We want to hear your questions! If you teach economics now or you are a grad student who will someday, what would you like to know about teaching the fundamentals of economic inequality? Later this week, we'll ask Professor Can Erbil these questions and share his answers with everyone.

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.”