Needless to say, the views and opinions expressed herein are my own as an individual and do not represent those of any institutions I am affiliated with.
Good news. Econ Journal Watch now officially accepts LaTeX submissions. Its Instructions for Authors & Style Guide states that authors may submit manuscripts in LaTeX using the downloadable template.
I have been amazed by ChatGPT Pro recently, and here is another episode.
この度、来日ついでに20年以上保有してきたSBI新生銀行の口座とJALカードのクレジットカードを解約した。
I often see posts about Americans moving to Japan for affordability and other reasons, such as food and culture. It is true that life in Japan is quite affordable these days, perhaps due to the weak yen and ...
最近、Geminiに「引退後はどこに住んだらいいか、税制の観点から説明してほしい」みたいなことを聞いたら、目から鱗の情報を教えてくれた。
In my post, I mentioned that I have been happy with the Capital One Quicksilver Card because it offered 0% intro APR for 15 months (and the card has no annual fee and gives 1.5% cash back on all purchases).D...
I often visit airport lounges, and a common experience is that they are crowded.
The University of California compensation data for 2024 is now published. I have updated the data set for my paper and rerun the regressions. For readers interested in predicting their salaries, the 2024 pre...
Here are my 2026 financial resolutions.
One key principle for saving money is to cut costs in a category with a high share of expenditures.
As I mentioned in this post, every credit card needs to have a purpose to hold. Here, let us discuss the Delta SkyMiles American Express Platinum Card (which is different from the American Express Platinum C...
As the year-end approaches, it is time to perform a cost-benefit analysis of my credit cards. Here I discuss the American Express Platinum Card.
As the year-end approaches, it is time to perform a cost-benefit analysis of my credit cards. Here I discuss the Costco Anywhere Visa Card.
In this post and this post, I discussed my ordeal of getting the battery of the Nissan Leaf replaced. This matter was resolved in September 2023, but since I have never posted an update, here it is.
I opened 529 accounts for my kids about 15 years ago. Their nominal balances have grown by about 200% over this period. (Actually, this is something that I regret. I enrolled in targeted date funds without t...
As I occasionally use Marriott, a few years ago I got the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card because it was offering a welcome bonus. I won’t go into details, but the basic structure is that the annual fee is $9...
With my American Express Delta SkyMiles Platinum Card, I received a targeted offer for 5 extra Delta SkyMiles per dollar for purchasing a Delta gift card. In addition, Delta is also running a promotion with ...
In this post, I mentioned that Fidelity Full View provides account syncing for Fidelity customers. Dividing spending into categories, it also presents a pie chart of spending. The picture below is my own exa...
In this post, I mentioned that I tracked every single penny of my spending from 2008 to 2022, but I stopped because there was little room left to improve my behavior, and the opportunity cost of keeping trac...
In this post in March, I discussed the reward structure of the American Express Blue Cash Preferred card. Here is a quick review. The annual fee is $95. The cash back structure is as follows.
In my post, I mentioned that I have been happy with the Capital One Quicksilver Card because it offered 0% intro APR for 15 months (and the card has no annual fee and gives 1.5% cash back on all purchases).I...
While studying how to legally save on taxes, I realized the following trick. Transfer appreciated stocks to your child’s UTMA (Uniform Transfers to Minors Act) custodial account. Sell the stock while keepi...
I often fly between San Diego and Atlanta, usually with Delta (because there are more flight options than Alaska, which also offers direct flights between SAN and ATL). As I was looking to book my next trips...
Great news. Starting from the September 2025 issue, Econ Journal Watch publishes papers typeset in LaTeX.For years, I have been begging the editorial board of EJW to accept LaTeX submissions. This summer, I ...
American Express increased the annual fee of the Platinum Card from $695 to $895.In this post last year, I discussed my love-hate relationship with the American Express Platinum Card. When I opened the accou...
This is utterly absurd. The California Assembly Bill 7 states This bill would state that the California State University, the University of California, independent institutions of higher education, and priv...
Econ Journal Watch (EJW) is one of my favorite journals, which publishes critical comments. I have published one myself.While browsing past issues of EJW, I came across this comment, which documents that the...
Since 2017 or 2018, I have only posted my working papers on arXiv because it is free, open to anyone (they need a referral for initial submission, though), users can download the source file, and version con...
In my post, I mentioned I opened the Capital One Quicksilver Card because it offered 0% intro APR for 15 months (and the card has no annual fee and gives 1.5% cash back on all purchases).I have been using th...
If a person enters my house without my permission, I suppose I have the right to ask them to leave, and if they refuse, I may force them to leave. By analogy, if a person crosses the border into a country wi...
