Prof Keith Marzilli Ericson
Professor, Boston University Questrom School of Business. Applied micro, health and behavioral economics.
- Reducing Administrative Barriers Increases Take-Up of Subsidized Health Insurance Coverage: Evidence from a Field Experiment url:https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01573/128264/Reducing-Administrative-Barriers-Increases-Take-Up
- Remember the "Highlights" that some Elsevier journals require? Dean Karlan and friends developed an amazing way to troll them: haikus!
- The highlights, like the title and abstract, are important in shaping how a paper is read. I'm not sure why one would want to troll them.
- Bone chilling. A court ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia to stay in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that he was illegally removed. Trump is pretending he won the ruling 9-0. 1/ You may not think this case means anything to you. But let me tell you why it does.
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View full thread8/ This is a watershed moment, as Trump thumbs his nose at a Supreme Court ruling, gaslighting the public by pretending his won 9-0 when he lost 9-0. If we normalize this, there's no end. He can lock up or remove anyone. We will no longer exist in a democracy.
- Therefore, the House must impeach this President and the Senate vote to convict. The way not to normalize this is to enforce the law.
- I am proud of economist and Stanford President Jonathan Levin for speaking out in defense of liberty. Let's see more universities follow suit! "Harvard’s objections... are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending".
- Hang together bsky.app/profile/roxa...
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- Nyman has two 1999 papers ... One, "the access motive," is what you are describing, but the other on moral hazard is what we are linking to doi.org/10.1016/S016...
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- While our liquidity constraint results are the new part of the paper, I hope another valuable contribution is a simple way to teach the deMeza/Nyman results, which I think are very important.
- Reducing administrative burdens helps people access support. If the govt already knows the answer to the question, why make you fill it out? www.nber.org/papers/w30885
- Good morning. Today is the 80th day that the U.S. President is running a backdoor bribery scheme in which any CEO or foreign oligarch can send him money secretly through his crypto coin scam in exchange for favors. It's the biggest scandal in the history of the Presidency.
- Where is your call for the president's impeachment and removal, then? A lawless president must be removed.
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- Forget about overriding the tariffs-- we must push for impeachment. It is no good if we end the tariff destruction but keep the rest of the lawlessness. They are abducting people without due process and illegally withholding appropriated money. Impeach and remove is the minimum.
- 🚨 Rethinking Moral Hazard: Moral hazard in health insurance—the increased spending that comes when you get insured—is usually seen as wasteful due to insurance’s price distortion. This paper challenges that view.
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View full thread🎯 Bottom Line: Insurance-induced spending isn't always a welfare loss. Joint work with Johannes Jaspersen and Justin Sydnor. Paper available here: practicingeconomist.com/wp-content/u...
- Fabulous coauthors, @jaspersen.bsky.social and @justinsydnor.bsky.social !
- From time to time I read a paper so clear and full of insight that I know immediately it will change the way I see a topic. This is one of them.
- Thank you for your kind words!
- Result: Not all insurance-induced spending is inefficient. We separate efficient moral hazard (beneficial spending because people can implicitly finance their costs) from inefficient moral hazard (distortions due to lower prices).
- 📊 Medicaid Re-evaluated: Applying our framework to Medicaid using the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, we find constrained hand-to-mouth recipients could value Medicaid twice as much as people with access to liquidity (which is implicitly assumed in existing applications).
- Insurance doesn’t just reduce risk. It also provides liquidity constrained people with a financing benefit. Paying healthcare costs with premiums smooths costs across time. Financing healthcare expenditures in a smooth way allows individuals to pay for care at a lower utility cost.
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- It is important to stand up and speak out for the rule of law. I donate to orgs funding legal challenges. I donate & canvass for candidates who support the rule of law. I contact elected officials. I write public comments. My church allies with immigrant groups. Some of us are trying.
- My public comment opposing the proposed changes eliminating the X gender marker on passports. practicingeconomist.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...
- "Two oligarchs control most of the social media. A few others control most of the major newspapers, from the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal, from the Los Angeles Times to the Minnesota Star-Tribune."
