In the eternal words of that one Skrillex song: "YES! Oh my God..." (With apologies for besmirching Soundgarden by mentioning Skrillex in the same breath.) bookshop.org/p/books/a-sc...

The great economist Alberto Alesina passed away unexpectedly six years ago. The next day, his former PhD student @sethsd.bsky.social posted an explanation for Alesina's incandescence as a scholar and mentor. I've thought about his words many times over the years. medium.com/@sethstephen...

A+ thread and responses.

Did I hallucinate an AI tool that will reformat your paper for another journal? (BTW, some of what will make AI productive is that it will make it easier to deal with dumb rules that never should have been in place to begin with!)

This is perhaps the most impressive #medical study I have seen in years: www.nature.com/articles/s41... It will save a lot of lives.

The best part of #science is the #process. In this case, it was spending some years learning from my smarter, more creative colleague @vinisingh.bsky.social while on a truly meaningful question. The paper also benefitted from a caring editor, good refs + copyediting by @standarderror.bsky.social.

It’s here, it’s finally hereeeee!!!! This paper is in the AER because of two people: my co-author @atheendar.bsky.social, and our copy-editor @sameyler.bsky.social.

Important work by @vinisingh.bsky.social and @atheendar.bsky.social

Forthcoming in the AER: "Rationing by Race" by Manasvini Singh and Atheendar Venkataramani.

A new wrinkle in the DID revolution: chatgpt.com/g/g-6a20206c...

Welcome to IDEA!

New working paper with Amol Singh Raswan and Chris Udry: "The Sisyphean Pursuit of Evidence for Poverty Traps." A central idea in development economics is that poverty can trap people. We went looking for the cleanest evidence. Here's what we found – and didn't.

How can we as researchers do a better job of making our work accessible and engaging to the public? Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani was recently interviewed by @ryansuk.bsky.social to discuss the importance of public engagement by scientists. Check out the full interview here 👇🏽

1/ There is are interesting discussions blooming everywhere on #modern #causal #inference methods in economics. The push-back seems to be around (1) "plug-and-play" research, (2) narrowness of the parameters obtained, (3) validity of underlying assumptions. I hope this debate comes to #medicine!

Alan Greenspan, who in nearly two decades as chairman of the Federal Reserve nurtured a long run of prosperity, navigated crises and was a powerful force in shaping market-friendly policies, died on Monday. He was 100. Read more: nyti.ms/4fZ9n0H

Can economic #opportunity help flatten the #income-#health gradient in the United States? Check out our new @medrxivpreprint.bsky.social by Anant Mishra, @rourkeobrien.bsky.social, and Atheen Venkataramani! Paper here: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... Key figure:

What do most people get wrong about how hospitals and physicians actually make money? 📹 In our latest "Good Science" interview, leading applied microeconomist Atul Gupta of @upenn.edu's Wharton School discusses health care financing, common misconceptions, and more. #HealthEconomics #HealthPolicy

So very sad about this news. There's a small army of health policy scholars — myself included — who owe their careers to Bob's taking a risk on us. And there's a much larger army of public health professionals who benefited from his wisdom as a teacher.

RIP Mark Rothko. You would have loved how the hydrogen peroxide bleach is only turning the Reflecting Pool blue around the perimeter

Just say no to gift authorship.

Just to be clear, this is not humblebrag. This is "we put your name on a paper you didn't work on directly, do you have any comments?"

I'm reaching that stage of my #academic #medicine career where papers somehow "just materialize." I'm trying to run away from it as fast as possible!!

This #applied #microeconometrics book is seriously incredible. Damian has also made all the data and code (R, Stata, Python) available here: damianclarke.net/books/microe... I've learned a ton from him -- and you can (should), too!

White Americans who were eligible for the GI Bill, or had fathers who were, benefitted massively, while the equivalent Black Am benefitted much less on average bc they were funneled into using it on vocational schools (or scam “schools”) Paper estimates that accounts for *5 pp* in sons’ college gap

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

I empathize w/ editors, but it's become a bad equilibrium for reviewers -- out of control. 14 day turnarounds are just part of it. The way these expectations are communicated is another. I just got an email from a Nature journal. "Overdue review -- first notice." Like I missed a utility bill.

