Another reminder that undertreated high blood pressure has real consequences. A physician bonus tied to blood pressure targets led to fewer medication increases for patients with borderline hypertension, and those patients then experienced more heart attacks and strokes.

This is a fantastic and rare (!) example of authors of a published paper and the author of a comment on that paper working together to fix the scientific record. Kudos to all involved. This is not easy, even with good faith all around. @droodman.bsky.social @i4replication.bsky.social #EconSky

Remember that recent paper claiming to show that "ideological bias" determined the results obtained by immigration policy research teams? A careful, open-code reanalysis by @kauspurg.bsky.social & Josef Brüderl finds that the result arises from a coding error. —> doi.org/10.31222/osf...

A theory of university parking (and fireworks) www.economicforces.xyz/p/parking-fi...

I hate a bad haircut as much as the next guy, but this seems disproportionate....

"[Novartis, Amgen and Lilly are] developing medicines that lower the level of lipoprotein(a), a fatty particle in the blood that is known as Lp(a)... Tens of millions of people in the U.S. have elevated Lp(a), an inherited and largely hidden driver of heart disease." www.wsj.com/health/pharm...

I have some on my Google Scholar page as well

New blog post: Evaluating Dr. Cuddy’s Claim that the Debunking of Power Posing is a Myth. daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/05/eval... On an AI generated description of a non-existent study, incorrectly citing findings from studies, and the importance of scientific criticism.

confirmed here by multiple sources!! another fun rumor is apparently the small and inexperienced firm taking over will subcontract the work back to ResDAC! I can feel the efficiency growing!

A proposal to manage blackouts in #Ukraine and other countries

I've been talking about this with some folks over the past few months and am happy to see @severinborenstein.bsky.social write it up so well. For many places, the status quo is subsidized insurance: taxes ⬇️ when price ⬆️, but not the reverse. energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/05/18/n...

Submissions for the 2026 Midwest Health Economics Conference are due 𝐓𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟐𝟏. We invite submissions of full papers or extended abstracts. Conference held on Sept 24-25 at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Submit a paper or volunteer as a discussant: go.gies.illinois.edu/MHEC2026

The cost of winsorizing is highest when treatment effects are concentrated in the tails. Medical claims are the canonical example: interventions often move the right tail, so winsorizing imputes away the very variation that identifies the effect!

Great feature of legalized kidney compensation is that it pays for itself "It would be financially feasible to pay donors quite generously without requiring recipients to pay anything at all. Donors could be paid entirely from the savings to the health care system by taking patients off dialysis."

Looking for a faculty job in an awesome department? Might I suggest Vanderbilt Health Policy? We are searching for a tenure track faculty member, all ranks considered! Please apply - it is an outstanding department and Nashville is a great place to work and live! apply.interfolio.com/185527

Aetna and Cigna have now both left the ACA market "Cigna said it lost money in the ACA business in all but two years since 2014"

Now is the time to let the AEA know who you'd like to see in editorial positions at AEA journals. Link for nominations (including self-nominations): www.aeaweb.org/journals/edi... Thanks! @aeajournals.bsky.social #EconSky

I agree with all of these points. And learning continues well beyond the PhD program: I’ve learned far more economics as a professor than I did as a student. That ongoing intellectual expansion is a large part of what makes this profession so rewarding.

Nice level-headed overview of this workshop

Some examples of why I don't think generative AI is going to take all our jobs, at least in the foreseeable future. #EconSky deryugina.com/a-rant-about...

I expect that we'll soon see a full replication layer for empirical econ: every paper from the past 20 years systematically re-run, audited, and documented on a public website. Even for papers that used proprietary data, the code and methods will be stress-tested in public.

Insurance isn’t the only way to smooth shocks, credit matters too. My new paper with Jaffe and Malani models insurance and borrowing jointly, showing they are substitutes: access to loans sharply reduces insurance value, cutting it in half for typical households. julianreif.com/research/rei...

🚨 U Melbourne flagship McKenzie Postdoc - 3 years fully funded, no teaching - 25K research budget - fame and prestige EOI closing 7 May, need to have a supervisor (email/DM me with Qs!) sites.research.unimelb.edu.au/research-fun...

