Joseph Steinberg

I spend way too much time on social media debunking "economic slop" promulgated by lawyers pretending to be economists, so I built Show Me the Model: a tool that uses AI to check whether the economic reasoning in an essay actually holds up.

showmethemodel.io

Give it a URL or paste some plain text, and the tool flags hidden assumptions, internal inconsistencies, and other problem areas, and tells you how a real economist would think through the issue.

Right now, it has 4 "personas:" macro, trade, IO/price theory, and labor. The tool first figures out which persona is right for the job, and then uses a parallelized prompt scaffold specific to that persona to process the source text.

Here are some example outputs based on some essays that triggered me hard:

Citrini Research's viral essay on how AI could trigger a self-reinforcing financial crisis rivaling the GFC:
showmethemodel.io/#/results/2ez3…

American Compass on the harms of trade deficits:
showmethemodel.io/#/results/kOvt…

@oren_cass on why Built-to-Rent should be banned:
showmethemodel.io/#/results/OXjr…

American Compass on the "China Shock:"
showmethemodel.io/#/results/dJM7…

@michaelxpettis on why China's trade surplus reduces global output:
showmethemodel.io/#/results/C8OT…

Try it yourself at showmethemodel.io. You'll need to bring your own API key (OpenAI or Anthropic), and a typical analysis costs $0.50–$1.50.

It's super preliminary and will probably break on you. I'd love feedback about both the functionality as well as the quality of the output.

The Stellantis-Roshel situation is unfortunate for the impacted workers, but we've got to start thinking in general equilibrium. What kind of signal does it send to potential investors when we try to force previous ones to prop up unprofitable ventures in perpetuity?

Unions trying to reduce opportunities for future applicant cohorts in order to benefit incumbents who've already won those opportunities? Shocking.

"If you don't want a better life for those who came after you, you are frankly an evil person."

I loved grad school, and I want it to be financially viable for universities to continue to provide that experience. Forcing them to pay 60k+ stipends does the opposite.

I made 15-22k as a phd student at Minnesota during 2008-2013. I think Yale and other Ivies were paying 30-40k. I was fine. Don't forget that you are getting massively subsidized by the university! Economic value of your classes, workshops, supervisor time is likely 100k+/yr.