We have a super easy letter campaign to save NCAR. Takes 30 seconds to yell at your Congress Critters and you’ll can do it every day! @standupforscience.bsky.social fight2win.standupforscience.net/campaign/152...

A study of middle-aged Kenyan adults finds that monthly earnings increase by 1.07 percent per centimeter of increased height, from Wilson King, Edward Miguel, and Michael W. Walker www.nber.org/papers/w34769

New Working Paper! 🚨 Taller people earn more, especially in low & middle-income countries @tedmiguel.bsky.social, Michael Walker, & I study why — using rich longitudinal microdata on 4,000+ Kenyan adults 🧵: 1/5

“Uruguay did what most nations still call impossible: it built a power grid that runs almost entirely on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. The physicist who led that transformation says the same playbook could work anywhere—if governments have the courage to change the rules.”

A glimmer of hope for US scientific research: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/s...

Working in open science or meta-research? Present at the BITSS Annual Meeting in Berkeley! One of the leading conferences in this space.

If you are a resident of California, the state now has a portal where you can demand deletion of your personal data from 500+ registered data brokers with a single request form, for free. consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov

Africa in 2025: A Review: open.substack.com/pub/kenopalo...

Earlier this year, we hosted the 2025 WIDER Development Conference in Helsinki, celebrating #WIDER40! Themes on growth, equity, and innovative solutions, the conference united leading minds to tackle global challenges. Looking forward to 2026 in New Delhi! #2025recap

We found that Wisconsinites that grew up around smelt mines during the 1940s had steeper rates of cognitive decline in later life. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35146115/

At the summit of Mount Fuji, hot bowls of udon soup await climbers. Many swear that the exhaustion makes the food taste better at 12,400 feet. Could a bowl of noodles and an unforgettable sunset justify the climb?

What would it cost to end extreme poverty? "We estimate that reducing the poverty rate to 1% ... would cost $170B nominal per year." "The results correspond to a cost of (approximately) ending extreme poverty of roughly 0.3% of global GDP."

The networks of economists who frequently show up in the Economic Report of the President. What stands out to you?

Pierre-Louis Vezina, Cevat Giray Aksoy, and Piotr Lewandowski show that, far from displacing local businesses, Ukrainian refugees in Poland sparked an entrepreneurial boom as they inspired Polish entrepreneurs and created new supply chain opportunities. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

The Govt of India is dismantling the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and that's a real shame.

Scientists are supposed to be happy when their predictions are skillful, right? Why do I not feel happy?

In other words, the research literature suggests a much better basis for modern policy: 1. Labor wealth is a scarce, strategic asset 2. Skilled emigration an *investment* in a global network 3. Aid should help manage, not stop, migration 4. Migration is at the heart of successful development

Less-educated labor is not broadly abundant anymore. In much of the world, the *native* working-age population will collapse over the next 20 years. The global divide is not 'developing' and 'developed', but peope-poor vs. people-rich.

The International Monetary Fund asked me to review the literature on migration economics to draw lessons for low-income countries. In a new @iza.org paper, I argue that policy for the 21st century must discard four outdated ideas. www.iza.org/publications... 🧵 thread—>

📣What does life look like for the Ugandan women who were taken as children by the Lord Resistance Army in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, & are now adults raising families of their own? 📣 ➡️ New @CGDev blog post, on our study @alessandracassar.bsky.social @eeshani.bsky.social @mirandainez.bsky.social

All early-career researchers are welcome to apply! RT2 is designed for researchers in the social and health sciences, with particular emphasis on economics, political science, psychology, and public health, who use quantitative or mixed methods. @cega-uc.bsky.social @tedmiguel.bsky.social

Princeton Economics (short) obituary for Kate Ho, great researcher, teacher, mentor and all around right guy. economics.princeton.edu/news/honorin...