だいぶ前の話になるけど、アトランタへの通勤の時間を有効に使おうと思って、Amazon Kindleで夏目漱石全集を2ドルだか3ドルで買った。主要作品は文庫本で持っているけど、マイナーな作品も読めてとてもよかった。
Among amateur tennis players, including high school and college players, I think it is fair to say that UTR (Universal Tennis Rating) is the number that we look at to measure the skill level. UTR rates tenni...
My tax situation in 2024 was very complicated due to a job change, a move, and a Roth conversion, among other factors. While filing for taxes, I studied part of the tax code. I discuss my thoughts here.
Last year, I analyzed the costs and benefits of a few credit cards in this post. Recently, I noticed benefits to the American Express Blue Cash Preferred card that I was not previously aware of, so let me pr...
During my recent flight, I read Everyday Millionaires by Chris Hogan. The same Google Feed article on personal finance that I mentioned in my earlier post also recommended this book, and I borrowed it from t...
In my article yesterday, I discussed the book Baby Steps Millionaires by Dave Ramsey. This book presents many real-world examples of ordinary people achieving financial independence (“millionaire” status) th...
This weekend, I read Baby Steps Millionaires by Dave Ramsey. I came across this book because a Google Feed article on personal finance recommended it. I could have clicked “Buy Now” on Amazon ($18 or so), bu...
In my recent post, I discussed the cost-benefit analysis of credit cards.
As I was preparing to file taxes, I paid some attention to my UCSD pension balance. When I quit UCSD last year, I left the pension there rather than cashing it out. It occurred to me to evaluate the pension’...
I recently read The Algebra of Wealth by Scott Galloway. An article about it came up in my Google Feed, and the book looked interesting, so I borrowed it from the library. (I could have clicked “Buy Now” on ...
Living a frugal life is one of the most important means to achieve financial independence. In this post, I will discuss tips for frugality.
Over the winter break, I read The Richest Man in Babylon, which is a 1926 classic on personal finance. I have read it a few times before, but it is entertaining enough to read once every few years. I highly ...
As part of my annual financial review, I closed my Citibank checking account, which I have had since coming to the U.S. in 2008.
As year-end approaches, I downloaded the transaction history for my credit cards to analyze the costs and benefits.
My textbook, Essential Mathematics for Economics, is now published and sold at Amazon. It would be nice if somebody could write a review.
Recently, I thought about submitting a paper to Journal of Monetary Economics. Upon reading its submission guideline, I learned that they charge a submission fee of USD 350, which I found quite expensive.
As I prepare for my first teaching assignments at Emory, I have started by creating a syllabus template. My department provided a Word template, but it wasn’t exactly to my taste, so I wrote a \(\LaTeX\) tem...
The compensation at University of California has just published the figures for 2023. I have updated the data set for my paper and run regressions. In case readers are interested in predicting their salaries...
Three years ago, I wrote a blog post in which I mentioned that I stopped (strictly speaking, significantly reduced) contributing to 403(b) and 457(b) retirement savings plans because I could no longer afford...
Jianjun Miao and Pengfei Wang published a paper titled “Asset Bubbles and Credit Constraints” at American Economic Review in 2018. In their abstract, they state that they “provide a theory of rational stock ...
I have been investing in a Roth IRA. Currently, the contribution limit is $7,000/year.I haven’t been paying attention much, but there are income limits for traditional and Roth IRAs. For traditional, married...
As I have already announced on my website, I am resigning from UCSD. Today is my last day. I have been employed for 11 years, so I have bittersweet feelings for sure.
I have just returned from a 10-day trip to Japan. During this short stay, I visited the Ikaho hot spring, did some sightseeing in Tokyo with my family, and gave talks at Waseda University and the University ...
I presented my paper “Housing Bubbles with Phase Transitions” at the UCSD Friday faculty seminar. Because this was my last talk at UCSD, I gave the following speech.
After spending several days, I significantly updated my website. Below is a list of the main changes. Previously, there was a “Research” page that I created manually. But it was tedious to list all papers i...
Maybe it is not the best use of my time, but I created a “Talks” page, which lists past and future talks and presentations. After spending all afternoon tweaking the code, I came up with something satisfacto...
I finished writing the draft of my forthcoming textbook “Essential Mathematics for Economics”. The book is based on my math camp teaching material. Please let me know if you have any comments on the draft.
I have been waiting almost 9 months for the replacement battery for my 2016 Nissan Leaf, and the delay is extremely frustrating.
In 2016, I purchased a Nissan Leaf. Given the technological progress in electric vehicles, it’s almost a joke now, but it had a 30kWh battery with around 110 miles of range. Including everything (tax, regist...
