🚨Replication alert🚨
I'm pleased to announce that my replication of Moretti (2021) is now accepted as a comment at AER.
I find ten issues in the paper. My comment focuses on two major problems; in the appendix, I document eight (relatively) minor problems.
1/
Team "Elsevier Highlights Subversion" strikes again! Best one yet!
@deankarlan.bsky.social, Monica Lambon-Quayefio, Utsav Manjeer, @christopher-udry.bsky.social
As a PhD student, I was told that "seniors" are always really busy, though I speculated, I really wasn't sure how this materialized. I'm not yet SSJ3 Senior, just like baby-senior, but one way it materializes is "Death by 1000 cuts" ⬇️
The Nazis stopped Jewish doctors from practising, so thousands of them left the country (my great grandfather was one of them). So many left that this was a good natural experiment for estimating the causal effect of losing doctors on infant mortality (& thousands died)
~75K violent, ~16K nonviolent deaths Oct23-Jan25.
"The combined evidence suggests that, as of Jan 5, 2025,
3–4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been killed
violently and there have been a substantial number of nonviolent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict."
In case folks are looking for a convenient way to containerize their claude code instances, here's a way to use Docker on your mac machine to isolate YOLO-ing claude instances.
github.com/paulgp/claud...
unbelievably good from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com @sarahoconnorft.ft.com on the intensification of (knowledge) work under AI
www.ft.com/content/9c6a...
It reminds me a bit of when the Internet arrived, that sense of a cornucopia of content, an infinite bookstore, a neverending toread list. 1/
open.substack.com/pub/rottenan... this by @economeager.bsky.social is an astonishing essay. With some excellent, loving, put downs about both the British and Americans.
🆕 Do disaster-relief cash transfers trap people in risky areas, or help them adapt?
Today on VoxDev, Muhammad Bin Khalid (Harvard) & Martin Mattsson (NUS) discuss how disaster relief enabled climate adaptation in Pakistan: https://ow.ly/XAgU50YiFE7
#CallforPapers — 4th Conference in Health Economics joint with @tse-fr.eu We welcome submissions on healthcare and pharmaceutical regulation, innovation financing, digital health, R&D, and related topics. 🗓️ Deadline: 16 February 2026 https://cepr.org/events/4th-conference-health-economics
#CallforPapers — 4th Conference in Health Economics joint with @tse-fr.eu
The organisers welcome submissions on healthcare and pharmaceutical regulation, innovation financing, digital health, R&D, and related topics.
🗓️ Deadline: 16 February 2026
cepr.org/events/4th-c...
#EconSky #EconConf
Minneapolis says no to ICE.
📢 Call for Papers
4th Diversity and Human Capital Workshop, June 9–10, 2026 @exeter.ac.uk @uofebusiness.bsky.social
We welcome papers in applied microeconomics, including health, labour, education, development, and public economics. Submit your paper by 16 March: bit.ly/3YRaYMa
if i could make you read ONE (1) single post to improve your understanding of the challenges of social science in general it would be this one from @markfabian.bsky.social about wellbeing science specifically
profmarkfabian.substack.com/p/airing-my-...
My last two shots before my world went dark.
Photograph from 1911 taken by Herbert Ponting whilst with Scott's Antarctic Expedition The monochrome photo is taken from within a cave. The walls of the cave are made of ice. The cave entrance is in the mid distance with two figures standing looking out towards a distant ship. Between them and the ship there is first a 'beach' of ice before the sea itself. The ship could be up to 800 metres away What makes the photo so special is that where the figures are at the cave entrance there is a band of very white snow and ice (contrasting with the comparatively dark inside of the cave) that creates a stark framework in which the men and the ship are captured. It is made even more dramatic by the fact that the cave entrance is at least 30 metres high and is in the shape of a distorted elipse with the tail sloping off to the right at the top of the elipse The photo being in monochrome in a largely white environment makes the photographers skill all the more laudable
This photo was taken in 1911 using glass plate technology by Herbert Ponting who was part of Scott's Antarctic expedition,
The composition and detail are exquisite with the band of white snow/ice creating a perfect frame around the two people and the ship in the distance
Iconic imo
The Boston Globe Test:
This satirical front page imagined a Trump presidency in 2016. Critics (including Trump himself) dismissed it as "alarmist" and "propaganda" at the time.
