"I say unto you, pray for your enemies."

📣 Hot off the press 📣 We document tremendous growth in U.S. federal place-based funding, show it has disproportionately gone to areas with more nonprofits & stronger housing markets, and find a pattern of cumulative advantage in funding among high-poverty neighborhoods. doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

How should elected officials divine voters’ preferences about building more homes: through broad-based polls or the 12 people who show up at a community meeting on Tuesday night and yell for hours? Hard to say…

A strongly worded letter isn't gonna cut it.

🚨🚨 Does labor market discrimination drive economic gaps? Can market competition eliminate discrimination like economic theory suggests? What *kind* of discrimination are we talking about. In a new paper, Alex Willen & I explore the question. #Econsky

Final_Version_of_Tarrifs_actualFINALcopy_version7_USETHISONE.docx

🚨🚨 What happens when you take a bunch of human capital out of a local economy? Is brain drain a real thing? And what are the consequences? In a new paper, we shed light on this in the context of highly developed economies: Sweden and Norway. #Econsky

As of Friday, there have been 46 cases in which federal judges have blocked Trump policies. The rulings in those cases have come from 39 different judges appointed by 5 different presidents (of both parties) to 11 different district courts across 7 different circuits. Maybe it's not the judges?

"Don't Be a Sucker" by the US War Department (1947) The film follows a young American, drawn in by a speaker promising an end to jobs for minorities and removing foreigners. He encounters a Hungarian professor who explains this is how Nazis grab power for themselves. archive.org/details/Dont...

Alsupp issuing a PI from the bench. Finding that OPM engaged in sham terminations, claiming they were performance based in an attempt to avoid the procedural requirements of the Reduction in Force Act. Oh holy shit, quote in next post

Case in point that just because a private sector firm was involved does not mean it has uncovered some sort of efficiency trick.

Time is running out to apply to the Chicago School in Experimental Economics (CSEE) 2025! The first school will take place at the University of Bonn, September 7-11, and the second school will take place at the University of Chicago, September 13-17.

NEW: President Trump moved Tuesday to punish a law firm for providing pro bono legal services to Jack Smith as he prepared to face a potential investigation from the Trump administration. He is stripping security clearnces and govt funding from the firm. www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

The degree to which this administration is driven by revenge cannot be understated.

"Too Black for the Moment" sounds like an amazing album title.

Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz reaches back to Tiananmen Square to call on American defiance.

The world is flooded by uncertainty; it now exceeds the peak hit during the pandemic in 2020. Stunning. 🥶

People tend to have a lot to say about why the Nordics have lower inequality than the US. Most of that is based on some version of "The Nordics do my favorite policy X, so, therefore, it lowers inequality." Most of that is wrong. It's PRE-distribution. openaccess.nhh.no/nhh-xmlui/ha...

The latest report from US EIA finds that, thanks to tariffs & higher US production costs, solar panels in the US sell at a *190% price premium* over global spot prices: https://buff.ly/4gaTSit

My quick take is that is reflecting the death of expertise in general, even among policymakers. Yes, communication is important. But in a world of fighting over things like the usefulness of a measles vaccine for kids & PhDs in other fields wrongly stating what we do, it feels like a broader trend.

If you're at #SEA2024 come to our session! It's going to be awesome. I'll presenting new evidence of oabory market discrimination and how competition strongly reduces it.

Wut?

lol Dads don't sleep.

Probably a sign that affirmative action in college admissions, as it has been practiced, may never have delivered on one of the central aims it was initially designed to pursue (before diversity for its own sake became the central argument decades later).

I am skeptical of this view. Low unemployment⬆️ the lowest income earners' wages, construction projects for manufacturing, union support, etc seemed to have no effect on vote shares. Harris ran a clean campaign, but few believed her move to the center. But still did better than Sanders & Warren.

Tech bros have done it again!

