Do you have a paper on financial decision-making? Want to present research & hike? Does Bozeman in early August sound good? The Financial Decision-making Conference is Aug 6-7! Submission deadline April 20. The call for papers is here: fdmconference.pages.dev#cfp

I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't had any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since typical grants are for three years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.

On the table: the first-ever interstate water transfer on the Colorado River! Could be a valuable precedent for more flexible management in the future

A reminder to East Coast based media. Here in Bozeman winter just never came.

There's no such thing as a best fruit. All types of fruit run from terrible to life-affirming. All preferences across varieties vanish in the face of within-variety differences in quality.

I love this America so much. I am aware that I am in a constant fight, one with existential stakes but which will not be conclusively resolved, to determine whether the America that exists is the one I love or the one people like Rubio love. But it is a fight to which I am wholly committed.

Should we be climate adaptation optimists? A nice new paper by Matt Burgess, Matt Kahn, and colleagues argues yes. I'm not so sure. Optimism is not a plan, and we need a plan. Some thoughts: www.stanfordecholab.com/blog/should-...

Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse serving veterans. He died trying to protect protestors being assaulted. A group of anonymous & masked men fired chemicals into his face, beat him, disarmed him, and shot him in broad daylight in front of witnesses. Then his government smeared him & defended his murder.

Air pollution is incredibly bad for human health. It causes a large share of chronic disease and deaths. This is one of the strongest empirical findings in all of economics and epidemiology. The EPA saying it's "uncertain" is not based in science. It's a pretext.

Human health benefits are by far the largest benefit from most environmental regulations. By not monetizing these benefits moving forward, the Trump EPA is essentially saying there are no human health benefits to reducing air/toxic/climate pollution, improving drinking water quality, etc. 1/

Call is open! Submit your abstracts for the BIG SKY WORKSHOP on the Economics of Agriculture and the Environment June 18-19, 2026, in Bozeman, Montana, hosted by Montana State University and PERC. Travel funding available for grad students www.bigskyworkshop.net/abstract-sub...

"This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation."

Fire alarm from the Fed Chair, explicitly calling out political intimidation from the president. The Fed never, ever releases videos speaking directly to the American people like this. Interfering with the Fed is the road to instability and inflation much worse than we've seen since Covid.

Land sparing's global "brutal math" is inescapable: from 1961-2020, global population grew 2.6x and agricultural output increased nearly 4x, but total ag land grew by only about 7.6% and croplands by 20-25%. www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/.... 8/

My New Year's resolution is improve how I start Bluesky threads. I forget to announce what they're about. So: please check out this thread if you're either highly critical or gung-ho about the merits of the Green Revolution, "land-sparing" and maximizing yields using industrial agriculture.

Finally caring about the federal budget deficit after spending nearly my entire adult life wanting more deficit spending Exactly what textbooks say you should do as conditions change... But sounds like I'm just getting more fiscally conservative as I age

Like the real reasons I suspect most people are upset, this article is supposedly about "affordability" but is actually entirely about housing People complain about the price of eggs but eggs don't ruin your hope of a secure middle-class life. Housing does. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/u...

This is a terrible development. The Administration is destroying the scientific institutions that helped make America great. It will take years to rebuild from this.

I agree apple pie is not very good when it isn't made with pears and Kerrygold butter

Save the date! Announcing the 2nd Annual... ** BIG SKY WORKSHOP ** on the Economics of Agriculture and the Environment Hosted by @montanastate and @PERCtweets in Bozeman, MT, June 18-19, 2026 Call for abstracts in January. Travel funding available for grad students More info: bigskyworkshop.net

Summers called this female Chinese economist “peril.” “Yellow peril” was partially built on the claim that Chinese women were sexually immoral threats. That logic fueled the Page Act of 1875, which barred Chinese women by presuming they were prostitutes, even before the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

This isn’t actually a thread of different posts. It’s all just different cultivars of a single post

