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Jun 1, 2022

🚨New paper!🚨 with

@VrindaMittal2

and

@SVNieuwerburgh

: we know remote work has been a big deal over the last couple of years. But what does this mean for the future of commercial offices? draft: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf substack: arpitrage.substack.com/p/remote-works thread 👇

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Tesla’s market share has been slipping a bit — but it seems to enjoy a durable cost/marketing advantage providing much higher margins than the rest of the auto industry.

David Thesmar

@dthesmar

Feb 4

This is the CAPM takedown that everyone has been waiting for

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NBER

@nberpubs

Feb 3

CAPM-based measures of the cost of capital are poor. The IRR of comparable firms explains the cross-section of firm values much better, and is easy to implement, from Nicolas Hommel, @augustinlandier, and @dthesmar nber.org/papers/w30898

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Feb 4

Chicken and egg problem— vaccines against the bird flu require incubation of doses in eggs, but the bird flu itself is devastating for chickens. nytimes.com/2023/02/03/opi

Feb 3

We did it everyone! Credit card debt is right back on trend.

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Feb 3

Seems like holographic aquariums should be more of a thing

y 88th park in my park tho?

@HunterRIP

Alright kids…I dunno if anyone else has done this so I wanted to take a stab at what Hochul’s TOD could mean… By my math it’s worth ~3-4 million units of additional zoned capacity. There are a million caveats to this analysis (see methodology below). Please weigh in!

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Why are the prices of "junk" tech stocks (Carvana etc) up so much lately? Doesn't seem to be just lower expected interest rate levels. Instead, Robert Amstrong argues expected rate *volatility* is down, along with some momentum ft.com/content/b567fb

"We [Alphabet] expect to incur exit costs relating to office space reductions of approximately $0.5 billion in the first quarter of 2023. We may incur additional charges in the future as we further evaluate our real estate needs." abc.xyz/investor/stati

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Daniel McNamara

@danjmcnamara

ALPHABET SEES EXIT COSTS RELATING TO OFFICE SPACE ~$0.5B IN 1Q @business @DiMartinoBooth #CMBS $GOOG

There are two active carbon capture plants in the US. 55 in the works across these states. A lot on TX and LA, where there is a favorable land use, permitting environment, etc. Unlikely to take off in the Northeast due to NIMBYs locally and no pipelines to export carbon

• the storage part is pretty simple. The challenge is the economics of finding concentrated carbon streams. • maybe carbon at $100/ton tax enough to encourage? Might not scale well, in that you have to move down to less concentrated carbon streams the more you expand.

• Carbon capture discussion grew after international reports (starting around 2018) argued that to keep global climate on track, you really need to get carbon emissions to net *zero*; not enough to cut 80% That last 20% is intensive in these industrial uses hard to decarbonize

• IEA projects 20-25% carbon mitigation by 2050 will come from carbon sequestration • not a lot of good alternatives for carbon mitigation in heavy metal/mineral construction (steel, aluminum, concrete) and are carbon intensive. Note these are also inputs for, ie, wind turbine

Carbon capture panel at NYU Law: • Can be $35-40/ton cost when captured at source • $200-500/ton when taken from ambient air • US tax credits for carbon capture substantially increased this market ($85/ton rebate when stored in geological)

Easy to see how this kind of AI assist is going to become standard for white collar workers

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Shubham Saboo

@Saboo_Shubham_

Big News

Microsoft just launched Teams premium powered by ChatGPT at just $7/month

With ChatGPT, Teams users can generate automatic meeting notes, AI-recommended tasks, personalized meeting templates, and a lot more!!

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Tesla up 78% this year

People talk about the Northeast Acela corridor — but the Raleigh/Birmingham corridor is absolutely booming economically and should be connected by high speed rail

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Birmingham Urbanist

@bhmalurbanist

The Piedmont Atlantic Region is compact enough to warrant high speed rail. Birmingham to Atlanta to Greenville to Charlotte to Raleigh-Durham is a no-brainer. 27 million people live in the region.

Reminds me of the idea that the Matrix would have made way more sense as a movie if the machines were using humans for computation rather than energy

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Science Is Strategic

@scienceisstrat1

Large AI models like ChatGPT use a truly massive amount of computing power Cc: @Noahpinion @ylecun @erikbryn @amcafee

Fun fact — when Bernanke disclosed his portfolio, the only single name stocked he owned was super-high dividend paying Altria (Philip Morris) money.cnn.com/2005/10/26/new

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Lawrence Hamtil

@lhamtil

From 2009 - 2022, Altria $MO paid $61.4 billion in dividends and repurchased ~$14.5 billion worth of stock for a total of ~$76 billion in cash returned to shareholders. For perspective, at the end of 2009, Altria's market cap was roughly $41 billion.

Huge loss here for market efficiency. $100b in value wiped out in the Adani Group due to a short seller report which didn't really release any new information.

Seems quite bad

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Karl Storchmann

@KarlStorchmann

Per Capita Traffic Fatalities in OECD Countries and U.S. States.

Tom Cui (Perpetual Amazement)

@ttfcui

This took me an embarrassingly long time, but.... A map of which Bay Area municipalities are subject to the Builder's Remedy – losing their zoning powers – per

@Yimby_Law

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Justin Bloesch

@JustinBloesch

A thread about why I think the soft landing has been achievable: Wages are downwardly sticky in nominal terms, but not in real terms. Also wage *growth* is not sticky downwards. This matters for both a low-cost cooling of the labor market and lack of a wage-price spiral.

