The proudest moment of my life was my admission to Harvard in 1976. Today I am deeply ashamed. @harvard.edu must revoke Summers' University Professorship. His holding the school's highest honor debases the university and is an insult to every woman and person of color in the academic community.

T1/ his article deserves the Scottish verdict for op eds. It does not make the case for the policies it advocates. The first problem is that the authors do not make clear arguments about the justification for price in housing and energy markets. Invocation of public support is not a justification.

1/ I highly recommend The First Russian Revolution by Susanna Rabow-Edling. She provides an extremely readable narrative history of the Decembrist Revolt. A path not taken? Too speculative. But certainly the book succeeds in demonstrating longstanding important liberal currents in Russian thought.

Latest installment in an extraordinarily interesting research program on inequality in Imperial China, one replete with insights on meritocracy, elite reproduction, and other topics with great current salience.

Important evidence on the first order importance of Asian immigration to the US economy, and by implication, the madness of efforts to truncate this extraordinarily productive flow of talent. Must read.

Delighted to post this great conversation with Nicole Fortin, Codirector of the new Stone Centre on Wealth and Income Inequality at the Vancouver School of Economics, which covered the many fascinating dimensions of her work on econometrics, labor economics, and gender inequality.

1/ Very pleased to release this paper with extraordinary coauthors David McMillon and Scott Page, which outlines ideas on how complex systems methods can enrich the study of inequality. A key idea is that persistent inequalities may be an emergent property for a range of socioeconomic environments.

1/ Egalitarianism should begin at home. I link to this article by @bencasselman.bsky.social in light of the communications between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein that have just been released. The released emails and the fact of friendship are vile. www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/b...

Very valuable thread.

Inequality Reconsidered: A Week with the Stone Center begins today! Missed the registration window for our Nov. 4 lecture with Sam Bowles? Don’t worry, you can still join “Why Economic Inequalities Endure” on Thursday, Nov. 6. Seats are limited, don't wait → cvent.me/aWXMPq

There is no greater joy in my academic career than my lifelong collaboration and friendship with Andros Kourtellos and Chih Ming Tan. They are "deep roots" for my trajectory as a social scientist.

In case you missed it ⬇️ I sat down with University of Chicago Professor Steven Durlauf, director of the school's Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, for a comprehensive look at U.S. wealth inequality. Watch the interview here: youtu.be/8f-ECvXYfWw?...

@corinnelow.com is an exceptionally creative, broadminded, and humane scholar. This is a lovely description of her book.

Truly consequential social science.

I invite you to listen to this conversation with my wonderful colleague @nomadj1s.bsky.social, Associate Director of @ucstonecenter.bsky.social, in which we explore the many interesting facts of his research ranging from racial inequality to consumer behavior.

The wonderful 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics brought to mind this Soviet poster which embodies a different set of ideas: "Let Us Speed Up the Pace of Technological Progress!"

Measuring inequality of opportunity must account for the context in which choices are made. Using linear Bayesian model averaging & machine-learning methods, researchers show how estimates of opportunity inequality vary across model specifications and EU countries. Read the paper → zurl.co/WD1ej

Registration for the Autumn 2025 Inequality Workshop is now open → forms.gle/bbnp8ZgfBxE7... We'll see you there!

Discussions about student loans are in the news more than ever. This Friday, we’ll hear from an expert who's using administrative credit bureau data to study the effects of loan forgiveness. Register now to be part of the conversation → zurl.co/sZ9VG

Delighted that a true doyen of inequality research, Sam Bowles, will visit @ucstonecenter.bsky.social to deliver the first Stone Lecture. And honored that he will engage in a public conversation on inequality with me. Please join us!

To be sure, according to Plato's Socrates, not trusting qualified experts is a defining feature of democracy. It's also what got Socrates the death sentence (qua the Apology) and also puts society on a path to tyranny (qua the Republic).

If I were the social planner, the next Nobel Prize in Economics would be awarded to Samuel Bowles, Glenn Loury, and John Roemer. Their work is foundational to the modern study of inequality, addressing normative and positive dimensions of inequality with profound insight.

