Nice article on returns to R&D in MIT Tech Review, ft. our own @mattsclancy.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/17/...

Some good news: NIH now seems on track to spend its $47 billion budget by the end of September www.statnews.com/2025/09/12/...

Cool paper on how 2019 OPO reform has saved lives by increasing organ procurement rates. Props to Greg Segal and Jenna Arnold for their advocacy to help make this happen, and to @johnarnoldfndtn.bluesky.social for supporting this work! www.nber.org/papers/w34140

Nice article in Inside Philanthropy on our Abundance and Growth Fund www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/heres-...

Striking chart about the decline of moving in the US

Excited that Open Phil is funding this @metaculus.bsky.social forecasting tournament on the future budgets and spending of NIH and NSF, and surprised that forecasters are expecting basically no cuts www.metaculus.com/tournament/...

Exciting NBER study (and NYT coverage) finding that $1,000 unconditional cash transfers in Kenya reduced under-5 deaths by 45%. GiveWell already took this evidence into account in their positive update on GiveDirectly last fall (doesn't make a huge quantitative difference).

This is great pathgolden.substack.com/p/a-forecas...

Congratulations to Giving What We Can on reaching 10,000 pledgers who donate 10% of their income to high-impact charities! bsky.app/profile/giv...

So excited that @scientificdiscovery.dev will be advising us on clinical trial reform opportunities! bsky.app/profile/sci...

I've been working on a new tool, Refine, to make scholars more productive. If you're interested in being among the very first to try the beta, please read on. Refine leverages the best current AI models to draw your attention to potential errors and clarity issues in research paper drafts. 1/

~$40b in market cap loss for Novo Nordisk today, which is ~8% of Denmark's total GDP (stocks/flows but still)

TIL that even though the US Clean Power Plan was repealed, US power sector emissions have dropped faster than it targeted (basically bc of faster than anticipated transitions to solar and gas). Bummer to me that these pieces of good news aren't more celebrated!

Nice NYT article on human challenge trials, featuring @1daysooner.bsky.social's advocacy pivot from COVID challenge trials to other diseases like Hep C, and a cool volunteer's decision to participate in a malaria challenge trial (and donate his comp!) www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/...

We've long supported work to use gene drives to stop the spread of malaria, but many of the approaches are fairly invasive. So great to see this new paper in Nature from a grantee about an approach to drive a *naturally occurring malaria resistance gene* through a mosquito pop!

Cool to see this report get mentioned in a recent article in The Economist bsky.app/profile/alb...

Interesting paper on the long-run domestic determinants of US political support for foreign aid conference.nber.org/conf_papers...

In this program in Rajasthan, adding a community health officer added a year of healthy life for ~$15K patrickagte.github.io/patrickagte...

Pair of interesting job market papers on impacts of improving roads in low-income countries jeannesorin.github.io/assets/pdf/... jrosenthalkay.github.io/pdfs/rosent...

Yet another paper finding huge negative mortality results from air pollution. Wild methods on this one from Brazil

Awesome paper finding huge benefits from relaxing zoning constraints in NYC, even once you account for the big costs of redevelopment vrollet.github.io/files/city_...

Very cool paper about how important social networks are in driving movement conference.nber.org/conf_papers...

This paper finds that net jobs created by the Opportunity Zones tax break are largely just shifted from adjacent census tracts conference.nber.org/conf_papers...

Big estimates of negative externalities from traffic noise in the US conference.nber.org/conf_papers...

Interesting result about the importance of sewers for the geography of cities arising from the fact that... um... "stuff" rolls downhill conference.nber.org/conf_papers...

Instant sepsis diagnosis via skin spectral imaging (palm or finger) and A.I. in a prospective cohort of >480 ICU patients www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

In a victory of optimism over experience, another open letter. (You can listen to this one if you prefer.) Also, it's good to exercise Americans' right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. #science #econsky #academicsky marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2025/07/open...

