Gotta wonder how much of today's bloated tuition costs go to crappy vendors and contractors exploiting schools for shareholder gain, at everyone else's expense.

Seems like my decision to go old school and not use slides, to teach using pen and whiteboard, and to do all communications over email was the right one...

"It's just a flu. It'll go away in a couple weeks." www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Call me IV (because I’m biased), but I really like this paper, had fun working with Marc, think it is very simple but important for applied people, and provides a simple (partial) solution to the problem. We both hope researchers will take note. PS This paper has nothing to do with diff-in-diff.

At long last, @dlmillimet.bsky.social's and my paper "On the (Mis) Use of the Fixed Effects Estimator" is published: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

As I was saying... (From www-nber-org.ezp2.lib.umn.edu/papers/w3516...)

This is the MOOC moral panic of the 2010s redux: (i) with the economy being what it is (and will be), people look to established institutions for credentials, and (ii) college does not necessarily teaches things useful for a given job; rather it acculturates people to working within an organization.

Q: Why do European farmers protest but American farmers don't? A: Because we pay the latter not to, pretty much, according to this interesting perspective piece: ambrook.com/offrange/per...

Like @paulkelleher.net once told me when I was comparing eating fish vs. eating land animals, the relevant question is not "Do they have emotions?" It's "Can they suffer?" Scientists call for an immediate ban on boiling lobsters alive – crustaceans can feel pain www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/...

Brace yourself for another round of MFP payments (and even that is unlikely to stave off food price inflation...) www.fb.org/news-release...

Huh. First graf: "Palantir announced a $300 million deal with the USDA, which will use the software company’s technology to manage farmland *as geopolitical risks threaten global supply chains.*" www.cnbc.com/2026/04/22/p... Someone should get on that. Oh, wait: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Glad to see some in the media have turned their attention to this www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0... My coauthors and I wrote up an op-ed version of our forthcoming JHR on commodity shocks and rural mortality (jhr.uwpress.org/content/earl...), but no national or regional outlet was interested so... 🤷‍♂️

This, from Akridge and Hummels about building trust as an academic leader, explains a LOT.

"Fuck everything, we're doing five blades."

Questions from my Political Economy of Food and Agriculture final exam today. The article I refer to in Q4 is here: www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

This. But shaming and tut-tutting is part and parcel of American policy making, so nothing is going to change.

Good times! Metrics and good people in a beautiful and historic place!

Really fun weekend presenting and learning about new research at Camp Econometrics in Lake Placid, NY, inluding hanging out with my coauthor (pictured) @dlmillimet.bsky.social and meeting @davidslichter.bsky.social in person.

This seems correct at my institution, but both statements (older faculty hanging on longer than is optimal AND retiring faculty not being replaced at way less than one-for-one) can be true at the same time! IOW, I can see a case for hiring less knowing that some will hang around longer.

What’s your hot take? LinkedIn is a marketplace where everyone’s selling relevancy and almost none of it is real work. Change my mind.

You want food price inflation? Because this is how you contribute to food price inflation. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Bernhard Dalheimer and I were interviewed on the Eat This podcast about our recent working paper on the geopolitics of food and agriculture. You can listen here: eatthispodcast.com/geopolitics/

“Smells Like Teen Teen Spirit,” no contest.

Mueenuddin’s 2009 book of short stories “In Other Rooms…” was such a good read! I just ordered this from Bookshop.org and look forward to reading it.

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds,” said Einstein. Maybe. But only mediocre minds mistake violent opposition with their being great spirits. P \rightarrow Q does not imply Q \rightarrow P, geniuses.

Oh, so… UDOIT all for nought?

“Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame. You give love a bad name.”

Some Canadian universities never tell you *anything.* One of my PhD students interviewed with a Canadian department, spent 2 two days with them in meetings and interviews. My student never even got the courtesy of an email saying “Thanks for your interest, but we made an offer to someone else.” 🦗

Hard agree.

"No!!!" - Me in 2013, probably. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Chat, should I start a Tiktok channel dedicated to utilitymaxxing? I'd calling myself Concavular. "Take the hammer and smash your preferences bro."

economists ca. 2027, probably

🥹

My book (!) How Economics Discovered Women is now available for pre-order from the University of California Press. The book is a survey and critique of how the economics of gender has developed since the mid-1970s. www.ucpress.edu/books/how-ec...

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. @dlmillimet.bsky.social and I (and others who may out themselves) have had a very hard time publishing applied econometrics papers because econometrics journals want asymptotics and/or prefer to publish replications instead of applied innovations.

Is this what good news feels like?

Damn, dawg. Just mention my institution by name next time.

Akridge and Hummels write about academic leadership, but this applies to any and all academics: findingequilibriumfuturehighered.substack.com/p/managing-y...

was once New Amsterdam.

“What is this, a serving for ants?”

This is all good and well but does it work on congressmen?

The idea that internal validity comes first and external validity comes after is a misconception—particularly in economics. In reality, research design involves a trade-off between the two, and the goal is to choose an optimal point on the validity frontier. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Nonconvexity of preferences in the wild!

One byproduct highly volunteer, part-time suburban elected officials is that there’s little expertise to push back when police and fire depts ask for truly insane things (more and bigger things than they need). You get massive fire engines and all officers in solo SUVs because no one said no.

*extremely eleanor rigby voice*

Thanks to the Internet, taking what other people say in the most personally offensive way possible has displaced baseball as the great American pastime.

Silicon sampling seems like something that, in 50 years, people will look back on and be like, ‘I can’t believe that was a thing.’ Like smoking or asbestos or SAS. #statsky #episky

I recently saw a talk where the presenter was using that method (without calling it that) to show how a group of economic agents navigate a given environment. I wasn't sold, if only because it was never made clear whether this was done normatively or positively. Isn't this just fancier ABMs?

Me, after re-joining Bluesky a few weeks ago and witnessing the Bluesky metadiscourse.

And quite possibly save *lives*, too.