💧 Small-scale irrigation supports farmer livelihoods but can strain groundwater resources. How do we strike a balance? Join us on Oct 23 for a session on Balancing Small-Scale Irrigation Solutions with Ram Fishman & @hagertynw.bsky.social. Register: go.cega.org/registerATAIwebinar

📢 Out now in the September 2025 issue of #JAERE! 📢 "Industrial Water Pollution and Agricultural Production in India" by Nick Hagerty ( @hagertynw.bsky.social ) and Anshuman Tiwari. Read it here: buff.ly/oAalYIW 📈📉 #Econsky

For people in Bozeman! We're voting on a ballot initiative this fall that sounds good but would cause some huge problems (Precautionary disclaimer: we wrote this as private citizens, not representing our employer) www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/gue...

Out today in JAERE! We measure water pollution released at India's industrial clusters. Does it hurt agriculture? Surprisingly: Not by much Come for how we published a paper of null results & with no regression tables Stay for new ways to proxy for crop yields & map hydrological relationships 🧵

🔥BLS Staff: "We will publish reliable data, no matter how inconvenient the results... Acting Commissioner is a respected career professional. There are no other political appointees at BLS... will remain accurate & nonpartisan... if that ever changes, the professionals will tell you." #StandWithBLS

I don't like it but HIGH FREQUENCY, IN-PERSON assessments are the only way college students are going to learn anything this semester www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...

We are hiring at Montana State! Link in thread If you aren't sure whether you fit the posted topic areas, please don't pre-screen yourself out, let our committee decide! I'm not on the search committee but happy to answer any general questions

knowing "how the computer works" is quickly going from "advantageous skillset in office job" to "godlike degree of metacognition when navigating reality"

For six months, I've said that threats to economic data have been more collateral damage than intentional harm. No longer. Firing the head of the BLS is five-alarm intentional harm to the integrity of US economic data and the entire statistical system.

Excited to announce a new funding opportunity for research on "what works" in climate adaptation. We are specifically looking for strong causal designs that tell us what interventions work (or don't) to reduce impacts of a changing climate. Plz share + apply! seedfunding.stanford.edu/apply/U5N4

Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.

I had no idea our registrar's office went so hard youtu.be/diZr6PdwutM?...

"I'm going to govern in econometrics" is a winning campaign slogan for the ages.

Trying to put this as simply as possible: Trump sent an innocent man to a foreign prison and is ignoring a Supreme Court order to bring him back. If this stands, he could do the same to anybody in the U.S., we no longer have rights, and the Constitution no longer has meaning.

This is a big deal. Spread the word. But it’s tiny compared to the totality of what’s happening at NIH. Cure Research for all cancers, Alzheimer’s, everything is being gutted. Intentionally. It’s all getting burned to the ground but the news isn’t getting out. The new cures won’t be there for you.

💧 Just accepted 🌱 in JAERE: "Industrial Water Pollution and Agricultural Production in India " by Nick Hagerty (@hagertynw.bsky.social) and Anshuman Tiwari Read it here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... #EconSky 📈 📉

I think the real problem with DOGE is that it’s a bunch of people who think that everyone is stupid except for them, when in reality every organization is made up of people who are trying to do things as best as they can but are constrained by other factors

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

A good thing that happened today was receiving a text from a friend who does education research telling me that the USDE grant he worked on was reinstated, following a lawsuit that his university filed.

The economy relies on the BEA's accurate estimates of statistics that have stable, longstanding definitions. Businesses and investors need to know what's going on. Interfering with GDP numbers for political reasons will lead to disaster.

This year's Bozeman Applied Micro Conference is June 16-17, 2025 Paper submissions open now through March 7 www.montana.edu/econ/summerc...

I'm happy to publish something I've been reporting for a while: a guide for how to fight the Trump-Musk power grab and win, with specific advice that you can start acting on *today*. www.vox.com/politics/399...

A take on our rapidly moving Constitutional crisis that isn't exactly optimistic, but gives some plausible reasons to resist the pull of full doomerism. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/o...

YES PLEASE