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

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: @jessebruhn.bsky.social, Michael Gilraine, Jens Ludwig & @sendhil.bsky.social analyze 1.31 billion student-item responses from Texas and find that item-level data contain rich, decision-relevant information that aggregate scores miss. 📄 edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1343

imagine fleeing the Vietnam War and in your arms you're carrying a baby who will one day grow up to correct the US Secretary of Defense on his jeans. like bringing a football into the end zone

1/ What does the social fabric of an entire country look like? We built a nation-scale social network of Denmark — 7.2 million people, 1.4 billion ties, 14 years of data. Here’s what we found 👇 📄 doi.org/10.1038/s415... #NetworkScience #Sociology

Next was the highly recommended 1st day of the @nber.org labor studies conference, w/standout talks by M Notowidigdo (returns to permanent residency) C Miller (effects of a criminal record) & @jessebruhn.bsky.social (long-run effects of early career experience) www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5mY... (3/4)

Y’all, I wrote a book! www.amazon.com/Science-Seco...

It seems pretty funny to allow the WSJ to cover a paper and then when it’s revealed to be fraudulent start crying about how it wasn’t even peer reviewed and the system worked etc. Why did our discipline tell the WSJ it was credible if it wasn’t peer reviewed then ?

A bit of personal/professional news: I'm sad to be leaving the wonderful editorial team at @restatjournal.bsky.social now that my terms are up, but excited to be joining AEJ: Applied as editor in January. www.aeaweb.org/news/member-...

I finally have a publication date for my new Experimental Economics textbook: December 12. Equally as important, I am proud to have negotiated a low price for the book: $38.10...for a nearly 800 page book! You can find the book here: www.amazon.com/Experimental...

@lindseykaler.bsky.social @christocleve.bsky.social @tashnuvashaheen.bsky.social @kslungaardmumma.bsky.social @jessebruhn.bsky.social

@buwheelock.bsky.social @oliviachi.bsky.social @jwhitmore.bsky.social @lizbettini.bsky.social @piacar.bsky.social @sidrah.bsky.social @michaelbriskin.bsky.social @daniellecgw.bsky.social @josefinasenese.bsky.social @hanyuncui.bsky.social @abbyfrancis.bsky.social @mingyanma.bsky.social

Our BU Wheelock Education Policy Center is going to be everywhere at next week's AEFP conference! Between our current faculty and PhD students and our alums, we'll be in 20+ sessions. Here's what we're presenting: wheelockpolicycenter.org/event/associ... @wheelockpolicybu.bsky.social

Honored to be one of the recipients of the 2025 Brown Postdoctoral Excellence Awards! Huge thanks to Brown Postdoctoral Affairs for this recognition and to @linzpage.bsky.social and the Annenberg Institute for their support in advancing my research! ¡Seguimos! postdocs.brown.edu/news/2025-02...

How are parents affected by their kid going to college? How are they affected when their kid gets a scholarship or grant? New working paper with @palaashbhargava.bsky.social @econsandy.bsky.social @odedgurantz.bsky.social and Rob Fairlie www.nber.org/papers/w33497

Amazing opportunity!! Send you talented undergrads / soon to be graduates this way 👇

"People who like to sound tough reflexively back the guys with guns over the guys in jeans with sacks of grain or the guys in suits with papers. But take it from someone who spent nearly 1,500 days downrange over the course of 20 years: USAID is worth every penny." www.thebulwark.com/p/usaid-kept...

If the president / secretary of defense really believe that eliminating DEI efforts will make things more "merit" based then they should probably eliminate the explicit veteran preferences in federal hiring too. The fact that they aren't tells you everything you need to know...

Not the banner you want seeing over this article from … checks notes … 8 days ago

Army Blackhawk helicopters are crashing into passenger planes at DCA while the Secretary of Defense is on Fox News ranting about DEI

the first fatal commercial plane crash in 16 years happened just days after Trump froze hiring of air traffic controllers that were already stretched thin

This is highly relevant today. While we can debate the merits of specific 'DEI' policies—some may indeed be misguided—it’s undeniable that racial discrimination persists in this country. The evidence is clear for those willing to engage with it! bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/cea/written-...

Props to all the academics trying to have a real world impact, but I'm not that worried about it personally. I do this work because it's cool /interesting. That's enough for me.