AJHE is now online! Our social media editor, Anna Chorniy, will be posting summaries of our accepted papers.

Yes, post preprints if you care about maximizing your readership. No good reason not to.

Amen

Did a series of videos with Markus Brunnermeier on Claude Code (more to come) Video 1: Getting Started with CC open.substack.com/pub/paulgp/p...

New work from Brookings and the American Journal of Health Economics suggests the health care cost curve may finally be bending conversableeconomist.com/2026/03/27/b...

Useful resource for health economists

A new political party in Japan, “Team Mirai”, is using an AI Interviewer to get feedback from voters and engage with them. The party was founded by a software engineer and appears to be doing well www.schneier.com/blog/archive...

Some argue that generative AI marks the end of human-generated knowledge. I’m skeptical. A simple thought experiment: train the best AI on everything humanity knew in 1875. Would it have discovered relativity, quantum mechanics, DNA? Unlikely. Full blog post here: deryugina.com/human-knowle...

3/ I want to show evidence that I believe that AI "one-shotting" papers is going to heavily lean on methods that require a huge amount of taste, discretion, and care (diff-in-diff):

I am excited to organize this conference with Yana Gallen. Please submit, repost, and also circulate to your networks.

Seems like a real milestone: researchers have integrated an emulated fly brain into a simulation. The video is spooky theinnermostloop.substack.com/p/the-first-...

The abstract submission deadline for HHES is coming up in 10 day (March 15). It's always a great set of papers and an amazing setting, so don't miss it! tinyurl.com/HHES2026-Inv...

Harsh Parikh will present work on how to transport estimated effects from one set of networks to another. Shuangning Li will share new results on covariate adjustment in experiments. So if you're working on networks+causality, consider participating. Abstracts due March 10th causnets.github.io

The Criminal Justice team at Arnold Ventures is looking for a pending/recent PhD with strong causal inference skills, for a remote, part-time consulting position. This is a great opportunity for someone considering a transition from academia to the policy space. Deadline: March 15 Please share!

DeclareDesign is super useful for anyone in the design state of their experiment

Medicare Part B spends over $40 billion on physician-administered drugs. Our new study, forthcoming in the Journal of Public Economics, finds that the program's payment formula slows drug price growth over time.

Are you a PhD Student curious about working in topics of health and aging? Do you feel like you may need extra support? I have a program for you! A one-day mentoring workshop hosted by yours truly and Jetson Leder-Luis (BU) through @nber.org www.nber.org/calls-papers...

#EconSky: Registration for "The Craft of Publishing in Economics" is now open! March 9, 12-1:30 EDT. Three fantastic editor will give suggestions for how to navigate the publication process w/ plenty of time for Q&A. More info & registration form below. econ4ua.org/the-craft-of...

FDA blinked www.wsj.com/health/healt...

⚙️ Working at the intersection of causality and networks? We're organizing a satellite event at @netsciconf.bsky.social in Boston on June 1st. The focus is networks science and causal inference. Submit your work by March 10th! causnets.github.io

📢 Predoc Opportunity I'm hiring a full-time predoc to work with me at UC Berkeley, supporting my research on labor economics, the economics of education, and public policy. jesse-rothstein.com/rothstein_pr... Please pass on to anyone who might be interested. #econsky #econ_ra

New dataset dropped this month: national Medicaid provider spending (2018–2024), aggregated by NPI x HCPCS x month. Includes FFS, managed care, and CHIP encounter data. Public, 3.3GB, provider-level detail. Looks very useful for utilization & spending research opendata.hhs.gov

#EconSky: Save the date & tell your friends! Economists for Ukraine will host an online workshop called "The Craft of Publishing in Economics" on March 9, 12-1:30 US EST. Sign up here to get more info: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The Francesca Gino saga has reached its logical conclusion: the LinkedIn post about what my adversity has taught me to launch “consulting services”.

Good idea

#EconSky: Tymofiy Mylovanov from the Kyiv School of Economics is a simply a hero. While Trump is busy allying with Putin, Tymofiy is out in the cold working for his students and his country. I will match all donations to KSE, up to $1K total (link below). www.youtube.com/shorts/RgDXI...

Nice essay by Carlos Chavez on the history and development of causal inference carloschavezp29.substack.com/p/on-causality