For managing bibliographies for my papers, I have been using the natbib package with bibtex for a long time.
When I moved from Connecticut to San Diego in 2013, one thing I paid attention to when searching for a house was finding one within a reasonable distance from work. I knew that San Diego had nice weather and...
It was reported that Wimbledon will ban Russian (and Belarusian) players because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Since I started working in 2013, I haven’t given much thought to investing. Because I know that investing in an index fund is the theoretically right thing to do and I do not like paying taxes, in addition t...
This post is completely boring for outsiders. I am just writing this down so that I do not forget.
My university uses Canvas for instructional purposes. Canvas has a feature called “Inbox” that lets you send messages. I have long thought this functionality not only useless but even harmful. This is becaus...
I have been a long-time customer of Shan Xi Magic Kitchen, a Chinese restaurant in San Diego that serves Shanxi cuisine.
These days, I mostly play competitive tennis, so my opponents usually have a good understanding of the rules, and we do not get into disputes. However, debates and disputes sometimes occur in recreational pl...
These days, I mostly play competitive tennis, so my opponents usually have a good understanding of the rules, and we do not get into disputes. However, debates and disputes sometimes occur in recreational pl...
These days, I mostly play competitive tennis, so my opponents usually have a good understanding of the rules, and we do not get into disputes. However, debates and disputes sometimes occur in recreational pl...
My paper “Capital and Labor Income Pareto Exponents across Time and Space” was accepted for publication in Review of Income and Wealth. I have long felt that in discussions of inequality, people often fail t...
My paper “Asymptotic Linearity of Consumption Functions and Computational Efficiency” with Qingyin Ma has been accepted for publication in Journal of Mathematical Economics. The main result is that when the ...
I played the San Diego District Championship NTRP 3.5 men’s singles over the last two weekends, and I won the final 6-1, 6-7(5-7), 7-5.
My paper “Perov’s Contraction Principle and Dynamic Programming with Stochastic Discounting” was accepted for publication in Operations Research Letters. I found a generalization of Banach’s contraction mapp...
In tennis, a pusher is a player who can consistently hit the ball back inside the opponent’s court. They have good footwork and run to every ball. Michael Chang and Rafael Nadal are legendary professional pl...
I have been playing tennis and publishing papers long enough to find something in common.
I have been a customer of American Home Shield, a home warranty company, for a few years until today. This company is the worst business I have ever dealt with, I would say worse than the California Departme...
I have been a recreational tennis player for 6 or 7 years. Since fall 2020, I have started to play some matches. (You can see my statistics here.)
I don’t remember when I opened a ResearchGate account; I guess I did so to increase the visibility of my research. I don’t really use their service, but I find it annoying that I get requests to upload full-...
It is a great honor to announce that I have been awarded the 4th Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) Finance Award under the auspices of Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and Ministry of Education,...
My paper “A Theory of the Saving Rate of the Rich” was accepted at Journal of Economic Theory. I started this project in early 2020.Initially, the paper was about rigorously establishing the asymptotic linea...
I have been investing for over 20 years. After learning about the capital asset pricing model and the mutual fund theorem, and after reading “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” and “Stocks for the Long Run”, I ...
My paper “Necessity of Hyperbolic Absolute Risk Aversion for the Concavity of Consumption Functions” was accepted at Journal of Mathematical Economics. The publication process was quite efficient. I came up ...
I have just signed the Great Barrington Declaration.
Recently, my working paper Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) Dynamics of COVID-19 and Economic Impact has surpassed my JEBO paper in terms of citation counts, and has become my most cited paper. My COVID-...
As a long-time California resident, I am very well aware of all that government red tape. But the recent move of the city of Berkeley to ban placing junk food and beverages at checkout aisles is completely n...
I have been using \(\LaTeX\) for over 20 years now. When I write a displayed equation without numbering on a single line, I have been using $$...$$ because it was simple. I didn’t understand why some people ...
I have recently read the article “Why Mathematicians Should Stop Naming Things After Each Other”. The same logic seems to apply to economics.
Let \(A, B\) be square (complex) matrices such that \(|B| \le A\). Then it is well known that \(\rho(B) \le \rho(|B|) \le \rho(A)\), where \(\rho\) denotes the spectral radius (largest absolute value of all ...
There is a restaurant called “The Bistro” on the UCSD campus. Although I don’t like this restaurant because it’s basically a fusion American-Asian place, sometimes I have to eat there when we take seminar sp...
I have created a new website. I have been using Google Sites to create my old website. I like the classic Google Sites because it lets users take control of the structure by programming in HTML. However, the...