I did my PhD in the dismal science at the University of Chicago. I was born in Cd. Madero, Tamaulipas, Mexico. My last name is “Tudón Maldonado”. Before becoming a worldly philosopher, I studied Economics and Applied Mathematics at ITAM in Mexico city, where I met my wife. We now have two daughters: one born in 2018, one expected in 2020.
I enjoy cooking, soccer and playing almost any game, from chess to cosmic encounter. (Basketball is a notable exception; I think that the marginal point is worth very little, but feel free to share your opinion!).
Some bad jokes:
Here are a couple of quotes I suggested to the JPE:
- Convexity of a State-Dependent Utility Function in JPE 123:5 (Oct 2015)
”Do. Or do not. There is no try.” (Yoda)
[Gary Kurtz, Leigh Brackett, Lawrence Kasdan, Irvin Kershner, George Lucas, Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, et al., Star Wars, Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back (Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox, 2004)]
- News Shock and Granger Causality in JPE 124:6 (Dec 2016)
Dr. Emmett Brown: [reads the “Save the Clock Tower” flyer and reacts with hope] “This is it! This is the answer. It says here that a bolt of lightning is going to strike the clock tower at precisely 10:04 p.m. next Saturday night! If… If we could somehow harness this lightning… channel it into the flux capacitor… it just might work. Next Saturday night, we’re sending you back to the future!”
[Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, Back to the future (Universal Studios,1985)]
- A Brief Lesson in Public Finance in JPE 126:5 (Oct 2018)
In The Labyrinth of Solitude, Octavio Paz, a Mexican Nobel laureate, explains public expenditure practices in the worldly and otherwise:
“I remember that years ago I asked the municipal president of a village close to Mitla: ‘How much does the Municipality’s income come from contributions?’
‘About three thousand pesos a year [around 12,000 dollars in 2016]. We are very poor. That is why the Governor and the Federation help us to complete our expenses every year.’
‘And how do you use those three thousand pesos?’
‘Well, almost everything at parties, sir. Small, as you can see, the town has two Holy Patrons.’”
[Octavio Paz, El laberinto de la soledad (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1959)]
- A Universal Crisis of Economic Illiteracy in JPE 128:6 (Jun 2020)
In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos is convinced that the universe is overpopulated, which causes anguish to its denizens. Instead of adjusting prices, Thanos proposes to adjust demanded quantities by erasing half of the population in the universe:
Gamora: I was a child when you took me.Thanos: I saved you.Gamora: No. We were happy on my home planet.Thanos: You were going to bed hungry, scrounging for scraps. Your planet was on the brink of collapse. I’m the one who stopped that. You know what’s happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It’s a paradise.Gamora: Because you murdered half the planet.Thanos: A small price to pay for salvation.Gamora: You’re insane.Thanos: Little one, it’s a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its resources, finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correcting.Gamora: You don’t know that!Thanos: I’m the only one who knows that. At least, I’m the only one with the will to act on it.If only Thanos knew basic economics.
[Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, et al, Avengers: Infinity War (Marvel Studios, 2018)]
And here is an embarrassing letter to the editor of The Economist in response to “Friction lovers”. You can find it here or in the print edition of Apr 12th 2017.
- Our foolish tax on efficiency
After looking for papers on “facile externalities” in the Scandinavian Journal of Economics, I got suspicious of the inclusion of a middle initial in the author’s name, Danilov P. Rossi, in “Friction lovers” (April 1st). You seldom do that. I solved the anagram. But am I still a poisson d’avril?
And here is a playlist that I hear when I’m running regressions. Be advised that it may reflect a rather cynical view of the less glamorous side of empirical work.
The profile picture is courtesy of Chuck Needy, a friend at the FCC.
Finally, the punchline: I’m a lifelong fan of Cruz Azul FC, which makes me quite resistant to frustration; a must-have in academia.