Forthcoming in AEJ: Macroeconomics: "The Lost Marie Curies and Foregone Economic Growth" by Jean-FΓ©lix Brouillette.
26.02.2026 09:56
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Forthcoming in AEJ: Macroeconomics: "The Lost Marie Curies and Foregone Economic Growth" by Jean-FΓ©lix Brouillette.
This recent RCT of an "AI stethoscope" claims the technology "shows promise" for diagnosing cardiovascular conditions.
It does not.
It is a textbook example of the risks of conducting unprincipled 'per protocol analyses'. Once again, peer review at a major medical journal has failed.
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AI's potential to extend human judgment and enable new tasks is transformative yet underexploited. This paper defines pro-worker AI and discusses how to build it, from Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson www.nber.org/papers/w34854
Because the market rewards the layoff signal, it creates a "signaling wedge." Firms behave as if they face an artificially high wage, acting as a shadow tax on employment that drives them to over-cut.
The intuition: genuine AI integration is messy and invisible to investors. Headcount reductions are public and may get rewarded. Claude translated this into a Spence signaling framework where headcount changes are a low-noise signal to investors, while AI integration is noisy and lagged.
Because the market rewards the layoff signal, it creates a "signaling wedge." Firms behave as if they face an artificially high wage, acting as a shadow tax on employment that drives them to over-cut.
The intuition: genuine AI integration is messy and invisible to investors. Headcount reductions are public and may get rewarded. Claude translated this into a Spence signaling framework where headcount changes are a low-noise signal to investors, while AI integration is noisy and lagged.
NEW: A hobbyist has created Nearby Glasses, an app that warns you if someone close by is wearing smart glasses. 404 Media spoke to the creator who said he was inspired by our coverage that uncovers how men are wearing Meta's Ray-Bans to covertly film massage parlor workers.
The figure shows the gender wage gap (the difference in average log hourly wages between males and females) in log points on the y-axis. The x-axis displays the gender wage premium gap, which is the sum of the sorting and pay-setting components. The diagonal lines represent scenarios in which firm wage premiums account for 10% (top line) and 40% (bottom line) of the total gender wage gap. Early explanations for gender wage gaps focused on human capital or career choices. This column uses data from the US and ten European countries to examine the role of firms. Across all countries considered, firms account for between 10% and 30% of the gender wage gap, mainly reflecting women being more likely to work at firms that pay less to all employees, irrespective of their skills. While men move to higher-paying firms as they advance in their career, women tend to stay behind. Women also tend to sort into low-wage firms in return for more flexibility in working time. The findings suggests that there is a case for complementing family policies with policies focused on firms.
Using data from the US & 10 European countries, the OECD LinkEED 2.0 Team analysed the role of firms in the gender wage gap. They find firms account for 10-30% of the gap, mainly reflecting women being more likely to work at firms that pay less to all employees.
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky
It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
Striking paper from researchers at Anthropic using a randomised control trial to look at the effects of AI use on skills acquisition.
TL:DR βWe found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.β
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...
Is AI making job recruitment less meritocratic? We're getting some v interesting research studies on this question now, and the news is... not good. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & I dive in, in the latest edition of our newsletter The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/e5b7...
Great news!
IZA (the German labor economics institute that had lost its main source of financial support) has found a new home and will continue as a convener and disseminator of knowledge.
Hurrah!
πThe latest OECD #EmploymentOutlook
Discover the latest labour market developments, such as:
Unemployment rates
Employment rates
Real wages
Learn about the enormous challenges population ageing poses to living standards & economic growth: oe.cd/employment-outlook
New article out in World Politcs. We analyze how different groups react to varying programs of social democratic parties. We find less trade-offs than often assumed. Generally, more left-progressive programs increase support among social democratic potentials
muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
π¨π¨π¨Blockbuster paper out today! Bear with me as I explain why this one is so important.
π€ The *economic* anger about immigration is based on the false notion that immigrants take jobs or lower wages. A major misunderstanding behind this view is that immigrants only increase the supply of labor.
Female PhD students (in economics) benefit tremendously from having female faculty around.
When female professors go on leave, it decreases third-year female PhD studentsβ likelihood of publishing & securing academic positions.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Interesting paper: 161 researchers in 73 research teams used the same data and hypothesis (immigration reduces support for social policies among the public), but arrived at different results and conclusions.
Paper in PNAS
Mental health is shaped by many factors, including the social and economic conditions in which people live.
This #EuropeanMentalHealthWeek, find out more about how countries can tackle inequalities in mental health β‘οΈ oe.cd/636
German media I beg you one day just please go just one day without being obsessed with migration. One day. I promise it wonβt kill you. You have lakes and mountains and good football and good healthcare and asparagus. Youβll be fine.
π’ I am delighted to share that the #OECD ELS Directorate is now active on Bluesky, posting here about our work on #employment, #social, #migration, and #health policyβ¦ and of course on #inequality π
@oecdsocial.bsky.social
πΒ Exciting Opportunity!Β π
#AI keeps me up at night. What will happen to work & workers? π€
I'm partnering with Schmidt Sciences to offerΒ up to $200,000Β in funding for early-career researchers! π‘
ποΈΒ Apply by March 31 2025
π spread the word!
π Learn more & apply schmidtsciences.org/ai-at-work
#EconSky
To add to that, they have also distinguished themselves from most other parties by not adopting a tougher anti-immigration platform and rhetoric.
The "Beamte" category is actually civil servants. So from left to right: blue collar, white collar, civil servants, self-employed
Abbildung der neun Opfer des Anschlags von Hanau am 19.02.2020
Wir erinnern an die Opfer des rassistischen Anschlags am 19. Februar 2020 in #Hanau:
GΓΆkhan GΓΌltekin, Sedat GΓΌrbΓΌz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza KurtoviΔ, Vili Viorel PΔun, Fatih SaraΓ§oΔlu, Ferhat Unvar und Kaloyan Velkov
#SayTheirNames
Read our new paper on how the economic empowerment of one generation of women drives greater political officeholding for the next πͺβ¨
The falsehood came from the right.
How (radical/ extreme) right shares mis/ disinformation more online.
Good to see @uva.nl colleagues @pettertornberg.bsky.social and @julianachueri.bsky.socialβs research featured in @theguardian.com #polisky
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...
Child penalties β the disproportionate career impact of parenthood on women relative to men β are a persistent driver of gender inequality in the labour market. Despite policy efforts, these penalties remain stubbornly high. Using rich data from the US, this column explores the effect of exposure to peers during adolescence. Greater exposure to working mothers during middle and high school significantly reduces girlsβ child penalties when they grow up. Exposure to working fathers has the opposite effect, increasing child penalties. Parental role models are critical in shaping gender norms and child-related gender gaps in the labour market.
More exposure to working mothers during middle/high school greatly reduces girls' child penalties when they grow up. Exposure to working fathers has the opposite effect.
H Kleven @princetonecon.bsky.social, G Olivero & E Patacchini @cornelluniversity.bsky.social
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky
Jetzt, wo in den USA Wissenschaft unterdrΓΌckt, Menschen gefeuert und Listen mit verbotenen WΓΆrtern verbreitet werden - sind die, die jahrelang woke cancel culture zur groΓen Bedrohung der westlichen Welt erklΓ€rt haben, zufrieden mit sich?
Politbarometer nach dem 70 Prozent eine stΓ€rkere Besteuerung hoher Einkommen wollen
StΓ€ndig ist von der βMehrheit der BevΓΆlkerungβ die Rede, die dieses oder jenes will. Nur seltsam, dass der Wunsch nach Umverteilung dabei fast nie erwΓ€hnt wird.