@linzpage.bsky.social is her too!! Absolutely a person you all should follow! Great researcher and overall very kind person. #edusky #highered #econsky

I was incredibly honored to be awarded the CSWEP Carolyn Shaw Bell Award. When I accepted the award, I talked about the importance of mentoring. The lessons I pass on are kind of obvious. But they are important, so I am going to share them yet again. (A🧵)

So a "friend" just asked chatGPT to write a first draft of a predoc mentoring plan for a grant. It's really good. Is it plagiarism/wrong to use as-is with light edits? My friend wants to do what's right but without creating busy work (i.e. there's no time pressure). Assume it will be followed.

The university empowers faculty... ...by giving them a thermostat with a 2 degree temperature range bandwidth.

We should at a minimum do what Nature does, in which the referee comments and author responses are published along with the paper. Allows the paper itself to be an authoritative artifact while lifting the curtain on the debate that led its creation. (quoting @dholtz.bsky.social ) 4/

Once again I am obliged to mention that I recently worked in a school district where the policy was teachers were not to accept gifts from parents worth more than $5 lest it affect our grading.

The QJE should send everyone a 2024 WRAPPED message with all their rejections

People sometimes make fun of science that sounds stupid and random. Meanwhile, a study of lizard saliva turned into a peptide medication, which was turned into a diabetes medication, which was turned into a GLP1 weight loss drug, that just became the first therapy every approved for … sleep apnea

Any theories about what is happening with the job market this year? Wondering for my Ph.D. students... This graph makes it look like the market is going to top out well below the covid year. Data quirk? Weird timing of thanksgiving? Fear of a hiring freeze? econjobmarket.org/marketState/...

Interesting experimental paper on online hate by @chidiya.bsky.social treatment group gets randomized feed instead of algo-curated, exposure to toxic content (TC) drops, engagement drops, search for TC rises, sharing of TC rises relative to exposure: www.econthatmatters.com/2024/11/can-...

"You either play hide and seek with me now, or pay for my psychologist in 5 years. Your choice daddy."

Family ▶️ Education ▶️ Outcomes ⬇️ ▶️ ▶️ ▶️ ▶️ ▶️ ▶️ ▶️ ▶️ ⬆️ Because family predicts education and would also likely have direct effects and indirect effects through EDU on future outcomes Family related variables, including SES would take up the Lion's share of variance by far.

I love that econ referees are so brutal I now semi-regularly get invited to surveys where the subtext is "do you find this result surprising?" all so the authors can write, "Our core results are surprising (see appendix table Z.17, where we prove this via a novel survey of professional economists.)"

I'm not sure something like "causal family fixed effect" is all that well-defined of a concept, or even could be well-defined. I think of it as coming up mostly in a "controlling for unobservables"-type application we we can conveniently side-step the definitional problems.

Suppose you could identify the “causal” family fixed effect and the “causal” school/education fixed effect on long run well-being (eg income, criminal justice contact, health, etc). What do you think is the ratio of the variance they explain on those same long run outcomes?

Baller night with OI juniors. Nothing says merry Christmas’s like chocolate covered fireball.

My small part in trying to get people to understand why it seems like running government like a business is a good idea, when in fact it's a terrible one (1/4): www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/o...

I have an op-ed in the NYT today about how to reduce crime. The key idea, based on decades of strong research evidence: focus on increasing the probability of getting caught, not the punishment. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/o...

A flight attendant on my plane just walked up to me (no one else), said “another round?”, shoved like four nips of Jack Daniel’s at me before I could answer, and then walked away like some magical whiskey fairy.

Turning off social media personalisation reduced toxic content exposure by 27%, BUT... Heavy consumers of toxic content just worked harder to find it - sharing what they found at higher rates & switching platforms. This suggests that algorithmic fixes alone won't solve online toxicity.

#econsky What is, in your opinion, the biggest question IO has credibly settled? Seems most of our contributions are either (a) fancy methods; (b) negative results (e.g. don't regress price on HHI); (c) narrow in scope (yogurts, etc); or (d) contested (have markups actually risen?)

1/ 🤔 Ever wondered if pairing socially isolated students with popular peers helps or hurts their outcomes? My job market paper explores this through a large-scale RCT across Indian schools. Thread below 🧵 #EconSky #EconJobMarket #JMP

Well-this-is-good-to-know-as-an-important-and-needed-work-around.

Hot tip: If you are trying to submit a paper to a journal with a 100 word abstract limit, the word counter will generally treat hyphenated words as a single word…