- Come teach at Boston University! We're hiring for a Full-Time Lecturer, in Questrom's Markets, Public Policy and Law Department. We're looking for some who can teach one or more of: microeconomics, macroeconomics, and/or econometrics with Python. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/29674
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- I so want to believe people could be better. I've found it surprisingly comforting to read up on history and historical fiction and know we're not alone in fighting this- eg stories of resistance to enslavers, the LGBT liberation movement. It makes this moment not so alien but continuous with before
- I don't think there's some complicated policy agenda. Retribution and harming disfavored groups is a key goal in itself. We often look for some material self interest driving behavior, when in fact the objective function is so alien to us. www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1...
- "Evil is unspectacular and always human, And shares our bed and eats at our own table."-- W.H. Auden
- We are so privileged to have leaders to remind us of our values and inspire us. MLK Day is one of the most meaningful holidays our country has because he still challenges us to do better and act more boldly.
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- Perhaps. Though the number of horses in use for transport and farm work has surely declined since the advent of the combustion engine.
- "a loose cannon for peace" what a phrase! www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/29/m...
- 🚨 Exciting news! The 3rd #Diversity & #HumanCapital Workshop @uofebusiness.bsky.social returns June 16–17, 2025 🎉 Keynote speakers: Josh Angrist, Patricia Cortes & Imran Rasul. Call for Papers will be out soon. Stay tuned! tinyurl.com/yc8h2nkr #econsky #economics @uniofexeternews.bsky.social
- I have made a starter pack for experimental economics. Please let me know if you would like to be added or deleted from the list. Thank you. go.bsky.app/2U7CMUC #Econskyat://did:plc:pc2fxsxu65kdptnhsmr6ulgp/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3lb476f6dgt2l
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- Alas-- we didn't have a particular narrative for the social preferences-- the pattern was complex. (It depended on whether you controlled for age)
- I run experiments!
- So much research fraud in b-school behavioral science. It just keeps coming-- two or three new cases I just learned about.
- gift link: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
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- I'd be happy to be included!
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- I'm here! www.nber.org/papers/w32222
- Appreciating beauty. #capecod
- I'm a liberal, and I find so much inspiration in the sacred texts of my religion (and those of others). These excerpts from Isaiah 24 remind me that God has walked with people through far worse calamities.
- In a democracy, *both* parties need to be willing to accept losing elections.
- "Men (and a woman, and dogs) have traveled to space for longer than the entire United States guaranteed all its citizens access to the ballot....The task of political work is to build a polity we want to live in, not to assiduously hope that eventually all will sort itself out."
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- Agreed. Swanson is the type of guy the Harris Walz camo hat is made for!
[Not loaded yet]- Leave the leaves! Run over them with a mower now or in the spring (spring is better for insects).
- #behavioralecon insights apropos WaPo & LA times: 1. Changing a single decision (unsubscribing) is easier than a series of ongoing decisions (not buying from Amazon). Limited attention and temptation undermine ongoing decisions. Both news and Prime subscriptions are effective levers(1/n)
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View full thread3. Public goods games teach us that punishment is costly but can be necessary to sustain cooperation. Boycotts hurt both the target and the boycotter and, from a myopic view, are value destroying. The value is to change the incentives for next time. (3/n)
- 4. Good rules are better than relying on punishments, but unlateral disarmament is for suckers. If firms only fear fascists, not the rest of us, they will accommodate the fascists. Better that we could all trust in the rule of law, but since we empirically cannot, boycots are a valuable tool.
- 2. Ownership matters. Ongoing reliance on for-profit media is dangerous. The non profit sector often out competes in areas where trust is relevant. Eg hospitals, education. NPR, public benefit corps, and non profits are likely a more effective model to support if you care about truth (2/n)
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- Do you have a policy on banning authors? There are people whose work I've reviewed who I'll never trust again (deception/fraud, not published). There's no formal policy at any journal I've been at.
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- I've cancelled. It's too much. They've failed this moment and so many before.
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- Assistant professors, including new from PhD and those who have been out for a few years.
- Fyi-- We read your cover letters! We are searching for a good fit. Future plans, reasons why BU is a good fit, why you would choose a business school...