🆕 Africa faces a climate-conflict poverty trap. Growth is the best solution. Today on VoxDev, Joel Ferguson, Marshall Burke, Edward Miguel & Solomon Hsiang outline their research on feedback loops between growth and conflict under climate change: voxdev.org/topic/macroe...

🆕 Ten key insights from development economics in 2025 The world is changing rapidly. Can research inform what comes next? I spent a long time trying to condense everything I read this year at @voxdev.bsky.social into ten key insights, you can read the full blog here: voxdev.org/topic/ten-ke...

Happy to announce that I have received an @erc.europa.eu Consolidator grant for the project "Authoritarian Threats to Scientific Knowledge". AutoKnow will study how authoritarian regimes and politics affect scientific progress, contents and topics in different fields. www.sv.uio.no/isv/english/...

Noise pollution from electric passenger rail harms babies' health. "I estimate that the annual cost of noise pollution due to harms to health at birth is $9.8 billion." Black, Hispanic, and the poorest Americans disproportionately bear these costs. This is such a cool paper!

Alan Auerbach & William Gale argue that after incorporating the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, debt-to-GDP is projected to rise to 183% by 2054, under conservative assumptions. Without a return to fiscal responsibility, adjustment will likely involve an external shock. cepr.org/voxeu/column... #EconSky

Congratulations to @simine.com well deserved winner of the Einstein Foundation Individual Award for Promoting Quality in Research 2025 🎉 www.einsteinfoundation.de/en/media/pre...

🗓️ Save the date: The next BITSS Annual Meeting is April 16, 2026! The conference will gather experts to discuss changes in academic publishing, AI, and current challenges to research transparency. @cega-uc.bsky.social @tedmiguel.bsky.social

Actual causes of death in the US and media coverage of same. And then we wonder why people have such a skewed understanding of the world. @ourworldindata.org is a treasure. Thanks, @hannahritchie.bsky.social and colleagues. ourworldindata.org/does-the-new...

Starting my #econtwitter #econsky recap 🧵 for #neudc2025 @TuftsEconomics! First session: displaced persons. Tamim shows that a housing subsidy for Syrian refugees in Jordan had only minor positive economic effects + led to a deterioration in relations btw hosts + refugees

CEGA Faculty Co-Director @tedmiguel.bsky.social shares results from mental health trainings and cash transfers to refugees in Kenya, finding 3-day mental health trainings are cost-effective and impactful even seven months later and cash transfers boost food security and better healthcare. #E2A2025

RIP Betty are.berkeley.edu/news/remembe...

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S. Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world. www.nobelprize.org

Nick Kristof lays out how millions are dying from cuts to US foreign aid: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

Orgullo celeste 🇺🇾 worldathletics.org/competitions...

The mortgage fraud claim against Lisa Cook is false, per documents obtained by Reuters. Bill Pulte's accusation, the sole pretext Trump used to fire her from the Fed, was that she claimed two homes as primary residence. These docs show she did not. www.reuters.com/world/us/fed...

Forthcoming in EJ: ‘Destructive Behaviour, Judgement, and Economic Decision-making under Thermal Stress’ by Ingvild Almas, Maximilian Auffhammer, Tessa Bold, Ian Bolliger, Aluma Dembo, Solomon M Hsiang, Shuhei Kitamura, Edward Miguel, Robert Pickmans doi.org/10.1093/ej/u...

I'm comfortably for as much independence of the Fed as possible from politicians of any type. I also don't think there is anything undemocratic in democratically setting up institutions that are protected from continuous political pressure

What is foreign aid and why should Americans care about it? In a new 101 video from @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social News, CEGA Faculty Co-Director @tedmiguel.bsky.social explains how foreign aid efforts like cash transfers in Kenya are investments in a healthier world for all. go.cega.org/101in101

When aid doesn’t arrive on time, many refugees turn to debt to survive, effectively pledging future aid to buy food for today. CSAE's @oliviersterck.bsky.social & @odid-qeh.bsky.social's Vittorio Bruni on the cost of ration cuts & delivery delays in Kenya's refugee camps.