Don't spend your Black Friday chasing deals. Read job market papers (and hire my students) instead @john-fallon-econ.com studies both occupational licensing AND the bizarre world of early 20th century healthcare, w MDs and chiropractors competing over patients to fix (or at least make less worse)

A thread of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) that look like record covers... because that's EXACTLY what the world needs 1. Huey Lewis and the News: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

We know that, for a ton of reasons, a lot of folks don't have as much to spend as they'd like this holiday season. Sooooooo, here's a thread of things you can do that will support your local indie bookstore or other business WITHOUT spending any more than you intended...

When Elon blew up Twitter he also fragmented online Econ. My solution has been to crosspost to X+Threads+BlueSky. I'm now seeing some interesting stuff on LinkedIn, so I've started to post there too. But I'm a newb. If you’ve got any pointers, I’d love to hear 'em: www.linkedin.com/in/justin-wo...

New WP: “University as a Melting Pot: Long-term Effects of Internationalization” Debates on international students often focus on capacity constraints, funding, or competition. In the paper, I show that the main effects of internationalization on natives are not academic or economic, but social.

Why impact evaluations are so important: not everything that sounds like a good policy actually has the desired impact. While many interventions are highly effective, others don't work at all:

Starting to believe in a system of peer review that says: "For every 5 reviews you do for our journal, we'll publish one of your articles no questions asked."

I am quoted in this Globe article as Director of American Studies at BU, and I like my quote very much: “It's a value to society to have people highly educated in disciplines, whether they teach at universities or not.”

"From Harvard to BU to Brown, New England schools are enrolling fewer new PhDs this year. Why?" www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/25/b...

University students who were provided with a free gym card (in a randomized experiment) exercised more and had a significant improvement in academic performance. The treated students were also less likely to drop out of classes www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

John Fallon (one of my PhD students on the market this year) does fantastic work in IO / Labor / Education, studying the medical profession in his JMP and teacher workforce policies in his other dissertation chapters. Take a look 👇

It appears that ED's first attempt to shift a piece of its portfolio to another agency has not gone tremendously well. We'll see if there are any lessons applied to this new, larger attempt.

Terrific podcast (includes @joshua-goodman.com) on the shocking UCSD report about the remedial math needs of incoming students and declines in math achievement more generally: open.spotify.com/episode/06Ve...

That standards-based reform altered culture of schooling in a way that had consequences for kids' mental heath = interesting and not entirely implausible hypothesis that is profoundly difficult to test (and, contrary to the author, is relative well-trodden ground) This article, however, ain't it

If other folks could stay off the road Tuesday night so that we don't get stuck in traffic, I'd appreciate it.

I was sufficiently annoyed with a piece claiming that inflation-adjusted college costs have doubled over the last 20 years that I wrote a response. There really haven't been increases over the last decade, but I fear that promising trend may be changing.

Hiring this year in economics or management? I try to read every JMP on innovation, entrepreneurship, or econ of AI; why not make the list public? Here's 54 candidates on the market this year (link below). Many great papers + NBER Innovation PhD boot camp grads! kevinbryanecon.com/2025innovati...

Looking forward to the next iteration of this work, “F- it, we’re doing four robustnesses.”

Recently accepted by #QJE, “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges,” by Chetty (@Oppinsights), Deming, and Friedman: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

Incredibly proud of this 🤩🥹! So much work and determination behind this publication. What a journey this was! Honored to have done it with you @vickybarone.bsky.social 🚀❤️

I just bought tix to see Weird Al in concert this July. That is all.

Our @buwheelock.bsky.social comms director told me I now hold every "In the Media" spot on our homepage, something no faculty member has done before! I'm grateful for the attention our work is getting. And now I understand why this week felt like a whirlwind. www.bu.edu/wheelock/

Hadley Wickham made a GenZ version of dplyr 😂 hadley.github.io/genzplyr/

New research finds that valuable education data is being wasted: Large gains are possible at nearly zero cost simply by better leveraging all of the test items currently collected, from @jessebruhn.bsky.social, Michael Gilraine, Jens Ludwig, and Sendhil Mullainathan www.nber.org/papers/w34484

Why do I love living in Boston? Yo-Yo Ma playing the Bach cello suites before bringing Mayor Wu out to duet for an encore, that’s why.

