Happy to see this published today - The GI Bill is a celebrated policy, but many veteran graduates are underemployed. I examine veteran underemployment, earnings penalties, and explore mechanisms across three historical episodes: WWII, Vietnam War, and GWOT. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Very proud of all the U.S. economists who signed this open letter to Trump: "Infrastructure strikes would impose enormous economic and strategic costs on America and humanitarian costs on the people of Iran, while strengthening the IRGC.

I hope the excellent Iranian students we accepted into our PhD program survive. I don't know how supportive they are of the regime change attempts, but I doubt they are supportive of a mad man destroying the country's infrastructure because of his own strategic mistakes.

Found this old map of the Otaniemi area where my university, Aalto, is now located.

News organizations have been trained in recent years to try to appear unbiased by including partisan, low quality polls in their averages. That's how the NY Times ends up with 41% avg. support for the Iran war today. Editorial decisions about how much to bow to dictators' will end up costing lives.

I honestly don't know who makes up stuff more: Chatgpt or Trump. But the combination of dishonest politicians and AI who will make up any answer to look polished is such a crappy zeitgeist for 2026.

Reading some referee reports clearly done with chatgpt, I fear it won’t be long until I’ll get reports where the referee left ”Adult mode” on.

By firing an opponent of chatgpt becoming smut and accusing her of sexual discrimination, Altman’s company emulates the ”accussation in a mirror” tactics of totalitarian regimes- portraying your opponent as morally corrupt to confuse public perception and delegitimize genuine criticism.

It’s ok to go back now, Roseanne Barr, the president of the United States posted a video of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys.

DOGE appears to have had an immediate use for social security data as it sought to influence elections.

Submit a paper to this year's meeting of the European Society for Population Economics in Helsinki (many labor/education submissions as well). I happen to be one of the organizers, so reach out if you have questions.

European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society in Nicosia- the University cats getting some warm glow.

New in print: In MS counties w/ higher % Black students, white policymakers were less likely to access Equalization funds. Exploiting variation in school spending induced by this so-called equalization policy, we document a tragedy in racist public policy. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It's really not for Zelensky to rise to the occasion, NY Times. He has, countless times. It's for Republican senators to remember US used to defend democratic countries attacked by Russia. Why would the US do that? Otherwise Russia takes over, which is seems to have done at the CIA and White House.

"Either the loss of dignity, or the risk of losing a key partner."- such a diplomatic way for Zelensky to say the US is abdicating from defending freedom and democracy.

Can people switching from X to Bluesky please leave humblebrags behind?

I learned today that a Carnegie Mellon Fulbright student from Pakistan was detained by ICE in Pittsburgh. The charges are unclear, and there’s no public news—unlike earlier student arrests. This is how fascism normalizes. It all happens in a camp somewhere far away.

Went to the office and found out Uni was closed today for Reformation day. In my simple Weberian logic, I mistakenly imagined protestants didn’t have religious holidays.

Can researchers start suing AI companies for all the made up articles and citations?

Norway preparing for Trump's wrath if he doesn't get the Nobel prize is the next best thing after "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

This doesn’t bode well for my talk tomorrow, but this is why we have universities. Maybe the next generation of leaders won’t allow a genocide to happen under their eyes.

So much for "don't be evil" ...sickening how these corporations keep paying Trump.

The FCC's intervention is not just about curbing freedom of speech. Every federal institution has political appointees who are strongarming and blackmailing private businesses into donating to the Trump Cosa Nostra.

"The starting point should be that the employment rates and share of benefit recipients of immigrants would be roughly the same as those of Finns." I'll be sure to ask this economist what was the last war or genocide he escaped from.

I can just see this discontinuity in seminar slides years from now when we'll examine effects on morbidity, sick days, house values, etc.

Just a reminder that the much needed recognition of Palestine is not just a political bargaining chip and a message to Israel, but has very real implications for the lives of Palestinians abroad.

