Folks in the Boston area: I’m looking forward to being in conversation with @greenwell.bsky.social this week on *Bad Company* — one of my favorite recent books and exceptional narrative non-fiction. Register: www.hks.harvard.edu/events/priva...

New from @drodrik.bsky.social, Gordon Hanson, and myself: "While global cooperation and national resource mobilization will be necessary to address the challenges we now face, it is local action that offers the most promising path forward." www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/g...

Come work with us on the Reimagining the Economy team at @harvardkennedy.bsky.social ⬇️

One of the most solipsistic things I do every year is share my favorite books. And this has been a pretty good reading year, with remarkable fiction and non-fiction. Here are some of the books that resonated most and that I’m thinking about as the year ends www.linkedin.com/pulse/books-...

One of the most solipsistic things I do every year is share my favorite books. And this has been a pretty good reading year, with remarkable fiction and non-fiction. Here are some of the books that resonated most and that I’m thinking about as the year ends www.linkedin.com/pulse/books-...

Excited to share *The Economy in Place* — a new data viz platform tracking local economic conditions and place-based policies U.S. commuting zones, with dashboards, place profiles, a blog, and research bibliography. economyinplace.com

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

Before the Booker Prize gets announced today, here’s my ranking of the shortlisted novels: 1. Flesh 2. Audition 3. The Rest of Our Lives 4. Flashlight 5. The Land in Winter 6. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (But #6 is probably going to win)

Official publication day www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shared-pro...

Currently reading @drodrik.bsky.social’s new book, releasing in a few weeks. Join us for a launch discussion with Dani Rodrik, @chatibbasri.bsky.social, Rebecca Henderson, & @johncassidysays.bsky.social, on October 29, at Harvard Kennedy School. Register here: www.hks.harvard.edu/events/share...

Really interesting case study on transformation support in a 🇩🇪 industrial region. Here's just one feature: “The final design reflects an intentional choice to avoid setting legacy sectors and new industries against one another... 1/

In a new case study, Sebastian Buck and I unpack the origins & functioning of a €3 billion investment instrument established by the German state of Saarland. Since 2022, the fund has made investments with the twin aims of stabilizing existing industries and enabling long-term transformation⬇️

@ezrakleinbot.bsky.social & @dkthomp.bsky.social's Abundance has become a Rorschach test among policy analysts w/ much discussion focusing on the impediments that government may have imposed upon itself. But beyond that conversation is a more expansive state capacity project ssir.org/articles/ent...

"Evidently, the state capacity needed to generate this abundance won’t just be a top-down federal imperative...We need to take an Everything Everywhere All at Once approach to building the institutional capacity required for an abundance of economic prosperity." @ssir.org ssir.org/articles/ent...

@ezrakleinbot.bsky.social & @dkthomp.bsky.social's Abundance has become a Rorschach test among policy analysts w/ much discussion focusing on the impediments that government may have imposed upon itself. But beyond that conversation is a more expansive state capacity project ssir.org/articles/ent...

"The state capacity needed to generate this abundance won’t just be a top-down federal imperative. It’ll involve building out the capabilities of a range of local public and private institutions, the system hubs and their spokes." New piece from @rohansandhu.bsky.social

“Mapping the AI economy” My new report w/ @shriyared.bsky.social @brookings.edu www.brookings.edu/articles/map... @shiraovide.bsky.social @profhicks.bsky.social @nickbunker.bsky.social @berkeleyolab.bsky.social @pkrugman.bsky.social @kevinroose.com @conorsen.bsky.social

Absolutely no one: Me: here are my best 10 movies of the 21st century: (And 5 more: The Lobster, The Squid and the Whale, No Country for Old Men, The Dark Knight, LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring)

. @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social: "I worry about a politics that often sees only problems of corporate & oligarchic control. That is a politics with so totalizing a theory of power that it has a lost a clear view of policy... That is a world in which the left will fail, both substantively & politically"

It was very invigorating to be at - and help organize - the 25th anniversary celebrations of the MPA/ID program. Some reflections: www.linkedin.com/posts/rohans...

Pre-doc opening: Come work with @harvardrte.bsky.social on research about place-based policies, industrial policy, and local labor markets with Gordon Hanson, @drodrik.bsky.social, and the rest of our great team! #EconRA #EconSky

Folks in the Boston area, we (@harvardrte.bsky.social) are hosting a panel discussion tomorrow with regional leaders at the forefront of building tech ecosystems in Colorado and Wyoming, Chicago, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sign up here: www.hks.harvard.edu/events/ameri...

The Reimagining the Economy Project is now on Bluesky! Follow our work here ⬇️

Reimagining the Economy is an economics-centered program based at the Harvard Kennedy School. We work on local labor market, industrial, and productive development policies in the US & around the world. We combine rigorous research with practitioner insight. www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/wien...

