Against defeatism.

Forthcoming in the AER: "When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media" by Leonardo Bursztyn, Benjamin Handel, Rafael Jiménez-Durán, and Christopher Roth. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

All is not well at Elsevier richardtol.substack.com/p/fraud-and-...

Excited to join @pegdev.bsky.social! Looking forward to my time in Stuttgart with this amazing team! 🎉

Congrats to IdEP PhD candidate Alda Marchese on being awarded the USI Doc-Mobility grant. She'll be visiting ‪@uclaanderson.bsky.social, hosted by Ricardo Perez-Truglia 🇺🇸🌴 Alda’s research examines how #socialnorms impact the #gendergap in voter turnout and if easing social pressure can reduce it

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand: $678M raised through those spam tactics $282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies. $11M to actual campaigns (1.6%) The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements This is a big deal

„In a social media post on Friday, Mr. Trump said the revision was made ‚right after the election.‘ In fact, the announcement was made roughly two and a half months before Election Day. […] ‚MASSIVE SCANDAL.‘“ Nonsense covered up with more nonsense (Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/b...

Check out if you’re interested in international trade or know someone who might be interested in pursuing a PhD! Can absolutely vouch for @petereppinger.com

„a rigid doctrine guarded by a modern priesthood who claim to possess the sole truth. Dissenters are shunned“ This is so very much untrue.

A *null* result I'm very proud of! Led by Rustam Romaniuc, 35 coauthors from all over France tested nudge interventions to boost voter turnout. None worked, and we are possibly not surprised -- but a well-powered null result *is* a result! Paper: kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...

We’re hiring 3 permanent (tenured) lecturers in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. These are ‘education pathway’ posts (in Economics, Research Methods, & Comparative Politics) 1/4 www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117268-... www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117209-... www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117245-...

Neat and important paper www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

ALERT: Two new PreDoc positions starting in late summer/early fall. Come join my team and work on exciting topics in Political Economy and Development Economics, using both experimental and quasi experimental methods (text-as-data, spatial data, AI). www.wyssacademy.org/careers

🚨NEW PAPER: Why are Members of Congress so extreme? We conducted a 4-wave panel of thousands of voters in 27 districts during last year’s primary AND general elections to trace polarization’s roots The results challenge conventional wisdom… and suggest lessons for parties🧵👇

Call for Papers: The 4th Annual Zurich Workshop in AI+Economics to be held Dec 5-6, 2025, hosted by ETH Zurich and University of Zurich. Info: eash.cc/AI-econ Submit (by Aug 15th): eash.cc/AI-econ-sub-2025

Today, Andreas Kotsadam (@UniOslo) presented his joint work with S. Dahlum, T.Hanson, Å. Johnsen, and A. Wuttke on whether support for authoritarian rule is contagious. Using field & survey experiments in the Norwegian Armed Forces, they showed that it spreads via peer influence.

UPDATE: I've written a deeper dive on these numbers and what's driving this unprecedented judicial pushback. open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

A long long time ago, in a far away galaxy... the US used to tax the rich

My new findings on Iran’s 2010 Energy Subsidy to Cash Program show that it uniquely resembles a true Universal Basic Income (UBI) at the national level—even under the strict criteria of Hoynes and Rothstein (2019).

🎓 Apply for the Master in Economics at USI – Deadline: 30 June 2025! 👇 See program highlights & links below. #USIEcon #EconBluesky

Today @uglogowsky.bsky.social (@jku.at) presented “The Parenthood Penalty in Mental Health”, joint w. @ahammeralex.bsky.social (JKU Linz) @mhalla.bsky.social (@wuvienna.bsky.social) & T. Hener (@au.dk). They find parenthood imposes greater mental health burdens on mothers, leading to long-run gaps

Today, Manuel Bagues (@warwickecon.bsky.social) presented “Friends in Childhood and the Gender Equality Paradox”, coauthored with N. Zinovyeva (Warwick). They show that children in richer, more equal societies have fewer opposite-sex friends. Evidence suggests household income as the key driver.

House GOP just unveiled $4 Trillion in tax cuts - overwhelmingly for the wealthy - in a country that already leads the developed world in inequality. Look at where the US stands right now: Top 1%: 20% of income CEO pay: 354x workers Child poverty: 21% And they want to make it worse. On purpose.🧵⬇️

9/🧵 Polls consistently show 60-75% of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, yet Republicans are doing the opposite. This is a political liability that Dems should exploit.

