The “hold-up problem” for the digital age. When you make the relationship-specific investment of streaming your favorite content from a digital provider (rather than owning it yourself), it gives that provider power and/or raises the cost of sourcing that input elsewhere. More holdup—>more ownership

I needed a good example for what happens when you put value capture ahead of value creation in your business strategy.

Interesting paper! Also, we do not directly model selection enough.

How did an extremely talented academic find moving from the US to Canada. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I think this is exactly how we fall into the “bad equilibrium.” Not training the next generation is a dumb choice. But most collective action problems lead to dumb outcomes. Not sure I take that much comfort in Canada’s laggard approach to technology and innovation, though….

Florida Decided There Were Too Many Children

Now, this is a way to do JOLT!!!!

On the site that tweeted too close to the sun I was briefly admired/reviled for my threads of dad jokes. Unfortunately, I have decided to restart the tradition here: #dadjokes #dadjoke #badjokes #badjoke #groaner #groaners #humor #humour #joke #jokes #pun #puns #punny #funny #notfunny #histoftech

Beware of coverage of AI-related pre-prints...unless they are mine. ;-)

Worth revisiting as we chase down the impact of AI on work. SO much is happening alongside the introduction of these models--how do we even start to unpack the causal effect vs. pandemic, pandemic response, VC contraction, tariffs, macro uncertainty, compositional shifts in labor supply, etc.?

USDA quietly said Friday it will, after a century, end the Farm Labor Survey (FLS), the only wage survey of ag employers. FLS is a critical input to setting local minimum wages for H-2A visa workers to try to avoid harm to U.S. workers' wages. #LaborDay #EconSky www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/Not...

This seems really important to understand, as we race to provide “back of the envelope” estimates of AI’s impact. Also, we should all expect to get a lot wrong in these early days. Owning it = integrity.

Impressive summary.

AI PSA: you have to do more than check that the AI-generated citations are real papers. You have to actually *use the citations properly.* Experts are going to notice when you clearly have no idea what is in the papers you cite. The authors, especially, will notice. They are often referees.

When folks complain about the influence of “technocrats,” what do they mean?

New: Flock, the ALPR company in thousands of U.S. communities and which ICE taps into, wants to partner with a firm that sells dashcams to ordinary drivers. Nexar gets "trillions" of images a month from the dashcams. Could turn cars into roaming surveillance devices www.404media.co/flock-wants-...

Excited to have my research (co-authored with the dream team of @mjyang.bsky.social, Zachary Kroff, and @erikbryn.bsky.social) featured in the New Yorker!

Americans used to get very upset at me for saying that the US has a mostly codified constitution with important unwritten elements and yell at me that "The Constitution is a document!" so I almost appreciate that the President has spent the last 7 months on speedrun proving me right... almost.

Now that I am home, here are my post-completion thoughts on the #Zcavengerhunt. First off: it was much more fun than I thought it would be, and that was largely due to how well it was organized, how it encouraged participants to talk to each other, and the spirit of the event.

In retrospect, it was silly to assume that it would somehow work out to stay in a booking.com listing that was across the street from the advertised address, missing one of the promised # of beds, with air conditioning ducts flopped thru unscreened windows to pass the “air conditioned” search filter

I was going to write some thank you notes today, but this feels like one to add to my pile of correspondence.

1/ Quick update on #fallvaccines: Flu and RSV vaccines remain business as usual this fall: if you’re eligible, you should be able to get them without issue. Vaccinations should start in September. Covid-19 vaccines are another story. There will be three key developments this week 👇

The alt-text is 🔥

WTF, Global Affairs Canada? If you can't answer Qs bc of privacy, issue a travel warning, dammit! "Global Affairs Canada did not respond directly to more than a dozen questions sent by The Globe, & did not confirm whether Canadian officials were aware that children had spent time in ICE detention."

He took on the Stormtroopers with his bite-sabre. Henceforth, he shall be known as hoagie-won-kenobi.

The Department of Energy HQ is purportedly cancelling all pending #FOIA requests submitted before October 1, 2024, unless the requester emails a specific address w/i 30 days asking the agency to continue processing. This is wildly illegal. public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-15490.pdf

I do love a good tea party.

This is a great piece of data storytelling. And also not depressing or anxiety-provoking.

This hit a bit close to home… #EconSky #Andor

Challenge: post your last photo taken in DC to show what a hell-hole it is.

Epic #EconSky post.

“The study, by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), also found that similar care needs in women were more likely to be omitted or described in less serious terms. Dr Sam Rickman, the lead author of the report… said AI could result in “unequal care provision for women””

“Losing trust in government statistics wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would be the end of the world as we know it.” Sobering thoughts for investors and others from Jeff Sommer. What if You Can’t Believe the Official Numbers? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/b... #econsky @aaronsojourner.org

For the record, while it's very important to scrutinize current practices, none of the reported concerns even made me think about withdrawing from the donor registry. #econsky #transplantation #medicine marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2025/08/with...

More bad news for butterflies. Our new paper led by Wendy Leuenberger shows common species are declining even more rapidly than rare ones. @ZipkinLab Three decades of declines restructure butterfly communities in the Midwestern United States | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501340122

The student newspaper. This fell. To the student. Newspaper.

Hey #econSky I've written a short blog post on some hidden advantages I see in Pre-Analysis Plans for team work, whether you do experimental research or not. Check it out here: adegendre.github.io/posts/2025-0...

Stanford's student paper sues Noem and Rubio, saying their policies cause non-citizen students to avoid expressing themselves freely in the Daily's pages due to fear of detention and deportation h/t @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.thefire.org/sites/defaul...

Some cities run on solar 95% of the time – cheaper than coal. With falling battery prices (-40% in a year), solar can run almost 24/7 in the sunniest cities. And 60% of the time in cloudy ones. This isn’t theory. It’s already happening. @carbonbrief.org

Important details from this story: 1) Yet another news-break by student journalists (this time @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social) www.thecrimson.com/article/2025... 2) Harvard saying "see you in court," not "let's make a deal." 3) Per Garber, WH/MAGA leaked news of a "deal." NYT then ran with it.

Breathing this during the “holiday long weekend” has really sucked. I hope it sucks bad enough for enough people that we can actually make progress on the climate crisis.

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements This is a big deal

I've never seen someone's soul leave their body in the middle of a word before

What to make of POTUS's attempt to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)? Let's run down what knowledgable people are saying...

Best thing I learned all day.

"I see you are affiliated with Very Important Men, so we will condescend to invite you to give a free keynote for us" is a really crummy invitation strategy, FWIW.