Excited to share v1 of our new paper on the Economics of Digital Public Infrastructure. This work provides a conceptual framework for thinking about how to measure the ways infrastructure creates value. Real privilege to work with @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social t.co/ENfNTMTgdU

"The bedrocks of successful climate action are limits on greenhouse gas emissions & cooperation with countries where emissions are growing fastest. A myopic & imperialistic focus on domestic energy production will take the world in the opposite direction"

From @ifp.bsky.social's Brian Potter: where do Nobel Prize winners come from? | would be interesting to unpack how these trends correlate with public R&D investments, especially during and post WWII in the US www.construction-physics.com/p/who-wins-n...

[email protected], @raffasadun.bsky.social, et al study 776 P&G employees & find large effects of #AI on collaboration & expertise: individuals w/ AI match the performance of teams without AI, produce more balanced solutions, & report positive emotions on the job papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The "supply chain" framing allows us to unpack the process, the rules, intermediary institutions through which "horizontally-differentiated policy actions" are designed, funded, and implemented within "vertically structured policy domains"

We discuss supply chains for 6 domains: strategy and planning, business recruitment and retention, small business support, community redevelopment, workforce development, and technological innovation. Across all of these domains, policies are implemented via a range of local intermediaries

Need to read, but the idea of place-based policy “supply chains” seems extremely helpful. Especially in a v centralised country like the UK 👇👇👇

Finally, today's institutions and rules are an accretion of over 150 years of innovations and updates to policies. We trace this history - from the creation of land grant colleges in the 1860s to New Market Tax Credits, Empowerment Zones, Opportunity Zones, & Bidenomics in the last couple of decades

Gordon Hanson, @drodrik.bsky.social, & my chapter for @nber.org's upcoming volume on place-based policy. We discuss the history of innovations in place-based policies in the US & unpack the "supply chains" through which these policies are implemented in different domains | www.nber.org/papers/w33511

. @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social & @dkthomp.bsky.social's #Abundance is about government *effectiveness* - as opposed to efficiency. It flips the script & frames policy in terms of the outcomes we need to accomplish. As such, it's about *enabling* the state to be more ambitious, not constraining it (1/5)

Big day for this genre of books in Cambridge — but terrible coordination between bookstores that @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social & @dkthomp.bsky.social, and @yappelbaum.bsky.social are all doing book events at the *same time* 😐

Apropos absolutely nothing, I'm giving up on current political affairs and rewatching all of The West Wing instead. Call me naive, but I need some semblance of idealism in my life.

Understanding the supply chain for place based policy - nber.org/papers/w33511 "The apparatus is the product of 150 years of policy innovation, both top down & bottom up"

Gordon Hanson, @drodrik.bsky.social, & my chapter for @nber.org's upcoming volume on place-based policy. We discuss the history of innovations in place-based policies in the US & unpack the "supply chains" through which these policies are implemented in different domains | www.nber.org/papers/w33511

In partnership with @schmidtsciences.bsky.social, @simonhrjohnson.bsky.social, David Autor and I are seeking funding proposals from researchers conducting innovative field experiments on the labor economics of frontier AI. Expressions of interest due March 31. shapingwork.mit.edu/call-for-pro...

Postdoc opportunity on industrial policies and related topics at the Reimagining the Economy program at Harvard www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid/...

Professional update: I've joined the Reimagining the Economy Project @harvardkennedy.bsky.social @harvardmwc.bsky.social as a senior research fellow, alongside Gordon Hanson, Dani Rodrik (@drodrik.bsky.social), @rohansandhu.bsky.social, and their excellent team. news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

Cambridge, MA just passed one of the most — if not the most — ambitious zoning reforms in the US, legalizing multifamily housing up to 6 stories! docs.google.com/document/u/0...

We are hiring pre-docs at the Reimagining the Economy Program at Harvard www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/wien...

My latest on how not to respond to Trump's tariff threats www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/t...

+1! Welcome to the team, @hboushey.bsky.social!

I am delighted our education and AI landscape review ‘A learning curve?’ has been published. 🎉 @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social @nuffieldfoundation.org I hope this work will generate further research and evidence to support schools, teachers, pupils and policy makers going forwards.

@markmuro1.bsky.social & Tony Pipa take stock of the Biden admin's place-based policies to target economic distress + Biden's final EO on econ policy: "the genie of helping left-behind places with focused, coherent, place-based economic policies is out of the bag—often with bipartisan support."

Janan Ganesh: "The lesson of the 2024 election for liberals was, or should have been, narrow: stop choosing useless candidates. This has somehow grown into a broader crisis of confidence about whether their underlying assessment of Trump as a menace was ever right." www.ft.com/content/e11b...

tl;dr | @dkthomp.bsky.social: “I’m not making any plans to give up my nightly glass of wine.”

@menakadoshi.bsky.social on a new place-based industrial strategy in India, to build 20 new cities: "Three features stand out in India’s $6.59 billion plan to build new industrial cities – they are scattered across the hinterland, mostly small and slow to build" | www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...