Well, the WSJ editorial board can't be any more direct than this: "Don't Fire Jerome Powell, Mr. President" www.wsj.com/opinion/jero...

“I don’t care how much you love working people. They can’t afford a house because all the rules in your state make it prohibitive to build. And zoning prevents multifamily structures because of NIMBY,” [Obama] said. www.cnn.com/2025/07/14/p...

What a weird framing! “Limits on entry help incumbent firms” www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

Can an AI model predict perfectly and still have a terrible world model? What would that even mean? Our new ICML paper (poster tomorrow!) formalizes these questions. One result tells the story: A transformer trained on 10M solar systems nails planetary orbits. But it botches gravitational laws 🧵

Instant add to my reading list: "Estimating public opinion from surveys: the impact of including a “don't know” response option in policy preference questions", new in PSRM www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I think this is a huge deal

The rhetoric around cash transfers seems to conflate two things: 1. The studies powered and designed to detect GE effects have studied cash transfers. They find important positive spillovers. 2. An advantage of cash transfers over other interventions is that they have these positive spillovers.

Developing a method to estimate producers' productivity beliefs in settings where output quantities and input prices are unobservable and using it to evaluate allocative efficiency in the market for science, from Fabio Bertolotti, Kyle R. Myers, and Wei Yang Tham https://www.nber.org/papers/w34000

#QJE Aug 2025, #1, “Manufacturing Revolutions: Industrial Policy and Industrialization in South Korea,” by Nathan Lane (@nathanlane.bsky.social): doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

The future of AI governance may hinge on our ability to develop trusted and effective ways to make credible claims about AI systems. This new report expands our understanding of the verification challenge and maps out compelling areas for further work. ⬇️

New paper by Oh and Kleiner finds that universal licensing recognition for physicians---getting rid of the requirement that they get relicensed when moving states---raises access to healthcare www.nber.org/system/files...

🚨Open Phil is hiring for some awesome roles to build out our >$120m Abundance and Growth Fund 🚨 Apply for a chance to work with @mattsclancy.bsky.social on accelerating scientific & technological progress and boosting economic growth bsky.app/profile/mat...

The Abundance and Growth Fund at Open Philanthropy is hiring! We’re looking for 2-4 people to help expand this new $120+ million program to accelerate economic growth and reduce the cost of living through strategic grantmaking and research. (1/4) www.openphilanthropy.org/research/ann...

New blog: There is a bipartisan consensus to preserve lifesaving US foreign assistance. I list twelve large, lifesaving USAID awards that have been cancelled. If we want to avoid a mounting death toll, these awards need to be reinstated.

Very cool article from @give-directly.bsky.social‬ on using AI to make fine-grained predictions of flood-prone areas in Nigeria, allowing for more efficient cash transfers to high-risk households. www.givedirectly.org/flood-forec...

Summary Table of the massive defunding of biomedical research in the United States www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

AEI/Brookings study finds Trump II immigration policy will reduce GDP growth by 0.3–0.4 %age points in 2025, put significant downward pressure on growth in labor force and employment. Monthly payroll employment growth could be near zero or negative in the next few years. www.aei.org/research-pro...

Really important report today from ‪@research-fri.bsky.social‬ — "the largest-ever study of expert views on how LLMs might enable bioweapon use" A few details from the report I found interesting (h/t Bridget Williams) 🧵

New paper estimates the effects of USAID over the last 20 years: • ~92m lives saved (that's 12k per day for 20 years), including ~30.4m kids • 65% mortality reduction for HIV/AIDS, 51% for malaria Projects 2025 cuts followed by ending USAID would cost 14m+ lives. www.thelancet.com/action/show...

It’s used to make IVIg, critical for immunodeficiencies and certain autoimmune diseases. The reason the world buys so much from America is other countries don’t allow payments for collection. Unlike whole blood transfusions, IVIg requires so much blood to make that you cannot supply it…

This recent working paper by Jim Wyckoff shows that student achievement declines began well before the pandemic, and lays out the evidence for several possible causes. edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1197