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Paul Krugman

@paulkrugman

But anyway, the soft landing story was that went up with shocking speed could also come down with shocking speed. 8/

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Isaac Baley Gaytán

@isaacbaley

The new 𝙃𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙗𝙤𝙤𝙠 𝙤𝙛 𝙀𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙤𝙢𝙞𝙘 𝙀𝙭𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 is out! In Chapter 23,

@laura_veldkamp

and I survey work that uses Bayesian learning in macroeconomics and the growing literature on the data economy. sciencedirect.com/book/978012822

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Friend-shoring vs. "Buy American"

Surprising persistence of mammoths into historical ages! Probably reflective of a broader pattern: species likely persist long after the available fossil record dries up, surviving in small niches.

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David Nogues-Bravo

@Noguesbravo

Oct 20, 2021

In a new study in @nature we found that mammoths survived in continental Siberia until 3,900 years ago!! At that time, for example, the Egyptian culture was florishing. The geography of the woolly mammoth extinction has just changed!! Work lead by Wang and Willerslev

takes the "imbalance" view, and Noah favors the geopolitical lens

Nice

post. Two schools of thought: • Those worried about imbalances. Key issue is distributional and currency costs of trade; equally so of Asian US allies as China • Geopolitical: need to just get supply chains out of China even at cost

noahpinion.substack.com

Cold War 2 won't be won with a go-it-alone strategy.

Interesting here — Brooks Brothers was profitable in a subset of stores, and cutting back could have ensured viability. But they had locked in long-term leases, would face penalties to leave, and so filed for bankruptcy.

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derek guy

@dieworkwear

Additionally, most stores are not profitable. According to this exec, about 80% of BB's sales come from just 40 of its 150 stores. ("I could have closed 100 stores and it would barely have an impact on sales, he said). But he couldn't close them bc of real estate leases.

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Timothy B. Lee

@binarybits

Some really interesting data here on how the pandemic hollowed out urban areas. jpmorganchase.com/institute/rese

Seems surprising in light of the Khan Academy style results that there was a lot of variability in individual learning speeds. If it’s more about initial levels, I guess that calls for initial remediation before standard class tracks as currently done. cc

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Cool paper finds that all students tend to learn math at about the same rate, and the differences between them are almost all due to their initial level of knowledge. psyarxiv.com/pxsfh/

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Navy Ships Providing Electrical Power to Cities — Post Disaster

Seems like it's been done on occasion on emergency basis but there isn't a protocol to do it in general

govtech.com

This topic has come up again and again.

I wonder how much power we could get by letting nuclear submarines run just offshore, and using them to power the grid

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Last Contrarian

@lastcontrarian

so amazing that - the universe gave us an infinite energy glitch - the US decided to use it to power giant underwater Gods (Ohio class submarine), enough to power it straight for 30 years - then entire society collectively chose not to use this energy source for anything else

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platformpolicyresearch.substack.com

Check out this new substack by my NYU Stern colleague

@raveeshmayya

on policy related to digital platforms:

Policy changes to accommodate a new generation of users

This post documents how demographics and competition shape the goals and policies of platforms by focusing on one type of platform: the social media platforms.

James Traina

@EconTraina

🚨 Public-firm profit rates have fallen to *half* their 1980 values 🚨, which explains why financial market rates fell despite rising/steady *aggregate* profit rates. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf New draft with

@ASollaci

@CarterDavisFin

, & outstanding support from

@TonBobrov

...🧵

Darrell Owens

@IDoTheThinking

darrellowens.substack.com

This is it! HCD will review Bay Area cities to see if they've zoned for new housing in wealthy areas. If a city fails, their zoning will be suspended and unlimited height & density at >20% affordable housing can be approved anywhere. Many are about to fail

CA Cities To Lose ALL Zoning Powers in 2 Days

Old law proposes to turn California's zoning system into something like Japan's in just two days.

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The Via Appia was more famous in Classical times; but the Via Aemilia proved to be more durable. There is just a clear line of cities all sited at the edge of the northern Apennines making a great linear track. Modern road/railroad lies substantially on top of the Roman road.

I suspect mountain areas are actually quite good for trains — restricting passage to a smaller number of passes means you can service many people with a smaller number of lines.

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Hayden Clarkin

@the_transit_guy

Zurich's main train station sees 2,915 trains per day, with 47 train routes coming from other countries, regions, and the suburbs. Tampa, which has the same population but double the metro population, sees 1 Amtrak train daily. We don't need perfection, we just need better.

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ALT

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Matthew C. Klein

@M_C_Klein

New at THE OVERSHOOT: America's "Excess" Household Savings Are Going Away theovershoot.co/p/americas-exc <-- The highest-income households pocketed a windfall earlier in the pandemic that they have since used to cover capital gains tax payments, weak asset income, and inflation.

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Shapiro signs order moving state’s hiring emphasis from degrees to experience and skills

Preston Cooper

@PrestonCooper93

Jan 30

This is why recent efforts by

, and

to move away from degree-based hiring are so important. State governments have been among the biggest drivers of credential inflation - but we can turn that around!

pennlive.com

The governor said his intent is to encourage more people without college degrees to seek opportiunities within state government, and he hopes private sector businesses will consider following suit.