New post: “The printing press, identity, and the formation of diaspora in early modernity - my review of Sebouh Aslanian's book” open.substack.com/pub/proseont...

New submission format at SBE: “Replications as Registered Reports” link.springer.com/journal/1118... You can get "in-principle acceptance" before data collection even begins; final paper gets published regardless the results, if the study is conducted rigorously. #EconSky

Prof. Noel Johnson (GMU) on our co-authored work on the 1857 Rebellion and vaccine hesitancy in colonial India. #EconSky

Did a podcast on my research with @malikaltaf.bsky.social on the 1857 Rebellion, British massacres, and smallpox vaccine hesitancy in Colonial India. open.spotify.com/episode/6Qfw...

📢CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS | Virtual Economic History Workshop for early-career researchers The workshop turns 3 in January! 🎉🎉🎉 Presenters have come from 15 universities in 3 countries (list below) Sign up to present: forms.gle/vt21XRe4KA4J... Join the mailing list: forms.gle/tVWH2TPYaRuD... 1/

Recently accepted by #QJE, “Enlightenment Ideals and Belief in Progress in The Run-up to the Industrial Revolution: A Textual Analysis,” by Almelhem, Iyigun, Kennedy, and Rubin (@jaredcrubin): doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

This essay from @bschmidt.bsky.social on how history rejected computational methods, & so "quantitative history" ended up in the social sciences, & "digital humanities" in literature, with no historians doing computational work, is fascinating, & worth a read: dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/computa...

Just want to mention two articles of mine since we are talking about the hilariously-named "Credibility Revolution." 1. "Randomized Controlled History?" It explores design-based inference approaches to history and finds them mostly problematic. (www.nowpublishers.com/article/Deta...)

The world's time zones visualized on a spinnable, interactive globe. Try out the code - it'll default to your current time zone and show you times around the world! #30DayMapChallenge Day 27: Boundaries Code: gist.github.com/walkerke/c4a...

Now forthcoming at Quarterly Journal of Economics Enlightenment Ideals and Belief in Progress in the Run-up to the Industrial Revolution: A Textual Analysis Available at: digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_... (See thread below for an overview)

#Stata #geoboundary has been bumped to v1.22 to include #WorldBank 's latest official boundary data that now provides upto ADM2 level shapefiles. Installations+code+more info on GitHub: github.com/asjadnaqvi/s... Up soon SSC!

More than a decade of effort went into this magnificent dataset. What an incredible public good. People need to know how hard it is to do rigorous empirical work in political science.

For our next seminar at the Demography Department at Cedeplar, UFMG, we have the extraordinary Ridhi Kashyap @ridhikashyap.bsky.social presenting. Don´t miss it! The Zoom link is below. We see you all tomorrow, October 8, at 2 pm Brazilian time 👇 💡 Zoom link: lnkd.in/e5UC-M54 #demography

🚨New Working Paper 🚨 Did Catholic missions have an impact on American Indigenous communities? Were the effects different depending on the origin of the missionaries? These are things I examine in this paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... (1/6)

I am proud to announce that my book "As Gods Among Men. A History of the Rich in the West" has been awarded the Ranki Biennial Prize by the Economic History Association!😊👇

Now on Early View: 'Wealth inequality and epidemics in the Republic of Venice (1400–1800)'. By Guido Alfani, Matteo Di Tullio & Mattia Fochesato. @guidoalfani.bsky.social‬ ‪@stone-lis.bsky.social‬ @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Why was the Irish Famine was so severe? Why did the North and South develop differently? Is Ireland ‘rich’? If you want to find out, CEPH is pleased to announce that registration is open for our online course, "The Development of the Irish Economy". Register here: ceph.ie/the-developm...

I'm excited to launch a YouTube channel about econometrics and practical coding / productivity tools. Please consider subscribing so that others can more easily find these resources! www.youtube.com/@structurale...

My interview on The Visible Hand podcast is now live! www.thevisiblehand.uk/episodes/epi...

Whoa! Elsevier fired @richardtol.bsky.social, longstanding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Energy Economics. Richard's side of the story should be ringing alarm bells. #EconSky Fraud and cover-up richardtol.substack.com/p/fraud-and-...

Come and check out our next Formal Demography Working Group meeting with @phbocquier.bsky.social ! Sign up on our website to receive the link. If you have an ideia/paper/ work in progress you would like to present please feel free to reach out to us! formaldemography.github.io/working_group/

Come check out our panel on Bureaucratic Performance in the Developing World at APSA (Thu, September 11, 12:00 to 1:30pm PDT in East Meeting Level, East 12. I'll be presenting some new work on how farmers and officials in India learned to game satellite-based environmental enforcement.....

Please apply!! RA for research on culture and development. employment.ucsd.edu/research-ass...

Just wanted to say clearly that Gautam Gambhir's comments to the Oval groundsman (heard over the mic) were arrogant, obnoxious and unacceptable. It represents the upper caste privileged Indian mentality.

If anybody is heading to Lund for WEHC next week, come see me present new research with @malikaltaf.bsky.social on "The Great Revolt and its Legacy: Understanding Vaccine Hesitancy in Colonial India". www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/om1q6...

