New IGC blog post w/ my advisor Anders Jensen: how AI can reshape tax administration by detecting evasion, targeting audits, and improving taxpayer services. Where does AI add real value, and where does it fall short? www.theigc.org/blogs/intell...

When it comes to the economy, are the Europeans sometimes their own worst enemy? The newly signed trade pact between the EU and South American is derailed. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/u...

We really should be able to do this. It’s a solveable problem!

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

This person went on a buying spree over the past 24 hours. Fresh wallet. Only existed since Dec 27th and has only bet on Venezuela-related markets. polymarket.com/@0x31a56e9E6...

What is the intersection of machine learning, causal inference, and economics? What are promising avenues for research at this intersection? I just drafted a new talk exploring these questions: maxkasy.github.io/home/files/s... Thoughts and comments welcome!

DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.

Ed Glaeser and Samantha Silverberg explain how screwed up the federal government's approach to subsidizing muni transit system's procurement of buses is -- and what to do about it. Short video. youtu.be/XLTGu8HFvuQ?... via @brookings.edu

These Indiana Republicans are civic heroes. Shocking and inspiring to see after the collapse of resistance to illiberalism among so many of their counterparts over the last decade.

Super cool looking paper. I want to try to implement this! arxiv.org/pdf/2512.06607

If you are at Harvard tomorrow (and why wouldn't you be?) I will be spitting truth about state capacity (also post your favorite Cambridge activities in replies) www.hks.harvard.edu/events/rebui...

Increasing political pressure on the Fed by half as much as Nixon did, for six months, raises the price level by 7% over the next decade. econweb.umd.edu/~drechsel/pa...

Check out our new data visualization platform to explore local economic conditions and policies targeting place in the US: "The Economy in Place." economyinplace.com

A blog post giving a more thorough take on survey experiments and the credibility revolution: cyrussamii.com?p=4168

This is an impressive project. My reaction to what it shows though is that survey experiments have gotten out of hand in polisci. I will blog more on this, but I do not think survey experiments are emblematic of the credibility revolution. Some are already interpreting as such, which is a problem.

Important public good (replications are much needed to help keep the whole enterprise honest but under-supplied)

"The high-income admissions advantage at Ivy-Plus colleges is driven by three factors: (1) preferences for children of alumni, (2) weight placed on non-academic credentials, and (3) athletic recruitment...The three factors...are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes..."

Also, friends, reviewers, editors -- please be willing to publish experimental estimates of the effects of anti-corruption messages on vote choice even if the "theory isn't novel" or "so and so already published on the effects of anti-corruption." This is an impt. estimand; we need many estimates!

Experts say exchanges could more closely scrutinize funds that made hops between multiple unknown addresses or move through swappers. ICIJ’s latest investigation The #CoinLaundry includes stories from scam victims around the world. Learn more: www.icij.org/investigatio...

ICIJ and its #CoinLaundry media partners interviewed 45 victims of crypto scams on four continents. In most cases, the funds from the alleged scammers’ wallet addresses were channeled to accounts at major exchanges, including Binance, OKX, HTX and Bybit. www.icij.org/investigatio...

Now forthcoming at Quarterly Journal of Economics Enlightenment Ideals and Belief in Progress in the Run-up to the Industrial Revolution: A Textual Analysis Available at: digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_... (See thread below for an overview)

This is terrifying. "[AI agents] can... infer a researcher's latent hypotheses and produce data that artificially confirms them." ... "We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people" [email protected]

Just got the best out-of-office message I've ever seen from a fellow academic: "I am currently away on leave. If this is an emergency... well, I doubt it. What could possibly be an emergency in my line of work?"

the password to the louvre surveillance server was "louvre" www.thesocialpost.it/2025/11/02/f...

The shutdown may not leave lasting economic damage, but it's making the Fed's job harder Powell warned the data blackout might be a reason for officials to move cautiously with cuts, upending expectations about December www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/b... @bencasselman.bsky.social @nytimes.com

📢 Our new VoxDevLit on Political Polarisation is out now! Senior Editors Cesi Cruz (University of Michigan) & Horacio Larreguy (ITAM) review research on the causes and consequences of polarisation. Read & download here: https://voxdev.org/voxdevlit/political-polarisation

Sora is much closer to pulling off the prompt "someone playing a winning card in magic the gathering, close up on the board state as the card is played" Interestingly, it makes up a card name and shows that fake card (in appropriate colors). Lots of little weirdness, but closer.