Best Liberal Unbiased Executive 🇨🇦

The natural leader to facilitate this collective action is the Speaker of the House who will lose his job if giving a hint of non-obsequiousness to Trump

Such a clear collective action problem for Rs in moderate districts. If they band together to push back against the craziest part of Trumpism they might survive the midterms. If not he will continue to plummet and they will get wiped out.

Econ is called the dismal science because it was anti-slavery early on, and some historian thought that was against the “natural order.” en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dis...

A short reminder that there are only 12 days left to apply for PhD positions at @cergic.bsky.social at ENS de Lyon! Come and work with @sophiehatte.bsky.social, @elisamougin.bsky.social, @jadeponsard.bsky.social and many more! www.cergic-lyon.fr/joinus

📢 Hey #EconSky, 5 more days to submit your full paper to our Workshop on Social Economy for Young Economists! 🗣️ Keynotes: Lea Cassar (@uniregensburg.bsky.social ) @stefanofiorin.bsky.social (Bocconi U.) Theoretical, empirical, and experimental contributions are welcome.

On tariffs, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Dear CEA: at least divide by 4. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/o...

The plan gets clearer by the day.

This is the clearest example yet of the collective action problem facing house Rs, particularly in swing districts. If Trump causes a recession they are the ones at risk of losing their jobs!

electoral gains, while creating widespread and significant costs, especially for lower-income consumers (see below for an example). www.xavierjaravel.com/_files/ugd/b...

Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1930 @qjeharvard.bsky.social www.jstor.org/stable/1882526

📣 I am hiring a talented PostDoc and PhD who are eager to research costly learning from a theory and experimental angle, to join me on my recently funded SNF project. 🥳 Please send candidates my way (or share the post 🫶)! 👉 jobs.unisg.ch/offene-stell... 🇨🇭 👉 jobs.unisg.ch/offene-stell...

With Yoon removed from office today, by my count that makes 34 democratic leaders convicted since 2010. Only one—Trump—faced no real consequences. Trump's actions weren't uncommon. What was exceptional was how our institutions failed to hold him accountable.

Senator Murphy absolutely gets it right.

St Andrews is hiring four Education/Research Lecturers in Economics! Field is open. These positions are in addition to the Professor and Reader/Senior Lecturer positions I posted about earlier. Also more good news coming that I can hopefully post about soon. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMM015/l...

Als Teil seines "Entlastungspakets 27" will der Bund das Budget des SNF @snf-fns-ch.bsky.social um 10% kürzen. Wäre das wirklich klug, ausgerchnet in dem Moment, wo uns die US-Regierung das Feld freimacht im internationalen Wettbewerb um Top-Talente (👇)? 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Der Bundesrat fordert ausdrücklich "tiefere Beiträge an Karrieren" - d.h. weniger Jobs für junge Forscher. Dabei haben wir jetzt eine riesen Chance, die hellsten Köpfe in die 🇨🇭 zu locken und hier zu halten. Bitte nochmal überlegen. 🙏 2/2 www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/messag...

“We analyze the local labor market employment effects of [the 2002 Bush steel] tariffs. ... The tariffs did not boost local steel employment but substantially depressed local employment in steel-consuming industries”

🚨New publication @The_JOP on human biases in data annotation (w. Nora Webb Williams, @kevinaslett.bsky.social, John Wilkerson). Extremely important given the increasing societal reliance on AI tools often trained on human coders www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

@usiidep.bsky.social is offering a block PhD Course on the Economics of Aging (covering topics on aging, retirement & health) taught by J.Skinner (DartmouthEcon, @nber.org)&F. Mazzonna (@usiidep.bsky.social). 📍@usi-en.bsky.social, Lugano 🗓June 17–20 2025 Last week to apply: sggoe.ch/course-list....

Josef Zweimueller (@econ.uzh.ch) presented his joint work with J. Voth (@econ.uzh.ch) and A. Steinhauer (@edinburgh-uni.bsky.social) on parental selection & the long-term effects of post-Anschluss fertility boom. The study finds these parents were more educated, carried over for their children.

X is the functional equivalent of regime-controlled media.

1/🧵 Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative). This isn't partisan opposition to Trump—it's the judiciary functioning as intended by cutting across partisan lines to uphold the Constitution.

We are very happy to publish the "National Elections Database," including the results of 1,023 presidential and 2,962 parliamentary elections conducted worldwide since 1946! www.nationalelectionsdatabase.com with Benjamin Marx and Vincent Rollet