Sherry Glied and I have critiqued the recent analysis on the impact of Medicaid work requirements on poverty. It is linked here: : www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore... Unfortunately, Professors Mulligan and Bai who appear to have led the work get a failing grade on this one.

Is zip code everything? A new study involving U.S. children found it influences brain function and structure—specifically, kids in lower socioeconomic opportunity areas had sleep deprived and stressed brains. New on @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/chil...

cc @atheendar.bsky.social

Wow, I didn't expect our paper on iPhones and fertility to generate this much buzz—thanks for all the feedback! Rather than scattershot replies, here's a compilation of thoughts and new robustness checks. 🧵1/15

"I'm into finally bringing 'Hamlet Hail to the Thief' to London, and to the Barbican of all places! It is fascinating and very strange to me how this came to life and how it has worked...

1/ Really impressed by @caitlinmyers.bsky.social's response to comments on her team's paper on iphones and fertility on the other site (www.nber.org/papers/w35310). It takes courage to take on big questions. And it takes equanimity to cut through the noise and strengthen the argument.

Basically, would you like a graph like that on the left (theory driven sample restrictions and controls) or on the right (data driven weighted controls seeking to "impose" pre-trends)? (Note - in paper, I will isolate main estimate in its own figure. These would be for robustness checks)

Help me rewrite my paper! Would you rather see: 1. Noisier (with mostly flat pretrends) in a standard TWFE with sample restrictions that follow history/theory 2. Flat pretrends + more precisely estimated coefs in Synthetic DID (Refs seem to be skeptical about 2. Baseline is hard bec noise for 1)

1/ #Stuckness. A concept which resonates with every regular person I talk to. A concept that elicits a "well, isn't this just..." or "how do you know..." from every researcher I talk to. A few years ago I decided to go #rogue in science. I've been much btter at my job since making that choice.

Even if you take the ASPE report's lit review at face value — and you shouldn't, it skips critical recent + relevant work — the rosiest 1990s work requirements study in their technical appendix suggests an effect size less than 10% of what the report's "model" projects with @chloeneast.bsky.social:

New WP, just in time for #ASHEcon26! What started off as a project to learn LLM use for text analysis turned accidentally into a paper about stigma. [1/n]

Great thread - love it! I always tell my students who worry about getting scooped: "We need more than one paper on important topics."

It's worth watching where the jobs are being created.

I am SO EXCITED that the Journal of Stratification Economics is coming next year! This has been a labor of love to bring this to pass. Please consider submitting to this exciting new journal specializing in the best stratification economics research. @jsecon.bsky.social @ucpress.bsky.social

I spent a few months trying to get proficient in DAGs. I learned a few things about myself: -Thinking in terms of DAGs is not intuitive to me, even though it is visual -I rarely found that DAGs of complex phenomena helped me understand them. -I see the potential, but am on the outside looking in.

This study of four cohorts of French schoolchildren shows that the gender gap in math (girls falling behind) begins essentially immediately as soon as kids start school. They use the natural variation in kids' ages at school start to show that it's school entry, not age, that triggers the change.

My amazing #coauthor Damian Clarke has a new textbook coming out (from @mitpress.bsky.social) on applied #econometrics! He is one of the smartest people/best teachers I know. Consider pre-ordering! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205364...

This is super concerning... please read and comment by July 13th if you care about the future of US federally funded research. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...?

1/ For my #book project (which I just turned in!), I looked at how #health varied by #income in states where people were more or less likely to be #stuck (i.e., experience disadvantage in multiple domains). In #stuck places, everyone's health is worse off.

"What signifies knowing the Names, if you know not the Natures of Things." —Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Improved, 1750 (We included this epigraph in the working paper version but it got deleted for publication. It captures well the essence of the paper.)

Maybe not deaths of despair after all? #econtwitter #econsky New in @J_HumanResource from @nick_reynolds88: ⬆️ mortality of white Americans reflects overall trend break (toward adverse health) for post-WWII cohorts relative to earlier cohorts - evident before the opiod epidemic

Ok friends - need your help spreading the word! If you work in state or local government, please take this survey and share with your networks! bit.ly/3Rsihtn It's the first-of-its-kind national effort to elevate the voices of local public servants! (1/2)

#Genius in every sense. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmyj...