the peer review system is totally unprepared to handle the AI-sparked influx of papers we've seen.

I feel like I have to use both Twitter and Bluesky these days. Both seem epistemically unhealthy, in different ways. Substack has been a great refuge. It's the closest I’ve seen to the sort of intellectual back-and-forth Twitter had before 2020. The norm of the long-form helps a lot.

Merry Christmas, folks! A new holiday installment of "Migration, But Better" is up: a wrap-up of everything I read, liked, and argued with this month, from agentic AI and pro-immigration misinformation to data viz tips and the worst policies in the developed world.

True. It almost feels like forbidden knowledge (sorry Bluesky). I've been playing around with Codex to automate the tedious parts of my research and writing workflow, and it's kind of absurd how well it works (probably better than an actual RA). I haven't been this excited about tech for some time.

Merry Christmas, folks! A new holiday installment of "Migration, But Better" is up: a wrap-up of everything I read, liked, and argued with this month, from agentic AI and pro-immigration misinformation to data viz tips and the worst policies in the developed world.

I don't care what Bari Weiss was thinking. But as someone who moved from Russia to America for freedom, I didn't have "passing around a pulled 60 Minutes segment like Soviet-era samizdat" in 2025 on my bingo card. Anyway: watch what our government is doing, and share it widely.

True. It almost feels like forbidden knowledge (sorry Bluesky). I've been playing around with Codex to automate the tedious parts of my research and writing workflow, and it's kind of absurd how well it works (probably better than an actual RA). I haven't been this excited about tech for some time.

That's impressive

I don't care what Bari Weiss was thinking. But as someone who moved from Russia to America for freedom, I didn't have "passing around a pulled 60 Minutes segment like Soviet-era samizdat" in 2025 on my bingo card. Anyway: watch what our government is doing, and share it widely.

Perhaps others have seen it already, but I found this pre-print (first posted in September) deeply troubling, raising concerns about how LLMs used for classification tasks in research open new researcher-degrees-of-freedom, which they call "LLM-hacking" (akin to p-hacking) arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825

Happy to see "In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular" reviewed in @foreignaffairs.com: "Carefully argued and data-rich...This cautiously optimistic book offers a welcome respite from futile, endless debates over migration." www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/our-...

I'm still in disbelief, but I have some doubly good news: I got tenure, and in January I'm starting as an Associate Professor at @notredame.bsky.social's Keough School of Global Affairs. I'm excited to keep working on making immigration policy better in theory and practice.

Cool new tool to check if your references contain retraction risks. www.retractionrisk.com

I'm honestly surprised why folks find it so difficult to understand that, even despite all the recent thermostatic pro-immigration opinion shifts, Democrats are still relatively disadvantaged on immigration with no clear rhetorical strategy or constructive positive policy vision to move forward

I'm still in disbelief, but I have some doubly good news: I got tenure, and in January I'm starting as an Associate Professor at @notredame.bsky.social's Keough School of Global Affairs. I'm excited to keep working on making immigration policy better in theory and practice.

Someone built a Goodreads for papers (and other stuff) www.papertrailshq.com

Happy to see "In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular" reviewed in @foreignaffairs.com: "Carefully argued and data-rich...This cautiously optimistic book offers a welcome respite from futile, endless debates over migration." www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/our-...

So cool -> Quebec researchers tracked eye dilation + sweat when showing respondents political issues to see if they aligned with results from standard poll questions on issue importance. They did! And suggest asking people to choose their top issue is most reliable academic.oup.com/poq/article/...

With everything going on, it's easy to forget that immigration reform can fail EVEN IF a majority says it's "for" it. Politics runs on attention, and immigration supporters often care less about it than opponents. My new paper in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social tries to address this gap.

Apart from being a near-perfect testament to individual creativity and progress, one thing I appreciate about Vince Gilligan’s new Pluribus show is that it genuinely educates people about things. Like how difficult migration is across the Darién Gap.

Apart from being a near-perfect testament to individual creativity and progress, one thing I appreciate about Vince Gilligan’s new Pluribus show is that it genuinely educates people about things. Like how difficult migration is across the Darién Gap.

With everything going on, it's easy to forget that immigration reform can fail EVEN IF a majority says it's "for" it. Politics runs on attention, and immigration supporters often care less about it than opponents. My new paper in @poppublicsphere.bsky.social tries to address this gap.

"We're interested in comparative or historical insights...about how something works or fails to work in the developing world." My fellow comparativists and historical political economists: this is your time to shine! Write <4K words to tell the world about your nerdy topic and make $2K.

"Every hundred South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren between them." I don't understand how folks can look at this chart and still say the looming population decline is "no biggie!" worksinprogress.co/issue/two-is...

"Every hundred South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren between them." I don't understand how folks can look at this chart and still say the looming population decline is "no biggie!" worksinprogress.co/issue/two-is...

A must-read for anyone already practicing or just interested in data visualization. I'd absolutely assign it to all my students in an intro data science class — and you should too!

alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/immigratio.. @akoustov.bsky.social defends looking at the effects of immigration policies, not immigration itself. I think we can say something similar about public opinion: don’t ask people which immigrants they like. Ask them which immigration policies they like.

Is this the nerdiest bit of causal inference ever to go viral on social media? It's almost certainly the most-read paragraph I've ever written, but folks you should read the whole piece. alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/immigratio...

A must-read for anyone already practicing or just interested in data visualization. I'd absolutely assign it to all my students in an intro data science class — and you should too!

Is this the nerdiest bit of causal inference ever to go viral on social media? It's almost certainly the most-read paragraph I've ever written, but folks you should read the whole piece. alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/immigratio...

I'm increasingly convinced that abstract system-wide concepts like "inequality" and "diversity" do not have any true, or at least practically true, identifiable effects on economic output or other relevant public outcomes. Change my mind! alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/immigratio...

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/🧵

Tomorrow's post will be my hottest and nerdiest take yet: Abstract concepts like "inequality," "diversity," and even "immigration" aren't tangible things that have identifiable true effects in the real world. Policies do. Subscribe to get it in your inbox: alexanderkustov.substack.com

🚨 New Working Paper! 🚨 Do people become more or less prosocial after major adversity? Using new global data on conflicts, disasters, and recessions, we find people's prosociality is very resilient. Altruism may dip a bit after disasters but tends to bounce back later. hicn.org/working-pape...

Tomorrow's post will be my hottest and nerdiest take yet: Abstract concepts like "inequality," "diversity," and even "immigration" aren't tangible things that have identifiable true effects in the real world. Policies do. Subscribe to get it in your inbox: alexanderkustov.substack.com

A word of wisdom from @cdsamii.bsky.social re credibility revolution and survey experiments: your conjoint or list experiment is not a policy intervention with real causal effects -- it's a measurement tool. A lot of smart folks are still confused about it for some reason! cyrussamii.com?p=4168

100%. Hear me out: “Au Pair for All” could be probably both more popular and better for people’s health and well-being than “Medicare for All.”

Highly recommended for any academic or social scientist who is interested in politics and public writing! I wouldn't be able to launch my newsletter without participating in the fellowship and being a part of GA.

Highly recommended for any academic or social scientist who is interested in politics and public writing! I wouldn't be able to launch my newsletter without participating in the fellowship and being a part of GA.

100%. Hear me out: “Au Pair for All” could be probably both more popular and better for people’s health and well-being than “Medicare for All.”

Didn't expect to be quoted in a piece making the liberal case against land acknowledgements and tying that to Stephen Miller's on US liberties. But it all makes sense: if we want progress in immigration policy and other areas, we need to talk about tangible national interests, not just symbolism.

A word of wisdom from @cdsamii.bsky.social re credibility revolution and survey experiments: your conjoint or list experiment is not a policy intervention with real causal effects -- it's a measurement tool. A lot of smart folks are still confused about it for some reason! cyrussamii.com?p=4168

If you're new to Substack or just looking for serious immigration writing, I've compiled "The Immigration Substack Universe"--a live directory of newsletters focused on policy analysis, research, and field reporting. Check it out and suggest additions. alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/the-immigr...

Japan feels "uncanny" to many visitors not because it's exotic but because things work there. My new post reflects on my Tokyo sabbatical, and how this experience overturned my assumptions about cultural differences, the threat of depopulation, and the benefits of immigration in Europe and America.

November 2025 links are out, from mapping migration institutes to identifying EU policy responses to Ukraine. In the meantime, tell me what I should write about next! alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/migration-...

I wrote about why y'all should go to Japan, even if you don't have a midlife crisis. If you're still on the fence for some reason, just book your trip now.

I wrote about why y'all should go to Japan, even if you don't have a midlife crisis. If you're still on the fence for some reason, just book your trip now.

Needed - larger samples, more realism about (the lack of) heterogeneous treatment effects: -"less than a third of proposed hypotheses were supported... the largest predictor of positive exp. results was sample size" -"moderation hypotheses were rarely significant" academic.oup.com/poq/advance-...

November 2025 links are out, from mapping migration institutes to identifying EU policy responses to Ukraine. In the meantime, tell me what I should write about next! alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/migration-...