Progressives are standing behind Graham Platner despite his growing baggage. They'd rather project a populist image than adopt more moderate positions, @jonathanbchait.bsky.social argues.

Now, corporate taxes are not tariffs, firms are not countries, and pass through can take different forms (his claim was very large effects on wages), but he is very much aware how incidence works and that it is unlikely to just show up in profits

Hassett is neither a trade nor a political economist, but when he worked on corporate taxation his papers were showing that taxes are massively passed through rather than absorbed by suppliers

I organized an economist amicus brief in the IEEPA tariffs case the Supreme Court will soon hear. You can find the full brief here: www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...

PEPFAR hasn’t released new monitoring data since 2024, undermining accountability, planning, and coordination. Ramona Godbole explains that restoring transparency is essential to preserve PEPFAR’s credibility and to avoid dangerous gaps in coverage: https://bit.ly/3L3hawU

WashU in STL just announced, in a university-wide email, that we will NOT be signing The Compact. This statement, I believe, exists thanks to the tremendous energy generated w/in our community by, among others, the Faculty Senate, the revived AAUP, and student journalists. I'm proud of everybody.

🚨 New LSE job in political science 🚨 We're looking for a *Full or Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy* to join the LSE School of Public Policy Please share! jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

wikipedia's data shows that AI is siphoning traffic away from the site, which is a danger to its sustainability. ironically Wikipedia is more important than ever to users who want reliable information instead of slop, and to AI companies that need it for training data www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

Elections often look fair, but patronage and clientelism can quietly tip the scales. CID PhD Affiliate rduartegonzalez.bsky.social asks: how do we make democracy not just competitive, but truly fair? Read more about Raul's story and broader research agenda 👉 bit.ly/4qlOhwf

Honestly very impressed by Newsmax, the Washington Times, and the Washington Examiner. They deserve credit precisely because they’re standing up for journalistic principle notwithstanding their ideological inclination.

Si se enterasen de que el Partido Comunista de Venezuela es otro de los damnificados por la represión del chavismo, a algunos europeítos, compatriotas míos, que viven muy bien lejos de todo este horror, echando balones fuera culpando al imperialismo yanqui, a lo mejor les explotaría la cabeza.

... que ella y su entorno padecen la represión del régimen y que, además, permanece escondida en Venezuela a riesgo de que la arresten y le hagan lo que le hacen a los presos políticos (desaparición forzada, torturas, incomunicación, proceso sin garantías...), Machado no puede merecérselo más (6/6).

Pero a Machado no le han dado el Nobel de la Paz por ser neoliberal; se lo han dado por su lucha contra la tiranía chavista y en favor de una transición democrática justa y pacífica en Venezuela. Y, dado su éxito al exponer el fraude electoral en las presidenciales ante el mundo entero... (5/6)

María Corina Machado es de derechas, no de ultraderecha. En Venezuela no hay partidos de ultraderecha desde hace más de dos décadas. Y, en la coalición opositora que dejó en bragas al chavismo por su fraude en las últimas elecciones presidenciales, la mitad de los partidos eran de izquierdas (1/6).

Another impressive highlight from MIT’s response to the proposed “compact:” “MIT has never had legacy preferences in admissions.”

I’m on the job market this year and happy to connect with anyone to discuss potential opportunities!

📣 CID is on the job market! Meet the 7 CID PhD candidates who are entering the academic job market and pioneering new research to build a world where all can thrive. @kartiksrivastava.bsky.social @rduartegonzalez.bsky.social @tilmangraff.bsky.social www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid/...

I gave ChatGPT Codex an article about a famous, lost Maxis simulation, SimRefinery, and asked it to create it for me. It built a prototype for me while I did other stuff, never touching any code once, instead just occasionally poking Codex for small changes. Pla: emollick.github.io/simrefine_re...

Algorithms and Bureaucrats: Evidence from Tax Audit Selection in Senegal: Bachas, Pierre; Brockmeyer, Anne; Ferreira, Alipio; Sarr, Bassirou

“American colleges, especially the most selective ones, are confronting the dual problems of rampant grade inflation and declining rigor,” @rosehorowitch.bsky.social writes. “Teacher evaluations are a big part of how higher education got to this point.”

Kids need messy, authentic human friendships to hone their social intelligence. If they opt instead for AI companions, Russell Shaw writes, they risk losing opportunities to grow. https://theatln.tc/qqyOq8Ci

This, to me, is Blueskyism