Great to see this in print : we develop a general equilibrium model of competition between for-profit, public and NFP colleges. We quantify the response of for-profit colleges to changes in public subsidies, and "gainful employment" legislation that links federal funding to student loan repayment.

New WP: we link 1940,2000,2010 census & Numident U.S. death records to study the education–mortality gradient, which we find robust to rich parental and neighborhood controls; mediators observed in 2000 explain over half the gradient, with interesting differences across margins of educ. attainment.

I don’t know what worries me more: Trump firing the BLS commissioner like any old dictator, or the language of appeasement that the NY Times has adopted when reporting on this presidency.

In Iași for the annual Romanian economists from abroad conference www.ermas.ro. All sessions in English and foreign presenters welcome.

A few years ago economist Guido Menzio was reported as a potential terrorist to cabin crew as he was writing differential equations and integrals that looked like Arabic to the person seated next to him. That person is now running the country.

I know of so many academics who did not get the message of the "there was no one left to speak for me" poem 😔

Arrived in Toronto for SOLE 2025. Everyone at the border was friendly, and no one asked to see if I had pictures of JD Vance on my phone.

You can have as many lists of banned words you want, the systematic genocide the Israeli army is perpetrating in Gaza and the racism, corruption and incompetence of the Trump administration can be seen from space.

I have decided to cancel all travel to the U.S. during my sabbatical and beyond. Growing up in a communist totalitarian regime, I am sickened every day by Trump and the far right leaders he supports all over the world, and I don't want to put my institution and host institutions at various risks.

Rotating lectern made in 1792, the LLM of its time, at the Naples Royal Palace. Great conference of the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE)- next year in Helsinki !

Socialist East German early childcare policies really stand out in terms of coverage - from "Can Early Public Childcare Reduce Child Penalties? - Evidence from Germany", Lisa Marie Duletzki

We are organizing a panel on the Labor Market Outcomes of LGBT Employees at the Aalto School of Business Tuesday next week- two academic presentations (Kitt Carpenter, Ylva Moberg), networking break, and policy panel (Seta, EY and Havulintu). Details here: www.aalto.fi/en/events/la...

Romanians voted against the pro-Putin/pro-MAGA nationalist. In 2016 in the U.S., Russia ran a disinfo blitz for Trump. Russia did the same in Romania in 2024, but the Rom. Constitutional Court scrapped round 1. Moscow kept at it—and Musk, JD Vance & Don Jr. piled on. Voters still said NO.

Finally some sanity - and justice for Rumeysa.

An excellent summary of all the conflicts of interest and actions against anti-corruption institutions under the Trump administration.

Soon they'll start sending these letters to Econ journals. They'll get a weak R&R in a year's time.

🧵DISMANTLING DEMOCRACY I've been keeping track of Trump actions - now up to 192. Here, I dig into 69 actions specifically targeted at undermining democracy, rule of law & suppressing dissent. It's been 12 weeks of assaults on democracy. based on christinapagel.substack.com/p/a-republic... 1/18

If you know of talented students looking for a PhD this season, with interests in Macroeconomics, Labor Economics and/or Public Economics, my very supportive coauthor Ioana Schiopu has an opening. Fully funded and in Barcelona, no less.

In Finnish family-owned firms, sons are 4x more likely than daughters to inherit leadership roles. How do entrepreneurial families arrive at such gender-skewed decisions—and what policy implications emerge from these choices? An opinion piece for IZA wol.iza.org/opinions/pla...

Pro-Palestinian protest at Stockholm University today. Notice how the police officer doesn't put on a mask and drag the protesters to a private prison without due process for weeks

Getting ready for autarky.

To understand what's happening to Columbia and Harvard under Trump, look at the pressures Israeli universities have been put through under Netanyahu.

New WP (w/ Robert Miller) - With Finnish data, we track how entrepreneurial families reach gender imbalanced decisions in CEO succession. We trace son preference in births/adoptions; how human capital accumulation depends on offspring gender; how the firm and children fare around successions.