"high-achieving underrepresented minority college-goers were up to 10 percentage points less likely to enroll in highly selective colleges... “cascading” down the college selectivity distribution into less selective colleges with lower graduation rates and earnings." edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1392

Thrilled to kick off the Spring 2026 Economics Seminar Series at @gsueconomics.bsky.social 🎉 If you’re in Atlanta and would like to join one of the talks, feel free to reach out!

🚨📢 Call for papers - IV Workshop on Economics of Education, Valle Nevado 🇨🇱⛷️ 📅 August 18-21 📍Valle Nevado, Chile Keynotes by Josh Goodman ( @buwheelock.bsky.social ) and Chris Neilson (Yale) Submit by March 6 👇 bit.ly/49QSsd3 @joshua-goodman.com @christopherneilson.bsky.social

"The College Backlash Is a Mirage" Americans are more pessimistic than ever about the value of a degree—but enrollment keeps going up. By @rosehorowitch.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

MDRC's THE-RCT data file, an individual-level data file including 33 higher ed RCTs and 80k students, is now available on OpenICPSR with a couple updates: -Two new studies (MMA and ASAP Westchester) -More years of data for three studies (EASE, DPP, and ModMath) www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/pr...

Recently accepted by #QJE, “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges,” by Chetty (@Oppinsights), Deming, and Friedman: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

Kevin Roberts' defense of Nick Fuentes is a watershed moment: the right has officially declared open, unabashed Hitlerism to be an acceptable position in their coalition www.vox.com/politics/466...

Econ of Ed (and other) friends: what are the best studies linking in-college interventions to labor market outcomes? Especially interested in those that improve outcomes via different mechanism than completion. E.g. if a college wants to improve earnings of grads, what should they do?

Meet the 2025–2026 job market candidates from GSU Economics! 🎉 @gsueconomics.bsky.social #econsky 👇 Here’s a quick introduction to each candidate.

Huge thanks to @jonisaacsmith.bsky.social for arranging my visit. GSU has an impressive econ department, full of great applied micro folks and the Georgia Policy Lab that supports work directly relevant to improving public policy.

Our 2nd annual @gsueconomics.bsky.social PhD Summer Symposium was a success! 🎉 It was great to showcase our GSU Economics JMCs for 2025–26. Thanks to @jonisaacsmith.bsky.social y.social for co-organizing, and a big thank-you to our endowed chairs for sponsoring this event!

Sounds about right to me.

Hopkins shows clearly that this is not about wokeness, or antisemitism, or whatever other excuse they may claim. It’s about bringing universities to heel, following the playbook of authoritarians everywhere.

It's a paper about voting, yes. But really, it's a paper about peer effects. We think we are uniquely able to identify causal peer effects in a vitally important behavior.

Deep cut. And better/accurate spelling of Marcia.

Depends on whether Marsha voted. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha..

The suspense is killing me...I hope it will last.

I'm lucky enough to have Alex as my new-ish colleague! Go @gsueconomics.bsky.social!

Very cool to see this paper (my former JMP!) forthcoming at one of my favorite journals!

Congrats to our own Economics faculty member @jonisaacsmith.bsky.social for receiving the 2025 GSU Ignite Faculty Research Partnership Award for his work with Achieve Atlanta !!! Economist Jonathan Smith Receives Georgia State Ignite Research Award news.gsu.edu/2025/04/04/e...

A new practitioner's guide to staggered difference-in-difference designs arxiv.org/pdf/2503.13323

AERA has just learned that all restricted-use NCES data licenses will be cancelled, possibly as early as March 20. We urgently request that all AERA members and others in the research community with restricted-use licenses take these two actions: www.aera.net/Research-Pol...

"International students increase schools’ funding via tuition payments, which leads to increased in-state enrollment and lower tuition prices." Link to working paper below

This is the way. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Meet Evan Anzoo, a five-year-old boy in South Sudan who died when Elon Musk shut down USAID and the boy lost access to his HIV meds. Musk says no one has died because of the aid shutdown, but that's because he didn't look. RIP, Evan, you deserved better. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Access to public four-year colleges boosts earnings and stability. @jonisaacsmith.bsky.social, @joshua-goodman.com, and Michael Hurwitz analyze college access’s long-term effects, showing students gain greater career mobility and security. doi.org/10.3368/jhr....

NEW: Senator Marshall (R-KS) RUNS AWAY, fleeing his own town hall after being asked about DOGE firing Veterans. MAKE HIM GO VIRAL.

How are parents affected by their kid going to college? How are they affected when their kid gets a scholarship or grant? New working paper with @palaashbhargava.bsky.social @econsandy.bsky.social @odedgurantz.bsky.social and Rob Fairlie www.nber.org/papers/w33497

🌟 Did you know that most federal education data are archived in the @urbaninstitute.bsky.social Education Data Explorer? It's a great resource for research and analysis - and there's even a full API version linked in thread. 🌟 #EduSky #EdPoliSky #EduSkyECEC educationdata.urban.org/data-explorer

I'll be visiting Copenhagen Business School on March 27th and giving a brown bag seminar. I hope the broader Copenhagen economics community can attend!

You can still submit for the NBER's Children & Families spring meetings on April 3-4. Submit by Jan. 31 here: conference.nber.org/confsubmit/b...

Same! Well, the Muppet Christmas part.

We hope to start reviewing applications very soon. If you haven't applied, now's the time! If you have questions, shoot me an email and ask me now!

Great to see so many of our faculty, colleagues, graduate students, and alumni at the @appam.bsky.social Fall Research Conference! #APPAM2024

Now that’s the way to return to Bluesky! This was a great collaboration and the paper is even better, imo. For those interested in what HBCUs offer to students, in terms of access and returns, this is your kind of paper!

Forthcoming in AEJ: Economic Policy: "HBCU Enrollment and Longer-Term Outcomes" by Ashley Edwards, Justin Ortagus, Jonathan Smith, and Andria Smythe. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

📢 We're hiring at @gsueconomics.bsky.social ! Come join our Economics department at Georgia State University! 📢 We're hiring an endowed chair position. This is an open field full professor position, with the option for promotion upon hire! www.aeaweb.org/joe/listing.... #EconSky

The fun doesn’t stop here.

We're hiring at @gsueconomics.bsky.social ! Come join our econ dept at Georgia State University! ATL is amazing! We are hiring for two tenured chair positions The first position is active on JOE and is open field; the second position will be posted soon. www.aeaweb.org/joe/listing.... #EconSky

Go Carycruz, very distinguished @gsueconomics.bsky.social alum.

Does anyone have publicly available data from a populous state (eg CA, TX, NY, FL) with detailed variables about each high school? I’m aware of National data from CCD and PSS and in fact, I want to link the state data to them, so an NCES school identifier is required. Thanks!

Great article by Dave Deming on how to better use standardized test scores in college admissions ("test-optional" ain't it). Cites our research that "super-scoring", as many colleges do, exacerbates income gaps by encouraging excessive retaking. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Econ of Ed folks (and skiers!). Great conference alert. I went last year, met some great scholars and skiers. Submit my March 1st. Workshop on Economics of Education - Universidad de los Andes (uandes.cl) In Valle Nevado, Chile.

Correction - BEST Job Alert!

Come work with me @ GSU! Interested in all ranks. Particularly interested in building on our existing fields (i.e., applied micro) and metrics, ATL is awesome and the department is even better! Please reach out if you have any questions. www.aeaweb.org/joe/listing....

Great piece by Prof David Deming arguing that "The College Backlash Is Going Too Far". I particularly appreciate the closing sentences: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

What metric do you fear?

Ok! Best dressed coauthor is…