This fetid landmark, this historical stain on humanity is primarily due to the stunningly reckless obliteration of America's foreign assistance agency earlier this year. Led by the richest man on earth. In secret, on a weekend. With zero analysis or discussion of its catastrophic impacts.

Big development as the UK government rules out any new North Sea oil and gas exploration. A decision which recognises the ongoing movement away from fossil fuels and underscores the urgency of managing the transition in a planned and just way. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6926de...

Check out the October 2025 issue (23,5) of @jeeanews.bsky.social Journal of @eeanews.bsky.social academic.oup.com/jeea/issue Teaching materials available: www.eeassoc.org/teaching-mat...

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics. 🧵 1/7

The August 2025 issue of the Journal of the European Economic Association is now published (academic.oup.com/jeea/issue/2...). It consists of 10 fantastic papers from a wide range of fields of economics. @jeeanews.bsky.social

I was shocked when I first saw these results from standard climate models used in IPCC reports: for high emissions, the Atlantic overturning circulation #AMOC shuts down in all 9 models that ran past 2100, and is well on the way to shutdown by 2100. Our paper on that is out today.🧵

One of the main benefits of doing a US PhD is the extra time you get, that's one of the big reasons I advised my students to apply for US programmes. We offer a four year degree here, there'd be no advantage over us. The US is euthanising its massive advantage in research for no good reason.

The employment rate of non-EU born migrants exceeded that of the UK-born for the first time on record. Confirms other evidence that recent migrants (even if they did not arrive on work visas) are very likely to be working/have high employment rates.

The White House is taking new steps to undermine every international student at our universities. It has approved a new rule restricting student visas to 4 years max. That's not long enough for PhD students, or about half of undergrads, to finish their degree. Likely to enter force within days.

Thanks to all for participating in our joint workshop on #PublicAdministration and #StateCapacity @unihohenheim.bsky.social. Frederico Finan from @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social and @hjortj.bsky.social from @ucl.ac.uk gave great keynote lectures.

Trailblazer and economist extraordinaire Mica Sviatschi just got tenure at Princeton! Mica didn’t need much guidance and I bet Miguel Urquiola wisely undid much of my rookie attempts at it, but I’m very proud of the first PhD student I properly co-advised (and the other awesome PhD advisees since)

I will take this as an excuse to plug that excellent careful work on the economics of fertility patterns in sub Saharan Africa has been done by researchers like (my past PhD student) Celine Zipfel, paper here www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3v897...

We at @ucleconomics.bsky.social have extended the application deadline to our MA degrees by a week (until May 8th)--all nationalities warmly welcome!

I'm honored to present the April 2025 issue of the JEEA - featuring 10 outstanding papers. @jeeanews.bsky.social academic.oup.com/jeea/issue/2...

Five years 3 million deaths www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

“Pepfar has saved more than 26 million lives and prevented roughly 1,000 babies a day from being born with the HIV virus” Superb piece on how cuts to USAID will affect the world’s poorest, focusing on HIV on.ft.com/3QX1HhP

Very glad to present the February 2025 issue of the JEEA - featuring 10 papers from some of the world's best economists, in a wide range of fields. academic.oup.com/jeea/issue/2... @jeeanews.bsky.social

i just made the mistake of reading the comments on a NYT article on foreign aid. My god, some people are just way too dumb to understand how lucky they are to have been born in a rich country. Not better or more deserving, just lucky. It's so simple and obvious.

foreign aid to fight infectious diseases is a kind of enlightened self interest, since infectious diseases that go around come around. Aid for fighting AIDS, now suspended by Executive Order, is no exception. marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2025/02/cons...

🆕 How does the loss of biodiversity impact economies and human well-being? 🔊 Today on VoxDevTalks, Eyal Frank (University of Chicago) discusses how the real-world impacts of biodiversity loss can be quantified: voxdev.org/topic/energy...

Mind-boggling wreckage. Among the lifesaving programs now disrupted by Elon’s attack on @USAID: phase 1 trials for a possible HIV vaccine.

Civil service was designed to protect government employees from political retaliation. That’s not working so well lately… #econsky marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2025/02/civi...

