Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 3d

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Anil Kalhan @akalhan.bsky.social · 6d

Newsom: "If any California university signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding – including Cal Grants – instantly. California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom"

California vows to ‘instantly’ cut funding to universities that cave to Trump ‘compact’

Governor Gavin Newsom urges schools not to sign ‘radical agreement’ to cuts to departments, students and speech

www.theguardian.com

9 180 620

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

Economic outcomes often depend on the distribution of some maximum value (e.g. the highest valuation, best idea, or lowest cost).

If the average number of options is large, do such outcomes change when some agents have more options than others?

1/ A thread about this paper 🧵

1 5 16

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

9/ Thank you to everyone who provided useful comments when I presented this paper seventeen times!

Here is a link to the paper:

www.sephorahmangin.info/current_rese...

I would love to hear your thoughts or questions, so please don’t hesitate to reach out!

1 2

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

8/ It is worth highlighting that the paper uses a very surprising and useful equivalence between mixed Poisson distributions and “invariant” search technologies that was recently discovered by Cai, Gautier, and Wolthoff (2025).

1 3

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

7/ I thank the co-editor Chad Jones and three anonymous referees for extremely insightful suggestions that greatly improved the paper and yielded new results, applications, and proofs. I also thank Louis Becker for his valuable contribution to an earlier version of the paper.

1 2

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

6/ For example, suppose the number of firms in a consumer’s choice set is a random variable that is negative binomial.

Suppose consumers draw utility shocks from a uniform distribution.

Greater consumer heterogeneity increases the average markup.

1 3

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

5/ The paper generalizes a nice result about extreme value outcomes in Gabaix, Laibson, Li, Li, Resnick and de Vries (2016) by incorporating heterogeneity across agents.

For example, the paper delivers a generalization of a result on markups in Gabaix et al.

1 2

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

4/ How do these new EVDs arise?

For example, suppose the number of options an agent gets is a random variable that is negative binomial.

Suppose options are drawn from a Pareto distribution.

The EVD takes this general form. 👇

1 2

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

3/ The paper presents a new class of extreme value distributions (EVDs) that generalizes the three standard EVDs (Fréchet, Gumbel, Weibull) by incorporating heterogeneity across agents.

Here is an example of a new family of EVDs. 👇

1 2

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

2/ My forthcoming Econometrica paper answers this general question.

The paper provides a toolkit that I hope is useful for both macroeconomists and microeconomists alike.

Potential applications include growth, productivity, trade, markups, auctions, networks, IO.

1 3

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 7d

Economic outcomes often depend on the distribution of some maximum value (e.g. the highest valuation, best idea, or lowest cost).

If the average number of options is large, do such outcomes change when some agents have more options than others?

1/ A thread about this paper 🧵

1 5 16

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · 23d

Excited to see this! A thread coming soon…

Econometrica @ecmaeditors.bsky.social · 23d

Economic outcomes often depend on the distribution of some maximum value (eg highest valuation, best idea, lowest cost). If the average number of options is large, how do such outcomes change when some agents have more options than others? @sephorahmangin.bsky.social buff.ly/I0CFaj4

1 4

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Prof Dynarski @dynarski.bsky.social · Aug 2

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing

As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements

This is a big deal

August 1, 2025
AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
Committee on Economic Statistics and Committee on Government Relations

Statement from the American Economic Association on the
Dismissal of the BLS Commissioner

Leaders of the American Economic Association express their grave concern over the dismissal of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) earlier today.
The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely, and impartial statistics are the foundation upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions. Undermining the independence or credibility of these agencies threatens the integrity of the information that markets, institutions, and the public rely on every day.
Measuring the vast and dynamic U.S. economy in real time is inherently challenging. It is standard practice for statistical estimates to be revised as more complete and higher-quality data become available. These revisions reflect the commitment of statistical agencies to accuracy, transparency, and methodological rigor-not failure or bias.
The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity.
Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions.
We call upon elected officials to respect and preserve the independence of the nation's statistical infrastructure.

Lawrence Katz
President, American Economic Association
Katharine Abraham
President-Elect, American Economic Association
Karen Dynan
Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics
Kenneth Troske
Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Government Relations

120 2.1K 5.1K

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam @economics-vu.bsky.social · Jul 28

How do firms search for and screen workers? When do the best workers match with the best firms?

1 2 3

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · Apr 7

America’s Brightest Minds Will Walk Away

"Of 1,200 U.S. scientists who responded to a poll conducted by the journal Nature, 75 percent said they were considering leaving the country."

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/o...

Opinion | America’s Brightest Minds Will Walk Away

Young researchers are choosing between staying in science and staying in the United States.

www.nytimes.com

1

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Yana van der Meulen Rodgers @yanarodgers.bsky.social · Feb 17

The Federal Reserve is not as independent from the executive branch as we’d like to think. The NY Fed just cancelled this Thursday’s @aeacswep.bsky.social reception at #EEA2025 and withdrew from our summer fellowship program. Both support women and underrepresented groups in economics. #EconSky

11 97 160

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Garth Baughman @econgarth.bsky.social · Feb 13

Call for Papers! 4th DC Search and Matching will be 4/25-26. Submission deadline 3/10. Send us your papers! www.cvent.com/c/abstracts/...

Fourth DC Search & Match Workshop – CALL FOR PAPERS

www.cvent.com

2 2

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Pieter Gautier @pietergautier.bsky.social · Feb 7

In NYC there is a shop selling cashmere sweaters for dogs, in Amsterdam there is a toothbrush shop. If you are a goth looking for a partner you should move to a city. Finally, there is a forthcoming JET paper explaining this www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Spatial search

This paper considers a random search model where some locations provide sellers with better chances of meeting many buyers than other locations (for e…

www.sciencedirect.com

4 7

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Stefanie Stantcheva @s-stantcheva.bsky.social · Dec 3

Zero-sum thinking is a key mindset that shapes how we view the world. A little thread to highlight our work on its roots with @sahilchinoy.bsky.social,
@nathannunn.bsky.social, Sandra Sequeira.🧵1/23 scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantc...

7 32 110

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · Dec 5

Congratulations!

2

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · Nov 28

2

Sephorah Mangin @sephorahmangin.bsky.social · Nov 28

When is competition price-increasing?

My latest research has just been published online in RAND:

doi.org/10.1111/1756...

When is competition price‐increasing? The impact of expected competition on prices

We examine the effect of expected competition on markups in a random utility model where the number of competing firms may differ across consumers. Firms observe consumers' utility shocks and set pri...

doi.org

1 1 7

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Florian Ederer @florianederer.bsky.social · Nov 27

Some of the most important lottery anomalies from the behavioral risk literature (e.g., probability weighting and loss aversion) actually have nothing to do with risk.

They also arise in perfectly deterministic settings.

Lead article in the latest AER issue:
www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

16 53 260

Reposted by Sephorah Mangin

Juan Moreno-Cruz @jmorenocruz.bsky.social · Nov 27

I am thankful for the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, the Implicit Function Theorem, and the Chain Rule.

Peter Hull @instrumenthull.bsky.social · Nov 27

Thankful for the Law of Iterated Expectations and the Central Limit Theorem

2 23