The least shocking turn of events is the rapidity of the shift from "I've got nothing to do with Project 2025" to "every appointee wrote two chapters of Project 2025"

Zelensky is so good at this.

Are these the very fine people he was talking about?

"...rising wages & falling grocery inflation have restored purchasing power for grocery shoppers to pre-pandemic levels... same amount of work to buy a bag of groceries as it did before the pandemic..." 📉📈#️⃣#️⃣ https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2024/08/14/july-2024-cpi-report/

It seems it's an administrative issue, saying the FTC's rule is "too broad" without enough explanation. There's no disputing that non-competes are actually unfair and anticompetitive. Only that the FTC somehow doesn't have the authority to regulate anticompetitive behavior in this way?

When you ask people how they are doing financially, most people say they are doing fine. But when you ask how other people are doing, there is a disconnect. Serious narrative focus on the negative seems to shape negativity at odds with people's actual experience.

Who wants to take bets on how long it takes to find one in economics? #EconSky Part of the economics supremacist in me says we would never...

Hi, #Econsky - I'm interested in putting together a session for LERA for next year's ASSAs on the topics of labor market monopsony, discrimination, or competition (really broadly defined). Let me know if you are interested in teaming up!

In some professional news, I'm grateful to share that in the Fall, I will be starting as a Senior Research Economist at the Dallas Fed's micro team. I am looking forward to new research & new discussions with colleagues going back to my Fed system roots where I started my career!

What are the effects of remote instruction on the mental health of students? A forthcoming economics paper uses Swedish data to study this question, with interesting results Read more in my Note: economics.osc.ac/the-effects-...

Our paper "How Do Firms Respond to Unions?" is now out as an IZA DP. When union density goes up at the avg Norwegian manufacturing firm: - wages & employment ⬆️ (monopsony power) - prices ⬆️ (consistent w monopoly power) - profits don't fall See Sam's thread for more! 🤓 docs.iza.org/dp16697.pdf

Saw this paper presented a few months back and thought it was awesome. Love that several of the results are surprising and nuanced.

This is the content we need on this site.

I've been thinking a bit lately about monopsony models vs efficiency wage and monitoring models. As more evidence like this arises, I'm struggling to see the efficiency wage story here. Maybe I'm missing something obvious though.

The world is becoming more connected, as are our labor markets—increasing labor market competition. What are the consequences for firms & communities? We look at the border of Sweden & Norway using cool admin data from both sides to find out! samueldodini.com/files/Dodini... #EconSky 📉📈

I am super excited to share my JMP coauthored with the awesome @annastansbury.bsky.social & Alex Willen: How Do Firms Respond to Unions? We do a deep dive into how firms respond when unionization increases in that firm. #EconSky 📉📈 samueldodini.com/files/Dodini...

Permanent daylight time. Not standard time. For one simple reason: crime.

#EconSky 📉📈

Do work requirements for social programs lead to self-sufficiency for low-income people? One way to check is to look at the financial lives of people that might be affected by work requirements. Come with me as we explore, will you?

#EconSky 📉📈 What is the point of insurance? To protect against severe financial risk. What happens to recipients’ risk of catastrophic loss when we subsidize the purchase of *private* health insurance rather than directly providing it (e.g. Medicaid)? The ACA did that. Let’s see what happened!

In 30 minutes, we'll be having a timely conversation about recent strike activity in the US and unions. Join us! nabe.com/NABE/Events/...

#EconSky 📉📈 What happens in the labor market when you increase occupational licensing? For workers that would have entered a licensed occupation but for the license requirements, where do they go, what are their earnings and employment rates, and how does that affect the labor market generally?

Hi, #EconSky 📉📈 ! I am on the job market this year, so in the spirit of “hire me, please” energy, I’ll be sharing a short run-down of some of my work (since starting my post-doc in 2021). I have broad interests, but I generally call myself an applied labor & public economist.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Teens randomized into a DBT therapy program had worse outcomes than the control group, especially for depression, anxiety, and parent relationships.