Count us out. www.ft.com/content/176c...

I ran @USAID health programs for the last 3 years. Trump’s 90 day Stop Work Order on foreign assistance does serious damage to the world and the US. Examples:🧵

1/12. Lots of engagement with this Walmart research post. I wanted to follow up on one of the themes I noticed in reactions. This will be a longer thread than I usually write, but I want to weave together a few related points on science (and communication about it), public engagement, and policy.

**New working paper** How does the under-representation of females in Economics affect the career trajectory of female Ph.D. students? Sahar Parsa and I look at this in a new working paper by exploring sabbatical leaves taken by female professors at top-50 US Econ departments.

About 20 years ago I interviewed Carter regarding development and Africa and the (amazing) work of the Carter Center. He was talking about US farm subsidies and the malign effect on developing country farmers. So naturally I asked him why he hadn't addressed ag subsidies when he was president. 1/n

This overview paper is now forthcoming in the Annual Review of Economics, hope some of you find it useful. Copying Lin's thread from x: cepr.org/publications...

🆕 How expanding internet broadband coverage lifted millions out of poverty By Taka Masaki, Carlos Rodriguez Castelan, Hernan Winkler, Tobias Pfutze, Kalvin Bahia, Pau Castells, Genaro Cruz, Xavier Pedros ⤵️ voxdev.org/topic/energy...

The December issue of the JEEA is out, with 10 excellent papers in fields as diverse as finance, macro, political economy, environmental economics... academic.oup.com/jeea/issue @jeeanews.bsky.social @eeanews.bsky.social

Hi #EconSky! I'm on the #EconJobMarket I am a development economist, focusing on firms and their interactions with tax administration. In my JMP I study how Tax Audits affect firms AND aggregate output. My wonderful advisor Natalie Bau wrote a thread about it on x that I can't beat. Check it out!

PEPFAR is at risk of not being renewed by US Congress. It is estimated to have saved over 20 million lives so far, and even now averts over a million deaths annually. In my view this is the most important risk to global health we face today. My post: forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/gF4nLB...

Watch Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Lecture: ”An Evolving Economic Force” 📈📉 www.youtube.com/live/RBkLI5i...

"Two wheelers like e-bikes and electric mopeds] are actually displacing four times as much demand for oil as all the world’s electric cars at present, due to their staggering uptake in China and other nations where mopeds are a common form of transport" theconversation.com/the-worlds-2...

So here is a radical two-state solution: one state for people who want peace, normal life and democracy and another one for Hamas and people like Daniela Weiss. They both might actually like it there, as long as they don't start arguing about who is more radical and theocratic.

To understand the context, IZA is a well-known labour market research outfit in Bonn, Germany, but not *that* influential in labour market policy domestically. Getting a young star like Simon, and dividing it up 50/50 between Bonn and Berlin, was a new (and impressive) strategy.

The EU-Mercosur trade agreement is in its final round - before being ratified or abandoned. My analysis "Trade and Trees", today accepted in AER:I, shows how a relatively simple modification of the treaty can motivate forest conservation instead of deforestation: www.sv.uio.no/econ/persone...

Episode 71: Michael Best on Individuals, Organisations, and State Effectiveness. Joint work with Jonas Hjort (@hjortj.bsky.social) and David Szakonyi. Listen now at thevisiblehand.uk/episodes/epi... #EconSky

In the next episode Michael Best will argue that, in the public sector, there are large differences in productivity across ex ante identical individuals and organisations #EconSky

"What immigration does for innovation" Nice interview with economic historian Petra Moser and labor economist Jennifer Hunt, on @wgbh.org —> blogs.wgbh.org/innovation-h...

Love this quote from Claudia Goldin:

📈📉

This hour with Sam Bowles is a really great history of modern economics podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/s...

Fascinating data visualized by @rubenbmathisen. In Belgium and Germany the rich work longer hours than the poor whereas in South Korea and South Africa the opposite is the case.

Before the pandemic, Rwanda was one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, and it's continuing that tradition post-pandemic. Real GDP is up 9.2% over the last year and is up 26% since this time in 2019!

Happy birthday 'merica!