Deeply disappointed with my alma mater, where I was subject to right-wing and occasionally extremely hateful rhetoric as free speech, that they think that protection only applies to some people.

🚨NEW RESULTS (w/ Slattery & Nober) - When gov't engineers retire, highway projects cost more: the engineers pay for themselves 6 times over - Improving gov’t engineer quality from the 25th to 75th percentile reduces costs by 14%, equal to 3x avg. engineer pay Paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I have students write for five minutes at the start of every class about the reading. I don't grade them, but I give feedback. It works pretty well to ensure a baseline level of reading and regular writing practice. I do it in a Bluebook that goes back and forth, collecting their writing over time.

I’ve done this for 2 weeks now and it *absolutely rules*. Best class discussions I’ve ever had. Best engagement with readings. They write in this worksheet for 15 minutes, then talk about their responses in groups of 3-4, then groups share with the whole class, and *then* we talk about the readings

Arwen’s favorite caturdays are CFB Caturdays. Go tigers!

In case you’re wondering how energy policy is going in California, the fully regressive pricing structure will be taking effect soon 🙃

Not the Denver airports fault, but last year I had to bathe my cat in the bathroom sink and it was clean, quiet, and well stocked with pretty view to the tarmac. Plus I found a shirt for like $7 to change into, which is an absolute steal for an airport.

See! My hoarding of clothing and refusing to part with anything was actually rational all along. I *will* need it one day!

What Bluesky is actually missing are companies customer service people who actually respond, unlike virtual assistants and phone trees. Seriously, FedEx, what is this??

Me sowing (coding without comments, expecting to remember everything): Haha fuck yeah!! Yes! Me reaping (trying to understand code I wrote years ago): Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

I'm working on a difference-in-RDs project but struggling with how to properly handle bandwidth selection across treatment periods. It's not obvious to me how to choose a bandwidth for multiple separate RD estimates at once. Would love pointers to resources or best practices! Thanks in advance 🙏🏼

throwing my undying support behind any candidate who pledges to round up everyone doing scam calls/texts and put them to the sword

sitting in bed at this la quinta inn watching videos of my cat next to a lil stuffed version of my cat bc I miss my cat so much

FYI: I've updated my list of Useful Data Resources, primarily with a bunch of (20-ish?) new links to state-specific public school datasets and data repositories. go.illinois.edu/UsefulDataRe... Suggestions/corrections are always welcome.

After 22 years, NBER shuts its Retirement and Disability Research Center. It was funded by the Social Security Administration (SSA) through a cooperative agreement with the NBER with the goal of providing research and analysis that could inform Social Security policy. www.nber.org/brd/20251/nb...

Charlotte is never beating the allegations when the baggage claim area at the airport has a Billy Graham ad on one side and folks holding “free bible course” signs on the other

just like buying a new empty notebook, switching todo apps will *definitely* make me more productive

my similar boomer opinion is that i think “home economics” or whatever the equivalent is ought to be mandatory for students in middle and high school.

Vote for Angelino!

There should be a rule that if you are a Known Sports Poster you can say things like “holy fucking shit” with zero context but if you are primarily a Known Politics Poster that gets you like a two day ban

If you're in town for #NBER Summer Institute come check out my talk on the impacts of staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration, 3:30pm in the Skyline room

With the recent diff-in-diffs upheaval, you may have asked: When can I get away with using two-way fixed effects? If so, check out this new working paper! It proposes tests for differences in dynamic treatment effects over cohorts, which allows you to explore when TWFE is likely to be biased.

The NABE @nabe-econ.bsky.social ky.social will be holding a webinar on the private sector job mkt for PhD economists on July 29 nabe.com/NABE/Events/Ev…

When I first started teaching my mom told me: you're trying to turn your students into a version of you, and by doing that, you're already failing them. Knock it off. Harsh but true, and I don't know if that sounds trite, or cheesy, but it has so deeply influenced the way I teach

PSA: UIUC is hiring in economics at the assistant level, looking for "expertise in Macroeconomics, International Economics, and Industrial Organization". illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

New release for the HHP project. We now have rent and sales price indexes for 30 cities along with rental yields, capital gains, and housing returns for the years 1890-2006. Online data viz tools and download here: www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-...

