Look at how physicians diagnose more children with ADHD on Halloween (the red line in the middle of the figure). The authors hypothesize that docs are more likely to diagnose kids on this day simply because kids are excited for Halloween. Fascinating! www.nber.org/papers/w33232

When academics regularly express their political opinions online, it under undercuts their credibility with the public. warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econ...

Sometimes the combination of arrogance and ignorance is breathtaking. Yes, US health care has high admin costs; that's because it relies so much on private insurers. Govt-run health insurance has much lower overhead

Madrid tripled the length of its metro system in just 12 years, faster and cheaper than almost any other city in the world. Left: in 1994 Right: after 2007 Cost per mile: £64–91 million (around 7x cheaper than London's Jubilee & Northern line expansions & 14x cheaper than Toronto's Ontario line)

By that measure, the US is a "monopolist" on advanced chips, and cut off supply first. Which has only led China to double down on developing an independent chips supply chain in ways they never intended to, undercutting US leverage. Nobody is winning here.

Carbon market folks have been banging this drum for a while. Mr Goverment Efficiency got rich from…government

New paper shows that recent $15+ minimum wage hikes have no disemployment effects. static1.squarespace.com/static/5e0fd...

I wrote a policy piece for the EconPol Forum, together with Rick van der Ploeg and Tony Venables. We argue that decisive 'big push' green industrial policy is needed to convince firms & households that, without a doubt, the green transition is going to happen. 1/N

1/ 📢 How Manufacturing Interests Dominated the German Response to the Energy Crisis Check out our new article with Anke Hassel and Martin Höpner, now open access in Politics and Society! 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/0032...

New working paper! How Business Income Measures Affect Income Inequality and the Tax Burden, with Aaberge, Francesconi and Vestad. Using Norwegian administrative data, we show that income inequality is much higher than commonly measured. Measurement matters! www.iza.org/publications...

If you are interested in learning more about minimum wages, Attila Lindner and I have a new, up-to-date review of the topic, coming out in the Handbook of Labor Economics. Here's the @nberpubs working paper. Link: nber.org/papers/w32878

Germany’s relative success over the past 20 years is based on squeezing its workers to boost competitiveness and importing demand from other countries (whilst whining about their inevitable deficits)

Good to see the Times picking up on a theme some of us have been hammering for a while: Trump's tariffs, and especially an opaque exemption process, will be an engine of massive crony capitalism 1/ www.nytimes.com/2024/11/23/u...

Now that "scale is all we need" has predictably faltered... 1. Small AI models often perform better in context. 2. Obsession w bigness has bad consequences, from climate, to power concentration, to research capture. Me + @gaelvaroquaux.bsky.social @sashamtl.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2409.14160