Mark G. Sheppard

New WP "The Inequality of Recession" uses @claudia-sahm.bsky.social like rules, with thousands of subseries of unemployment, tells a consistent empirical story: recessions consistently hit some folks first. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... #EconSky #Recession

When I teach spatial data in metrics, I have a slide called “All Maps are the Same Map” dedicated to the logic behind these visualizations.

With deep respect, let it be known that as a card-carrying member of the absolute bottom, let me make clear: I’m not trying to fit in.

GDP as a measure of well being is quite bad. On top of that, GDP pc is just average GDP, and as far as measures of center go, it’s not great. There is simply TOOOOOO much inequality in the U.S. to rely on a mean.

We are thrilled to celebrate the Dissertation Award recipients for the Professional Development Training Series on Poverty and Economic Mobility Research! 🎓✨ Discover more about the training series and this year's incredible scholars: www.irp.wisc.edu/training/pro...

Importantly, the U.S. has high structural deficits due to top-heavy tax cuts.

Deep economic frustration has broken into the coalition that elected Trump to his second term. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/21/u...

There has been multiple financial promises made to voters, none of which have materialized.

Redesigned the accompanying website to my working papers that use turning point frameworks to understand the inequity in the duration of recessions. Check it out! #EconSky

If undecideds break in a mean-reverting way, then a 50/50 Senate seems most likely. But that assumes, no economic fundamentals in the model, no ballot access issues or polling bias, and that Democrats win Texas. In this mean-reversion model, Democrats lose in Ohio and Maine, but win Texas.

All election forecasts, like all models, are incredibly parameter-sensitive. What isn't sensitive is voters' focus on the economy, and on the discontent that follows promised policy relief that never came. goodeconomics.substack.com/p/the-econom... #EconSky #PoliSky

Just as a design point, if this was colored to show categories of types of studies, like state, fed, event study, etc., that would be more useful. The point and range estimates are already shown, give people more information. Also might be worth seeing these chronologically rather than ascending.

University of Michigan (@umich.edu) is hiring: Assistant Professor of Economics - Any Field #assistantprofessor #econsky

Basically none of the pledges Trump campaigned on have materialized, including: DOGE checks, tariff rebates, $2 gas, cheaper groceries, halved electricity prices, and more. Only $500 ACA refunds, those checks go out in October, and mostly affect states that are in-play in November. #EconSky

An LLM workflow that reproduces, improves, and extends economics research has been applied to over 4,000 published replication packages, from Matthew Schwartz, Isaiah Andrews, and Jesse M. Shapiro www.nber.org/papers/w35782

This is incredibly clearsighted, in a way that is rare in economic commentary. Contrary to partisan rhetoric, economic discontent is not linked to any one administration. Roughly speaking, folks are upset that two generations ago one job could afford a home and a family. And now it can’t.

Exactly. I don’t even think this is controversial view. Hearst is probably the canonical example of rich barons buying media conglomerates to ensure preferable press. Musk/X or Besos/Post are just the modern equivalents. Musk/X is the first social media endeavor, but makes sense given the times.

Relative to Talarico in Texas, El-Sayed is a particularly weak candidate in a much easier-to-win state —who still might win. #EconSky

Watch Stone Center Senior Scholar @pkrugman.bsky.social discuss geoeconomics at last week's ECB Annual Research Conference. "Once you start turning trade relations into a source of geopolitical power, you might find yourself starting to do other things in pursuit of geopolitical power."

My students turn in AI slop not realizing how nerdy I am, I wrote an entire program that extracts all of the metadata from these documents. I can tell when/who/how these documents were created, how long was spent editing, how many times you saved it. I can tell if they ran it through Grammarly.

We need this data disaggregated by county. To unpack these state-level trends we’re seeing.

Student asked why they received a 0 on an AI-generated assignment. #EconSky

Using the latest 2026 redistricting files, the data shows Republicans drew themselves ~9 new safe House seats. Democratic counter-maps in California and Utah claw back 6 — netting the GOP about +3. #EconSky

Me cooking up a midterm that matches the level of expertise in the AI-generated assignments these students have been submitting. #EconSky

TFW you catch students using LLMs by simply adding some white text into the homework prompt. #EconSky

Lecturing and making lecture slides is so much fun. The cover art for my pop quiz is a baby lizard desperately running from endless traps and snakes in search of safety. Which feels emotionally appropriate.

Finished my two week annual training deployment last week, and finished my PhD Field exams in inequality and econometrics. #EconSky

The Gulf bases largely serve as support stations for broader operations. There’s reasonable arguments to pull back U.S. investment/involvement, but to maintain the current level of regional stability would require an ally stepping up —which is unlikely.

Your regular reminder that if not for the Trump and Bush tax cuts, federal revenues would keep pace with federal spending indefinitely. Instead, these tax cuts have added at least $10 trillion to the debt. The so called "party of fiscal responsibility" is full of it.

The visuals at @ourworldindata.org are getting much better.

*Top-heavy tax cuts

All the Ginis (ATG) have been updated. Branko Milanovic - in a new interview - explains that ATG "is a compilation of income and consumption Ginis collected, harmonized, and made available from various databases or platforms, or calculated by [him] from existing data sources." 🌍 Read all about it!