Alternative economist minimum wage petition

Signers include three Nobelists, Greg Mankiw and Tyler Cowen, among others.

Given all the possible welfare-enhancing policies out there that would obtain nearly universal approbation from the economics community, it is a real shame to see so much political capital being spent on something that does not. Of course, there is information in that fact regarding the objective function being maximized.

Assorted links

1. Nick Gillespie defends millenials.

2. Tunnels at UM.

3. More pressure on Steve Sarkisian at USC or Chris Peterson at Washington? I would say clearly Steve Sarkisian.

4. Art and politics don't mix.

5. Interesting Atlantic piece on where (chain) restaurant menus come from.

Hat tip on #4 (including the joke) to Charlie Brown.

Paper: Is Twitter actually useful for something?

Using Social Media to Measure Labor Market Flows
Dolan Antenucci, Michael Cafarella, Margaret C. Levenstein, Christopher Ré, Matthew D. Shapiro
NBER Working Paper No. 20010

Social media enable promising new approaches to measuring economic activity and analyzing economic behavior at high frequency and in real time using information independent from standard survey and administrative sources. This paper uses data from Twitter to create indexes of job loss, job search, and job posting. Signals are derived by counting job-related phrases in Tweets such as “lost my job.” The social media indexes are constructed from the principal components of these signals. The University of Michigan Social Media Job Loss Index tracks initial claims for unemployment insurance at medium and high frequencies and predicts 15 to 20 percent of the variance of the prediction error of the consensus forecast for initial claims. The social media indexes provide real-time indicators of events such as Hurricane Sandy and the 2013 government shutdown. Comparing the job loss index with the search and posting indexes indicates that the Beveridge Curve has been shifting inward since 2011.

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I saw Maggie Levenstein (who runs Michigan's Census Research Data Center) present the paper a couple of weeks ago. It's a clever idea and likely an exemplar of much that lies in our future.

Play: Venus in Fur

Venus in Fur at Performance Network is great fun as well as a thoughtful meditation on gender and power. The writing is excellent and the acting is strong as well, particularly Maggie Meyer in the female lead.

Recommended (and recently extended for an additional weekend).

Job market papers

Bonnie Kavoussi, a student in our Masters in Applied Economics (MAE) program, draws some good lessons from one of the funnier bits of this year's skit night.

Institute for Human Studies Summer Seminars

It's that time of year again: time to advertise the fine summer seminars on classical liberal / libertarian themes run by the Institute for Humane Studies. I did a couple of these back in the day, had a great time, and learned a great deal about the non-economics parts of the classical liberal intellectual tradition.

I recommend them even if you are not a classical liberal. It is always good to understand your intellectual opponents.

Full disclosure: The IHS gave me a fellowship in grad school. Now I give them donations.

Tax fun

I've been asked to advertise the upcoming Let's Get Fiscal (public finance economists are big on puns) symposium in Washington DC on May 15-16.

Looks like fun to me. Flyer / program here.

Hat tip: Adam Cole