First Pilates flow of the New Year ✔️ looking forward to continuing the little things that bring me joy 😊🧚🏿‍♀️

Presenting our paper with @nonsoobikili.com @chinemeluokafor.bsky.social and Ajuwon on Monday in the 10:15am session @assameeting.bsky.social, in case anyone wants to come listen to research on the effects of women's protests on gender gaps in political participation #ASSA2026 #Econsky

The *hidden curriculum* was a VERY frequently mentioned topic here, including: how academic publishing worked, how to negotiate contracts, get pay raises, how tenure worked, how to approach faculty, how to apply for awards, how the academic hierarchy worked...

All of the top-10 books borrowed through the public library app Libby were written by women. And Kristin Hannah's The Women was the top check-out in many library system around the country. n.pr/49tGkyq

People ask, “If the economy is growing, why doesn’t it feel like it?” Because our individual economic realities are driven less by the national average and more by the policy choices—tariffs, taxes, and cuts—that decide who actually gets the gains from growth.

In case you need a positive reminder: How effective is protesting? According to historians and political scientists: very www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Actual 2025 tariff rates are, to date, far less than statutory rates, but the costs of the tariffs are mostly borne by the US – estimated tariff pass-through to US prices in 2025 is 94%. Tariffs on imports act like a 1 to 2pp tax on US manufacturing. brentneiman.com/research/GN2...

A day after part of a missile fired by the United States hit their village, landing just meters from its only medical facility, the villagers of Jabo in northwest Nigeria are in a state of shock and confusion.

Fulvia Budillon, Andre Gray, and I are hiring a field RA for a project in Mozambique, starting in the spring. Please see application information here: www.saralowes.com/resources.html. Deadline February 13. Please apply!!

After his mom died, Fry Bread author Kevin Maillard found himself wondering, "but where did she go?" So he wrote about it. His new kids' book is And They Walk On, illustrated by Rafael López.

US president says 'deadly strike' in Nigeria targeted ISIL fighters who killed 'primarily, innocent Christians'.

An argument that the political history of Africa is a surprising success story as Africans achieved what they set out to accomplish, from Soeren J. Henn and James A. Robinson www.nber.org/papers/w34546

n.pr/3YkHtlt

🆕 The Atlantic slave trade and economic development in Europe Today on VoxDevTalks, Ellora Derenoncourt @princetonecon.bsky.social discusses how profits and economic linkages from slavery contributed to development in Europe: www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2zu...

That is patently false: not only do immigrants score better than native-born Americans in tests, the mere presence of immigrants improve test scores for all students, when factoring in white flight sesp.northwestern.edu/news-events/...

Many voters aren’t trading their vote for goods or patronage. They’re seeking recognition in a political system that routinely devalues them, but this demand for dignity can weaken accountability. The paper presents experimental, qualitative, and descriptive evidence in support of this claim.

New paper in @ajpseditor.bsky.social. Is descriptive representation good for substantive representation? Why do voters stay loyal to corrupt and poorly governing ethnic parties? I argue that we ought to focus less on patronage and more on dignity concerns. Defiant pride can come at a price. 1/🧵

Same product. Same store. Same time. But on Instacart, different customers may see different prices. My story on a fascinating new experiment from @groundwork.bsky.social & @consumerreports.org and how the idea of a single price is breaking down in the digital age: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/b...

The hepatitis B vaccination is an essential safety net for newborns. Without vaccination, as many as 9 in 10 infants infected with hepatitis B in their first year of life will develop chronic infection that can lead to liver failure and death. publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/why-hep...

After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts www.nber.org/papers/w34524 via @florianederer.bsky.social

🌟🇬🇳 New MPP scholarship for Guinean Students We are pleased to share that a new scholarship is being funded to support one student from Guinea to study for the Master of Public Policy. Apply by 2 December 25!👇 https://ow.ly/Um8p50Xy1tg

Stephen Miller’s ancestors were Jewish refugees from the pogroms in czarist Russia. They came to the U.S. in the early twentieth century, even as racists said this same stuff about them.

For millions of Indigenous Americans, Thanksgiving is tied to a history of invasion, displacement, and devastation as settlers took over the land that is now the US aje.io/bb1ezw

Join me at @propublica.org in one of the most rewarding jobs in journalism, guiding collaborative investigative projects in local newsrooms around the country as a senior editor with our Local Reporting Network! We’d love to see your application by Dec 8.

