When I got tenure, I decided to use it start a new research agenda, studying US science in the 20th century, how it became dominant, what held it back, and what we can do better. Here's the first pub (with Scott Kim).

Stephen Miller is Wrong about American Science www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

Jacob French and I are hiring a pre-doc in Applied Micro apply.interfolio.com/166572

This, from my colleague Brent Neiman says it all. Trump admin used the results from his paper to justify tariff rates. Except they used the completely wrong number. Staggering 🤯 www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/o...

Some Germans want Syrians to return home - unless they are doctors. That won't work: "If my family and friends aren't allowed to stay, then I don't want to either." 1/n wapo.st/3DDxUYd

Dunno what this says about me, but I saw "Moby Dick" at the Met last night and absolutely loved it, down to the "squarely undulating minor-key references to Philip Glass, John Adams and Britten..." Go see it if you can! www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/a...

Phew. All that takeout I'm buying is increasing productivity. Thank you @goolsbee.bsky.social, Chad Syverson, NYUStern PhD student Rebecca Goldgof & Joe Tatarka www.nber.org/papers/w33555

When German Alexander rammed his car into a group of people in Mannheim on Monday, killing two, wounding 25, he was stopped by Afzal from Pakistan. It's funny how we only hear names and place of birth when they match our fear and prejudice.

There is still some sanity in this world, at least when it comes to footwear. Birkenstocks argued that their sandals are "art" to get copyright protection. German courts said "nope" www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/s...

the grownups are back in charge USDA accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is now trying to rehire them www.nbcnews.com/politics/dog...

A plagiarism check did not find evidence of plagiarism, so is publishing accusations of poor citation practices in footnotes (25 years ago, please check mine). And when that's not working they go after the dissertation of @robert-habeck.de wife. Ok....

ESA now puts the probability of Earth impact at 1.8%, NASA (miraculously not dismantled yet by Musk and Trump) at 1.9%. NASA data suggest a yield of roughly 8MT TNT equiv. Big, but Tsar Bomba was bigger 🤓 tl;dr: it's very unlikely to hit. And there's zero chance we'll be wiped out as a species.

Felt this, as we were trying to estimate how seeing Marie Curie affected girls' choice to pursue science. Part of our data was gone. I never thought that in this country censorship would prevent me from doing my research. wapo.st/4hPMU3A

Germany needs about 400,000 immigrants per year to keep its economy going. IAB's Enzo Weber & @yuliyakosyakova.bsky.social explain why (in German) www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...

Kim is great, really smart and thoughtful. And like @tkehoe.bsky.social I admire Kim for his service and very much hope he succeeds in influencing US economic policy.

"The feeling of not being wanted in that country" is an issue not only in Germany but also in the US, historically and today. In "Immigration and Innovation. Lessons from the Quota Act" we find that students, who were exempted, did not come to the US after the quotas if their countries were targeted

Inspiring: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/o...

I'm shocked by the implied decline in inequality between 1913 and 1958. Did WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII disproportionately destroy top wealth? Using the same measures for 1913 and the rest of the graph, 1913 may look as bad as today. So what happened in the first half of the 20th century?

Access to pre-k increases parental earnings by over $5,400 per year, show bsky.app/profile/john..., Chris Neilson, Xiaoyang Ye, Seth Zimmerman). Could you do this for publications? For women vs men? nber.org/papers/w33038

Not what I had expected to see: www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/u...

Santos started his 5-year appointment in 2022, and was preparing the 2030 census, which is "set to be used to redistribute political representation and trillions in federal funding across the country over the next decade."

If you want to pretend the world is in harmony for a couple of hours, we are singing, and I think it'll be beautiful bkcm.org/event/joyofs...

Here's what we import from Colombia that will get socked with 25%/50% tariffs if imposed . . .

