James Traina

Market power in US manufacturing: it's about wage markdowns, not price markups! Firms with market power in product markets restrict all variable inputs symmetrically. Firms with market power in labor markets restrict labor inputs *more* than other variable inputs like materials.

The origin story of “AI as Normal Technology”, and lessons learned Many people have asked how the “AI as Normal Technology” paper came to be. This paper has been an (ongoing) journey for me and @sayashk in developing not just the substance of our arguments but also learning how…

As AI automates junior-level tasks, it destroys the training grounds that create future experts. Who will train the next generation when entry-level work provides no value for firms to capture? Today on Silicon Continent on the 'AI-Becker problem': siliconcontinent.com/p/the-ai-becke…

Brian Albrecht (@BrianCAlbrecht) consistently offers some of the sharpest takes on basic economics on X. His recent post is a gem: 🔗 economicforces.xyz/p/will-ai-skyr… Brian makes a simple but essential point, one I’ve tried (and failed) to make thousands of times when talking about…

Open call for papers, Gender in the Economy: Structural Transformation and Women's Time-Use. Conference to be held in Cambridge, MA on March 27, 2026. Submit papers by 11:59pm EDT on December 8, 2025. More information: nber.org/calls-papers-a…

This chart would be a good basis for discussion in a principles of economics class: “Here is a chart of p and q across markets. What can we learn from it?”

1/@EpochAIResearch doubles down on preiction AI will drive 20%+ annual GDP growth. Economists remain skeptical. This is the defining debate of today: AI builders see infinite prosperity ahead. Economists see the same limits that constrained every technological revolution.🧵 1/13

Some of those failures were very weird indeed. At one point, Claude hallucinated that it was a real, physical person, and claimed that it was coming in to work in the shop. We’re still not sure why this happened.

WSJ may be upset.

Love!

Excited to see my JMP at the JM in print! Super grateful to @ShrihariSridha1 & the fantastic review team—the paper is better because of their feedback. Thank you so much to my advisors @Guenter_Hitsch, Pradeep Chintagunta, Sarah Moshary, & Sanjog Misra, & my friends & mentors.

Delighted to have received an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant for the next phase of the Social Science Prediction Platform! Some exciting new developments coming soon... watch this space! @socscipredict @SloanFoundation @econuoft

The solstice has passed. A good time to remind ourselves that people still disagree on how to think about portfolio diversification. There is no progress in finance. We were born to suffer. And it’s not even Monday.

my brother is trying to start a podcast or something i guess

A big AI question is why, as LLMs get bigger, their values seem to increasingly converge on the same preferences, and this holds for Musk’s Grok and China’s DeepSeek, too. “These findings suggest that value systems emerge in LLMs in a meaningful sense, with broad implications”

If you ✅ work on gender inequality in the labor market ✅ want to finally understand what this never-ending DiD literature is talking about ✅ teach recent advances in DiD then take a look at our WP with Lukas Riedel! 🔗rfberlin.com/research/child… @RF_Berlin

We are heartbroken to announced that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away. We are at a loss for words right now. Please respect our privacy at this time as our family grieving. We realize that we are sharing our grief with the world. Love & Mercy