Delighted to post this wonderful conversation with Joseph Fishkin, whose brilliant book Bottlenecks has so deeply influenced my thinking about inequality and meritocracy.

Parental income and family structure during childhood shape adult income—especially in middle childhood and adolescence. These effects complement one another across key developmental stages. Research by Yoosoon Chang, Steven Durlauf, Bo Hu & Joon Park. https://ow.ly/kZeL50X7ott

Earlier this month, we hosted an authors' conference for the upcoming volume, "Whither Meritocracy?" published by the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Read the recap and preview what's to come → bit.ly/46VBKro

Very happy that exceptional conversation with Alexander Monge-Naranjo has posted. Alex's work addresses many aspects of inequality, from financial barriers to college attainment to the dynamics of spatial inequality in cities.

New paper! (And note that effects faded to a pretty precise 0 by six months later)

Very happy to share this terrific conversation with Francisco Ferreira @lseinequalities.bsky.social, with a focus on his foundational work on inherited inequality.

Recommended! Important evidence on declining mobility in Germany, consistent with an intertemporal Great Gatsby Curve.

Great opportunity.

1/Very pleased to release this paper which provides a very flexible methodology for estimation of Markov transition matrices linking parents to children, joint with my brilliant coauthors Yoosoon Chang, Bo Hu, and Joon Park.

My papers arguing that the "Abundance Movement" needs broadening to include place-based jobs policies for distressed places are being released today, with a long paper at the Upjohn Institute & a shorter summary at Brookings Metro.

Very much looking forward to this event which celebrates the 10th anniversary of @lseinequalities.bsky.social.

Thank you @tderyugina.bsky.social for taking the lead on this important letter.

Very pleased to release this new paper with Giovanni Bernardo, Andros Kourtellos, and Chih Ming Tan on the measurement of inequality of opportunity.

Delighted that this conversation with the wonderful Wendy Carlin has posted.

Must read paper which provides fascinating evidence on the ways the Industrial Revolution generated social mobility.

Very pleased to post this new paper which provides some theoretical structures to study aspects of the dynamics of assimilation.

Exploring the role of social influences in majority language acquisition and language minorities and demonstrates complex comparative statics exist in such environments, from William A. Brock, Bo Chen, Steven N. Durlauf, and Shlomo Weber https://www.nber.org/papers/w34138

Let me highlight my coauthor, the brilliant Stone Center postdoc Kristina Butaeva @butaevak.bsky.social, who was the heart and soul of the project.‬

Delighted to release with paper with Kristina Butaeva, Lian Chen, and Albert Park. Many of the Markov chain ideas we develop are inspired by mobility ideas that originate in sociology, specifically about exchange versus structural mobility.

EJ Antoni for BLS Commissioner - Neither citations nor experience conducting statistical analysis needed (according to Daily Signal) #econsky econbrowser.com/archives/202...

Delighted to post this great discussion with Eric Schliesser @nescio13.bsky.social. And if you do not follow his substack digressionsimpressions you are missing a treat.

Nov 2024 paper assessing Antoni-St. Onge calculation of deflators #econsky www.ssc.wisc.edu/~mchinn/OnAS...

Paper: A Statistical Critique of Antoni-St. Onge (Nov. 2024) Given EJ Antoni has been nominated to be head of one of the most important statistical agencies in the country, we should know how much he knows about statistics #econsky www.ssc.wisc.edu/~mchinn/OnAS...

1/ Is there any case of an academic who has joined the Trump administration resigning in protest or publicly defending the integrity of the BLS? Anyone purporting to be a scholar has an absolute ethical obligation to do so. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/u...

1/Kevin Hassett had long ago discredited himself as a scholar by parroting claims about the economy he knew to be false. Even so, parroting the lie about rigged statistics, is a new low. The academy should ostracize him the same way a fabricator of research should be ostracized.

Very pleased to post this great conversation with Cristobal Young.

Very happy to share this conversation with the hopelessly creative Caterina Calsamiglia on her fascinating work on education and inequality.