We're launching the Tobin-Cowles Health Economics & Policy Program, a hub for policy-relevant health economics research at Yale. Co-directed by Janet Currie & Zack Cooper, the Program will catalyze rigorous economic scholarship to directly inform policy: tobin.yale.edu/news/251117/...

Excited to share that I'm writing a book: a history of the debates over funding public schools from the 1960's to now. (Yes the working title is tongue in cheek.) Now I just need to finish writing—stay tuned! And if you want to follow my work, you can do so here: www.chalkbeat.org/newsletters/...

The US is losing blue-collar jobs for the first time since the pandemic—year-on-year job losses have hit 59k as manufacturing industries lose jobs at a rapid pace while growth in construction & transportation has nearly zeroed out

Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics: "Early Grade Retention Harms Adult Earnings" by Jiee Zhong. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

I was glad to be on the latest episode of @dkthomp.bsky.social's Plain English podcast, discussing how to turn around declining US math skills. We know at least some of the solutions but in many cases have been doing just the opposite. Listen here: open.spotify.com/episode/06Ve...

#EconSky ICYMI: the #EconJMP feed reposts tweets with that tag or #econjobmarket. Candidates: introduce yourself Hiring folks: browse and subscribe

I'm on the #EconJobMarket! I study how policies and childhood environments shape outcomes of low-income & vulnerable kids. In my JMP, I study the effects of allowing youth who would have aged out of foster care at 18 to stay until 21—offering support their peers not in foster care get from parents.

🚨 New report! “The Road to SUCCESS” documents how Massachusetts built a statewide student support initiative across all 15 public community colleges. Comprehensive support services. Local flexibility. Rapid scale-up. Report 👉: annenberg.brown.edu/publications...

Q for the professors: I’m mentoring a few students on their (econ) honors theses. I’m used to giving feedback for grad students, but the objective function/expectations for undergrad work seems necessarily different How do you differentiate advising research for grad students vs undergrads?

So great to see BLS back to work measuring and informing us about our large and dynamic economy. It’s a great institution full of dedicated civil servants deeply committed their mission. They have had a tough year, and everyone is covering for someone who left. I thank them all for their service.

Amazing study showing that deactivating social media improved mental health. [It has so many coauthors that the sample size was sufficient to run the RCT on themselves.]

@edsustainable.bsky.social is hosting our first annual interdisciplinary conference! Research at the intersection of education and the environment. 🎓🌎 May 1st, 2026 Providence, RI Easy one paragraph abstract submission ⬇️ docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Please share w/ your networks!

I'm glad The Atlantic is drawing attention to declining US math skills. I'm on record here partly blaming lowered expectations during the pandemic, but also noting that the problems run deeper than just the past 5 years. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

It's striking just how important factors beyond the school matter for school learning. Heat is one of them. Excited for this new report from the IDB. publications.iadb.org/en/heat-proo...

CSWEP strongly condemns Larry Summers’ behavior as revealed in the email correspondence with the late Jeffrey Epstein. While abuse of power in the economics profession is not new, rarely has the intent behind such abuse been so clearly stated.

Indonesia built 6,000 secondary schools and you'll never guess what happened to enrolment rates next cesarlgm.github.io/documents/pa...

I spoke with the Boston Globe about the Summers situation TLDR: other professors like myself can no longer trust Summers to perform a key duty of a university professor, which is to advise & mentor students www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/18/m...

I will be sending this email a lot this year. Feel free to tell me it's problematic, but I've had it with students who don't show up and expect me to be in their corner.

I have read more upsetting things. But the UCSD report is worth reading, as are the various responses to it. Grade inflation coupled with the end of tests has made a totally foreseeable outcome.

One of the most upsetting articles I've read in a long time www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-grade... UCSD report senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347... We are failing a generation of kids.

1/ Today the Department of Education said that it’s transferring a variety of programs to other agencies, making good on Trump’s promise to dismantle ED. The most important thing to understand is that this is a Potemkin reorganization. It’s fugazi, it’s fairy dust. It’s not real.

My statement on McMahon's plan to dismember the U.S. Department of Education. www.newamerica.org/education-po...

From a co-author of Larry Summers open.substack.com/pub/larrykot...

"Housing, housing, housing is the issue that I hear everywhere I go... we need to produce more housing in order to lower the cost. I have charged Senator Cyr [Housing Committee Chair] with the task 'Be bold. Nothing is off the table.'" - Massachusetts Senate President Spilka