like what @JohnHCochrane wrote about this on his blog last year.
