The EU is determined to clamp down on organised crime’s infiltration of legitimate businesses and banking. This column shows that dismantling Mafia connections leads to more bank credit to legitimate businesses, raising local output and productivity. It also leads to a modest increase in borrowing costs, driven by foreign and non-local banks, as they update their risk models in light of new revelations. These findings suggest that tighter crime controls can strengthen the banking system and wider economy – a win-win for Europe’s security and prosperity.

Dismantling Mafia connections leads to more bank credit to legitimate businesses, raising local output and #productivity. Tighter #crime controls can strengthen the #banking system and wider economy.
B Buchetti, M Fabrizi, E Ipino, I Miquel Flores, A Parbonetti
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky

The solution to AI cheating has been painfully obvious from the beginning. I have no idea why this is even remotely controversial. Just 15 years ago, basically all of my exams were written in blue books. I’m not sure when or why this changed but it’s time to RETVRN.

I spent two years of my life driving around LA and blasting Pet Sounds on repeat. They were great years.

RIP Brian Wilson. Simply one of the greatest to ever do it.

Looking forward to presenting work on extreme heat and industrial structure in India at the BSE Summer Forum this week. Drop me a line if you’re going to be there!

It’s just a list of people he considers right wing who have done drugs

Haha I thought this was that Jeet parody bot honestly

That could be a great paper though

Damn well done, that’s an awesome vintage find!

Derek do you have good suggestions for mills that do really slubby raw silk. I want to get a jacket made. Very hard to find RTW.

Very nice piece on using LLMs as simulated participants in social science research. Can we do away with pesky humans? Not yet…maybe not ever?

Deep research is better than standard. Broad Qs much easier for ChatGPT than narrow ones, though often less useful for us. Getting a broad and well sourced overview of a literature is now possible. Anything deeper than that still suffers from the issues you identify.

Shouldn’t this awareness among traders imply that stonks no longer react to tariff announcements? Yet that doesn’t seem to be happening.

On Sarah Milgrim, one of the victims in a heinous antisemitic murder this week in DC.

www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

The 50 Best Stevie Wonder Songs The 50 Best Stevie Wonder Songs

Happy 75th Birthday, Stevie Wonder. 🎉

To celebrate, here is a list of the soul visionary's best 50 songs

I have had this experience several times

NBA playoffs takeaways: Nuggets top Thunder in final seconds, Knicks down Celtics in OT The two road teams of Monday's conference semifinal games executed well in the fourth quarter and stole Game 1 victories.

From @theathletic.bsky.social: Monday was a night of last-minute, come-from-behind upsets in the NBA conference semifinal round.

That’s my 🐐 #BrunsonBurner

Jalen Brunson's game-winning three sends the New York Knicks into the second round 🔥

Corporate greed!

Why in the world would used car prices rise, they’re not tariffed…

When you don’t understand pass through and substitution patterns.

The times I’ve used AI for model-writing, it makes exactly the same dumb mistakes I would!

It also made a few obvious algebraic errors like forgetting the quotient rule of a derivative. Make sure you check its work!

Had an interesting experience with ChatGPT today trying to write a model. It was at once incredibly good at taking my idea and turning it into a nice toy model. At the same time it couldn’t say no when I asked it to do mathematically impossible things because it can’t reason from first principles.

I’ve tried this experiment as well on economics papers, and chatGPT was honestly not great. Not terrible, but a lot of generic fluff. My report was significantly better. It also recommended acceptance on a weak paper for a good journal. It’s too agreeable, though I do hope my next R2 uses ChatGPT!

Table supremacy 🙏🏼

The long-term effects of artificial intelligence are still unknown, as productivity benefits may be compromised by unintended costs. This column assesses the local effects of shocks to AI job postings on municipal capital markets. It finds that increases in postings are linked to declines in municipal bond yields, particularly for riskier and longer-term bonds. Furthermore, counties with higher AI labour investments experience improvements in local economic conditions and positive spillovers into local public finances. As AI adoption continues to grow, policymakers must consider how to ensure that its gains are widely shared.

An increase in #AI job postings are linked to declines in municipal bond yields, particularly for riskier and longer-term bonds. Counties with higher AI labour investments experience improvements in local economic conditions & positive spillovers.
L Andreadis et al
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky

Against a backdrop of escalating geopolitical tensions and rapidly shifting global alliances, policymakers are advocating strategies such as ‘friendshoring’ to safeguard supply chain resilience. This column uses data on 700 US firms importing from 96 countries between 2007 and 2020 to show that US firms reduce imports from countries that become ideologically distant from the US, while increasing imports from countries that have become friendly. This effect is strongest for firms led by CEOs politically aligned with the US administration, prompting the question of whether firms are optimising for economic efficiency, or being guided by political loyalty.

US firms reduce #imports from countries that become ideologically distant from the US, & increase imports from countries that have become friendly. This effect is strongest for firms led by CEOs politically aligned with the US administration.
M Ayyagari, J Gao, P Ma
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky

Same bro.

Genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. we need to mercilessly ridicule lawyers every time they open their mouths about economics.