✨Did markets make Americans more cooperative❓🔍 ✅YES‼️ Between 1850 and 1920, the US became the largest and most integrated economy in the world 📶🌎 We show that this shift didn’t just move goods and affect prices—it fundamentally changed culture and behavior 🧵 👇 1/17

The keynote recordings from the 7th EBRD–CEPR Symposium on the Economics of Demographic Change are now online! Talks by: Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (@upenn.edu): www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7_e... @mdoepke.bsky.social (LSE): www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FRE...

How culture and policy shape each other—and why paying attention to local context is key for development policies' success, from Natalie Bau, Sara Lowes, and Eduardo Montero https://www.nber.org/papers/w33947

Read this, bookmark it, download it (& print it, too, if you want to go all out). But make sure you & yours know that medical history ( #histmed) has a solid response to the nonsense our HHS secretary is spouting. nursingclio.org/2025/06/30/m... 🧪🗃️ And follow @nursingclio.bsky.social. #MiasmaTheory

Delighted that after many years of hard work, Barriers to Global Capital Allocation (written jointly with Bruno Pellegrino and Enrico Spolaore), will be coming out in the QJE. academic.oup.com/qje/article-...

The annual EHS Residential Training Course for Postgraduate Students will be held 3-6 December 2025. 12 part-funded places are available on this course, primarily designed to raise the quality of dissertations. Deadline for applications: 16:00 (UK) Friday 12 September ehs.org.uk/society/stud...

Some personal/professional news: I am excited to be joining the Economics Department @upenn.bsky.social and the Penn Initiative for the Study of Markets as a Postdoc in Fall 2025!

This is intriguing -- Language Dialect boundaries block the transmission of Pertussis, but not Measles or Smallpox. www.cell.com/iscience/ful... #linguistics

“Effects of Communal Violence on Women’s Marital Outcomes”: Ghose & Pandey show that following the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat, the prob. of child marriage increased relative to the rest of India while women’s age at marriage, employment & autonomy dropped. read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

Smallpox declined gradually, until the WHO coordinated the global effort to eradicate it

❕New WP from Eric Schneider and Romola Davenport❕ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐩𝐨𝐱? ⬇️

Hey #EconSky I would like to set up a microgrants for phd-students and postdocs in econ. I.e. microgrants for submission fees, conf fees etc. Q: Does something like that already exist? @climent.bsky.social @joshua-goodman.com @dynarski.bsky.social @ckronenberg.bsky.social

Up next, a tremendous paper led by @shirahebelsela.bsky.social finding that a semester-long virtual contact intervention improved attitudes, reduced dehumanization, and increased self-outgroup overlap among non-Muslim and Muslim students www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Taking a break from American and British politics on this site? Here is a new blog post on Broadstreet about what we can learn about state capacity reversal from a historic episode of ideologically motivated bureaucratic decline in China. If you haven’t subscribed, Broadstreet is now on substack.

“Extending‌ ‌previous‌ ‌work,‌ ‌we‌ ‌vary‌ ‌the‌ ‌race,‌ ‌gender,‌ ‌and‌ ‌topic‌ ‌of‌ ‌the‌ ‌constituent’s‌ ‌message, and we‌ observe ‌if elected‌ ‌officials ‌both open‌ ‌and‌ ‌reply‌ ‌to‌ ‌constituents’ messages‌.‌ ‌ We ‌find‌ ‌that‌ ‌Black‌ ‌men‌ ‌are systematically ignored, regardless of the message they send.‌” link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🚨 Bottom line: The oft-cited 20–30% CFR for Variola major doesn't hold up across time and place. We argue for a more nuanced, historically grounded view—context matters. 📄 Read the full paper here: www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-His... 6/6

So why is the consensus CFR (20-30%) for endemic smallpox too high? Three factors likely biased estimates of CFRs upwards: 1) Under-reporting of smallpox cases 2) Positive selection into vaccination after 1796 3) Selection of severe smallpox cases into hospital samples used to estimate CFRs 5/6

📜 NEW WORKING PAPER 📜 What was the true case fatality rate (CFR) of smallpox? My new paper with Romola Davenport (Cambridge) revisits this question using 18th-century data from Sweden and Iceland—and challenges the long-held belief that smallpox CFRs were 20–30%. 🧵👇 1/6

@vincentdelabastita.bsky.social, Spike Gibbs and I have a new working paper out! We explore the dynamics of wage inequality in medieval England, which allows us to better understand the commercialization of labour markets in the Middle Ages. www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-His...

The Public Choice Outreach Conference

This summer, @histparl.bsky.social will be joining forces with the University of Worcester hosting a conference to reassess Hastings 230 years on. @royalhistsoc.org @bsecs.bsky.social #skystorians royalhistsoc.org/calendar/the...

#QueenCharlotte gave royal support to Edward Jenner's ground-breaking #smallpox vaccine, which used cowpox to build resistance. Opponents argued that the procedure would give people bovine features 🐮 an idea mocked in this #caricature by James Gillray. #18thcentury #historysky

People who follow me know I maintain a scholarly, multidisciplinary bibliography on the #2ndPlaguePandemic. What I don't include there are popularizations. Or #BadPlagueHistory. I'm flagging this one b/c it (& others) disgrace the medical journals that publish such crap. www.jaad.org/article/S019...