1/ My article is out in HOPE and I am excited. In writing the first concept history of WTP I show how early neoclassical econs understood that the amount someone is willing to pay for something often does not reflect how much they value it because rich people have way more money!

4/You can read the article here: read.dukeupress.edu/hope/article.... It's pretty critical of modern neoclassical economics - especially mainstream textbooks (Mankiw!), law and economics and cost-benefit analysis and I tip my hat off to the editors of HOPE for publishing it! I learnt a ton.

3/ Only in 1970s did economists brush away these criticisms and institutionalize WTP as a central metric of societal welfare. Today, WTP has a massive influence on our lives, yet it often can be biased against the needs of the poor in favor of the whims of the rich. Not good!

2/ These econs also recognized that because of the principle of diminishing returns on marginal utility, the free market will often lead to inefficient outcomes and allocations where goods are *not* put into the hands of those (the poor) who would benefit the most from them.

1/ My article is out in HOPE and I am excited. In writing the first concept history of WTP I show how early neoclassical econs understood that the amount someone is willing to pay for something often does not reflect how much they value it because rich people have way more money!

Funny how this article argues that there are no profits in the nyc supermarket business and then casually mentions that the guy who owns the nyc supermarkets is a billionaire www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o...

Cant stop thinking of this picture since I first saw it

Scandinavian Peeps: I will be giving a talk next month in Stockholm about my forthcoming (2026) book!

www.iffs.se/en/calendar/...

"Freeing" markets never creates abundance. It builds just enough to be profitable and then usually stops. Abundance is risky , capital wants no part of that

Another dead Gazan prisoner. Israel is making Guantanamo look like a beach resort in comparison

Israel update: Trump effectively twisted Bibi's arm and stopped the war in Gaza, something Biden was too weak (and pathetic) to do. But after that shitshow of a WH meeting, it's clear that Trump's insane shift in focus to ethnic cleansing has empowered Bibi to end the ceasefire. What an evil idiot.

Oh no, the rate of economic exploitation and surplus value extraction is dropping whatever will we working people do

Deepseek? Meh. Wake me up when the Chinese finally invent a meseek

@phenomenalworld.bsky.social has established itself as an indispensable and vibrant forum for fresh thinking in political economy. Delighted to step into this conversation again with a contribution on railroads & the history of industrial policy in the U.S.: www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/dev...

Honestly, calling this the second Gilded Age is such an insult to the first Gilded Age when corporate power and oligarchy were *way* more challenged. We wish we were in the second Gilded Age.

The whole "behavioral surplus" framework is really odd and just overcomplicates stuff in my opinion. Also feeds narrative that Google "just gives people what they want" and the real problem isn't power but privacy

Reading Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism and it feels like 80% bullshit. I also think she way overestimates the actual predictive powers of big data. If I were a Google executive I'd be happy with this book: Evil but super-competent!

Ample parking

This place is kind of dull....BUT what if I told you that slavery played a central role in the rise of American capitalism?

So.... how bout them bears?