In-N-Out is a lot like Chick-fil-A, in that what makes it great is not the product but the consistency. Every single time you get it will be exactly what you expect, at any time of day in any location

Did Citizens United increase the propensity to form corporations, and LLCs in particular, to conceal one's identity when spending money in politics? Using a diff-in-diff design, I find the answer is "yes, it did!". See working paper (now on SSRN!) below. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

New CRR Brief: "Social Security’s Financial Outlook: The 2025 Update in Perspective" bit.ly/3GqwbXM #EconSky

One challenge in the coming months will be to sustain projects of remediation while making clear that they're not enough. For instance, food banks may need donations like never before. And people need to be encouraged to give--and to know that grassroots giving is no substitute for restoring SNAP.

Indiana Jones will be played by a rotating cast of three adjuncts who answer to two different associate deans

Frodo Baggins

It's wild to me is so few people who are not Disabled include Disability in their politics at all. Current proposed cuts are based on 3 baseless zombie ideas 1. There is somehow a 'correct' amount of Disabled people who need support 2. Disability can be precisely measured 3. Spending is too high

How distortion becomes reality:

Once again, I find myself thinking of the press release announcing that the Social Security Administration was unilaterally cancelling funding for all Retirement and Disability Research Consortia. It called the centers “wasteful initiatives.” All of them had a combined cost of about $15 million.

EXTREMELY BAD NEWS for economic research, per former BLS Commissioner @ericagroshen.bsky.social on LinkedIn. BLS is suspending access to its restricted data "for the forseeable future." Applies to projects through the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers & onsite projects with BLS. #EconSky

AML is like 20% unsourced "facts" and 80% meaningless LinkedIn posts and panel speeches at industry conferences these days

Basically all of AML operates like this: generally accepted “facts” that upon digging are just one guy’s opinion that got parroted enough to hide the source.

There’s been lots of chatter about repealing taxation of Social Security benefits in the tax bill. Turns out Rs opted to increase the standard deduction for some seniors instead. Will this increase help lower- and middle-income retirees? Nope, and here’s why. 🧵

GAO reports have been a highly valuable resource for factual information on government inner-workings. We need publicly-available, independent sources of information on agencies. We will miss out on so much if we’re left to rely on agency press releases.

SCOOP: Since SSA installed new anti-fraud checks on claims made over the phone, only 2 claims out of over 110,000 were found to likely be fraudulent, according to internal documents I obtained. The policy has slowed down payments, though. Retirement claim processing is down 25%

The one person a woman is married to is more likely to kill her than all the illegal immigrants in the country combined and yet none of our laws or policies seem to recognize that fact

Shout out to the disabled community for always showing up, always being on the right side of history and justice, always willing to put their bodies on the line, all for the cause of making sure *everyone* has the basic dignity of health care.

Storm-induced power outage just went from 5 hours to estimated 11 hours, so there goes basically all the food in the recently-stocked fridge 😔

1) USPS did not lose $3.3b. It provided a service that cost $3.3b. *The Pentagon* loses you money, however, every time it accidentally yeets a fighter jet off the deck of a carrier

Happy to share videos of 12-hour course on DIDs I taught at @liser.lu in Luxemburg. Covers in depth the first 7 chapters of our textbook, and last chapter more quickly. Use it to teach yourself (for free!) recent developments on DID! Thanks ‪@andreaecon.bsky.social‬ for class and videos!

I strongly believe that this is the root of discontent in the US, and we point to economic/social/etc issues to try to pin it on something tangible. Going through daily life “on guard” & defensive is exhausting and cognitively taxing; we need to figure out how to rebuild societal trust

after this last few months I think I am now in critical support of all weird ultrarich people hobbies. take that horse dancing class. I love that yoga retreat for you. tighten up that golf swing. search the ocean floor for ancient shipwrecks. anything that keeps you in your business and out of ours