Strongly recommend this episode of #TheEconomicsShow with @alanbeattie.bsky.social and @douglasirwin.bsky.social - a true trade feast! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

A great point. Hammering Colombia’s legal exports will pour acid on the work of so many Colombians to overcome the narcoeconomy

First time ever surfing. Loved every second of it. Back to the real world tomorrow.

Great paper by Marta Prato on effects of inventor migration on innovation in the US and EU @qjeharvard.bsky.social academic.oup.com/qje/article-...

My step-Dad came home from the hospital today, after three surgeries and four harrowing weeks. Not to die, as we had thought on Christmas but to live. And I'll do my darnedest to have it be a good time.

Daughters living at home were the safety net when Dads making booze lost jobs during Prohibition www.nber.org/papers/w3334...

If this is true, I might as well stop working out and start eating pop tarts www.nber.org/papers/w3334...

If you are happen to be in Paris, go see Sahar Parsa present at CEPS!

Re-posting this call for applications targeting PhD students and early career researchers (PhDs 2014 or later) doing research on the fiscal and economic effects of three productivity policies: R&D, permitting, and immigration. Applications due at midnight on Thurs January 16.

Looking forward to our session on "Women, War, and Structural Change" at the AEA, I'll talk about the "Ms.Allocation of Talent" - on zoom because I'm home with my step-Dad, but super grateful to be there with you all www.aeaweb.org/conference/2...,

Here are the first five sets of slides: 01 Introduction: psantanna.com/DiD/01_Intro... 02 Classical 2x2 setup: psantanna.com/DiD/02_two_b... 03 Clustering issues: psantanna.com/DiD/03_Clust... 04 Functional form: psantanna.com/DiD/04_Funct... 05 Covariates: psantanna.com/DiD/05_Covar...

I've had a tough hoilday taking care of step-Dad after two failed surgeries. But now I'm laughing as I try to clean my inbox from 100s of funny and kind emails from NYU faculty who hit reply all. Thank you NYU 🤣https://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/28/40000-nyu-students-spammed-in-replyallcalypse/

Merry Christmas! (I love old trees...)

Tupi got a mantra, and I'm going to steal it. "Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane. Focused. Flourishing.” www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/s...

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 led to a 72 percent relative increase in bilateral exports for affected country pairs and a likely permanent increase in world trade, from David S. Jacks, Christopher M. Meissner, and Nikolaus Wolf https://www.nber.org/papers/w33250

📢 #CallForPapers @cepr.org and RFBerlin invite submissions for the RFBerlin-CEPR Annual #Symposium in #Labour Economics. Keynotes by: John Friedman (Brown U. & Opportunity Insights) and Heather Sarsons (UBC Economics & CEPR). 📆 Deadline: 31 Jan 2025 More details & submit here: ow.ly/wZGK50U923u

Palma ahead of European Winter Meetings of @econometric.bsky.social. What a beautiful city!

Red bars are the 1920s quota acts www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/b...

Economists are not prepared for the impact of the demographic cliff. Enrollments are already down in aggregate, they are going to fall more, and it looks like maybe professor demand is already responding

#TalDíaComoHoy en 1906, nace Grace Murray Hopper. Desarrolló el 1° compilador para un lenguaje de programación y fue precursora del COBOL. También popularizó el término «debugging» para corregir errores. ¡El Día Mundial de la Informática se celebra hoy en su honor! ¡Mi día! 👩🏻‍💻

This lecture by @humphreyslab.bsky.social is amazing: "William Muir was an evolutionary biologist interested in productivity. He studied chickens because their productivity could be very easily measured — by simply counting their eggs they laid. He designed an elegant experiment. ...1/n

Our latest research with Toman Barsbai and Christoph Winter is now forthcoming in JOLE! 📄 We explore how labor market conditions at arrival shape migrants’ integration, showing that arriving during recessions pushes migrants into lower-paying jobs—a persistent effect lasting over 10 years.

....and their word of the year - "kakistocracy" - sounds like German slang for sh.t