🆕 Cash transfers & agency: What Nigerian couples reveal about household power Mehrab Bakhtiar @ifpri.org, Marcel Fafchamps, @markusgold.bsky.social @cgdev.org, Kenneth Leonard & Sreelakshmi Papineni on the interplay between empowerment & norms ⤵️ voxdev.org/topic/social...

From North Carolina to Mississippi, Black-owned farms are filling the gaps left by SNAP funding delays

In light of recent events, it seems like a good time to reup this. “The way out isn't about left versus right; it's about clean versus corrupt, reform versus a rigged system, the people versus oligarchs.”

CNBC - US job cuts last month surged 183% from September and went up 175% from than the same month a year ago. This is now the worst year for layoffs since 2009. www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/job-c...

Doing a PhD can be lonely, but it doesn’t have to be. At the 4th ACES Political Economy Summer School in Zanzibar, 23 young researchers came together to learn, & build the future of economic research📊. Read more 👇 theigc.org/blogs/reflec... #PoliticalEconomy @comparativeecon.bsky.social

JUST IN: Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assemblymember, will make history as the first Muslim and South Asian person — as well as the youngest in over a century — to serve as New York City mayor.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayor’s race.

Decision Desk HQ has declared Democrat Zohran Mamdani the winner of the NYC mayoral race, currently the only US outlet to do so. 🟠 LIVE updates: aje.io/c1ytm0

This is a lie: www.propublica.org/article/immi...

The government shutdown has put SNAP benefits at risk for millions of Americans. Travis Peters, an urban farmer in Detroit, is giving out free produce tomorrow 'If it's getting tight, my food is free. Don’t even sweat that'

Look. It would be great if there was one simple trick for winning elections. But 'just be more moderate' isn't it. In fact, you can use the NYT's exact method to 'prove' a 'Progressive Advantage' of +1.4 pts. This piece shows what's really going on: funded candidates do better than unfunded ones.

One tactic these data guys use online is to dismiss academic work they don’t like by calling it “overly complex” or “disconnected from reality.” I call this anti-rigor propaganda. It’s a move to sour people on serious scholarship when you don’t have better evidence. Adam addresses it in the piece.

Awful finding in a new study: airborne mercury from gold mining is contaminating food in Nigeria. Reminds me of when I went to the Brazilian Amazon in 2019 and found that mercury miners were dumping in river tributaries was making Indigenous villagers sick. www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

The Supreme Court's conservative justices appeared likely to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a decision that would have massive consequences for the future of Black political representation in the South

Political scientist colleagues, what is this called, especially in African countries, when the federal government acts in this way?: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

It’s hard to put into words what it means to lose D’Angelo. Not just the man, but the sound, the feeling, the very essence of soul that he embodied.

Good history helps us avoid nostalgia. The great article “Economic History and the Historians” (2020) by Anne McCants reminds me why nostalgia can get us in trouble. Two of her examples are very relevant to today: vaccinations and the popular narrative of some economic “good old days.”

🆕 Mythbusters: Development economics edition Development is full of persistent myths: ideas about how the world works which are widely held but not supported by research. On @voxdev.bsky.social, I've highlighted 10 myths which don't stand up to the evidence: voxdev.org/topic/mythbu...

In Lesotho, a style of traditional accordion music called Famo has become entangled with deadly gang rivalries. Once the soundtrack of shepherds and migrant workers, today it's linked to killings, government bans — and a fight over cultural identity.

🆕 Empowerment or protection? A potential trade-off in cash transfer design Today on VoxDev w/ Giulia Greco (@lshtm.bsky.social @lshtm-gheco.bsky.social), @selimgulesci.bsky.social (Trinity College Dublin), Pallavi Prabhakar (BIGD) & Munshi Sulaiman (BIGD): voxdev.org/topic/social...

Serious scholars have examined what happens when we change the number of H1-B visas issued. Cities that get more H1-B immigrants subsequently see the wages of natives *rise* substantially. Skilled immigrants bring new ideas, fill labor shortages and make us all more productive.

"The real kick in the teeth is no matter how much manufacturing is brought back to the US these items will never be made in the USA. There is no upside." As we predicted, the end of de minimis has made every hobby that requires the purchase of items more expensive. 🔗 www.404media.co/its-just-a-m...

When the facts are available and their meaning obvious, people who want power over you must eventually demand that you ignore what you see, what you know. "Freedom", wrote Orwell, "is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

The de minimis rule that allowed small packages worth less than $800 to be exempt from tariffs ended on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025.

Highest level of support since Gallup started asking this question a quarter century ago