Do these headlines feel normal today? Even...quaint?
If so: we have grown more accepting of what was once unthinkable.
Global cancer deaths have increased, but age-adjusted rates have fallen. Line chart from 1980 to 2021 showing three series: estimated number of cancer deaths, crude cancer death rate, and age-standardized cancer death rate. Key findings annotated on the chart: the total number of cancer deaths has roughly doubled since 1980; crude cancer death rates have increased by just under 20 percent; age-adjusted cancer death rates have fallen by more than 20 percent. Data source: IHME, Global Burden of Disease (2024).
Global deaths from cancer have increased, but the world has made progress against it—
Animal Consciousness (first paragraph of the article). First published Sat Dec 23, 1995; substantive revision Tue Jan 13, 2026. Is there something it’s like to be an octopus, a bee, a snail? For much of the twentieth century, research into animal cognition tended to avoid questions of consciousness, following the lead of human neuroscience, where such questions were also marginalized (see the entries on animal cognition, methods in comparative cognition). However, the growing profile of consciousness science since 2000 has brought the topic of consciousness back into the scientific mainstream (see the entry on the neuroscience of consciousness), and this has led to resurgent interest in studying conscious experience in other animals.
I've been working for ages on a comprehensive revamp of the Stanford Encyclopedia Entry on "Animal Consciousness", with new sections on non-Western perspectives, methodological challenges and evolutionary big pictures, and it's out today: plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons.... Hope you find it useful!
Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof X.com I'm struck by the contrast between the passion for democracy shown by Iranians willing to die for it and the complacency with which many Americans have accepted an authoritarian slide. Americans should cheer for Iran's democrats--and also learn from their determination.
I see this take around from time to time and totally disagree. ICE just murdered a woman standing up to them. No Kings is among the largest protests in history.
The complacency is coming from elites in media, business, universities, and the Democratic leadership
Grumpy opinion:
Too many young development economists are working on behavioral econ questions that are unimportant for development. The topics are amenable to small experiments that can nail mechanisms and demonstrate smarts via a clever design. The profession over-rewards those attributes.
Details of WBER call for papers, including URL and submission deadline of November 30.
Call for papers for a World Bank Economic Review special issue on migration and development: we are doing a special issue that builds on a recent conference, but with submissions open also for non-conference papers. Short papers in the AER insights type format also welcome. Deadline November 30.
Do you have a paper on the economics of health in lower-and-middle income countries? Submit it to the 2nd Workshop of the Global Health Economics WG in Rotterdam 4-5 June 2026. Submit at tinyurl.com/ywcwz7ba by 1 Dec. Special treat: keynote by @martinabjorkman.bsky.social
And obviously, the NHS.
Yes, it is overstretched and suffering from neglect, but bring a parent in for a day procedure and witness the depth of compassion in that organisation.
If nothing else does, that should restore hope.
Last week, @rhodesben.bsky.social and I did a Munk Debates against Kevin Roberts and Kellyanne Conway on whether Trump is leading America into a new golden age.
We won. This is from my closing statement.
There’s nothing golden about a movement that bathes in gratuitous cruelty.
I have an email folder for precisely this. I look at it when I need "you have meaning in the world" feels.
"For 142 years, the merit-based civil service survived because both parties recognized that functional government requires professional expertise. That consensus is dead. We're watching the transformation of public servants into party servants, of a government of laws into a government of loyalty."
The tragic landslide in Blatten gives me the excuse to tell you the story of how we found out Ice Ages existed. It's a cool story and the most important bit is rather similar to what's happening now.
indefensible
