Nicolas Van de Sijpe

The quote says: "The choice of behavioral assumptions in economics tends to pull us in two different—sometimes contrary—directions. The demands of tractability can conflict with those of veracity, and we can have a hard choice between simplicity and relevance. We want a canonical form that is uncomplicated enough to be easily usable in theoretical and empirical analysis. But we also want an assumption structure that is not fundamentally at odds with the real world, nor one that makes simplicity take the form of naivety. There is a genuine conflict here—a conflict that cannot be easily disposed of either by asserting the need for simplification in theorizing or by pointing to the need for realism. What we have to face is the need for discriminating judgment, separating out the complications that can be avoided without much loss and the complexities that must be taken on board for our analysis to be at all useful."

Love this, by Sen, on theoretical modelling. From "Goals, Commitment, and Identity" #EconSky

Capital composition and the decline of the labor share: Why buildings matter This paper argues that the decline in the labor share is not driven by the overall quantity of capital, but by its changing composition. Constructing …

This paper argues a lot of the decline in the labour share of income comes from a change in the composition of capital: relatively less building capital (complement to labour) and more machinery capital (substitute for labour): www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #Econsky

[133] Heterofriendly: The Intuition for Why You Always Need Robust Standard Errors - Data Colada When I taught my first PhD-level methods course, I invited students to submit questions about any topic in statistics or methodology. Six out of 10 students asked about the same topic: robust & cluste...

Answering the most popular question in a PhD methods course
datacolada.org/133

Cees Nooteboom obituary Dutch novelist, poet and travel writer who reported on the Hungarian revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall

“I have not remembered chaos,” he said. “I found my way out of all that in my books.” www.theguardian.com/books/2026/f...

"A 10 percentage point increase in mobile coverage is associated with a 0.03–0.46 percentage point reduction in infant mortality. Improvements in health knowledge and behavior and health-care utilization appear to be plausible channels." www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... #EconSky

An accessible overview of what unified growth theory does: www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10... #EconSky

On the role of economic ideas in shaping policy implementation: when Malthus died and his colonial bureaucrat training was taken over by someone with opposing views, the officials trained by the new person provided more relief during droughts: ericnrobertson.github.io/files/jmp.pdf #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.

The era of declining global poverty is over Global economic development is hitting a wall

"The era of declining global poverty is over" davidoks.blog/p/extreme-po... #EconSky

The Returns to Education: A Meta‐Study There have been many studies estimating the causal effect of an additional year of education on earnings. The majority employ administrative changes in the minimum school-leaving age as the mechanism...

A meta-analysis claiming a very low rate of return to education onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

1-panel SMBC comic update. Three men are startled and afraid, standing around an opened Egyptian sarcophagus, with a mummy sitting up in it. The mummy says "for that you have disturbed my tomb, you shall die at a typical actuarial rate, but perceive it as unusually high!" The caption below the panel reads "my favorite genre it Stats Horror."

Anything that deviates from normal is a conspiracy, including when things are precisely normal.

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/curse-2
PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm...
STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Princess Mononoke: The masterpiece that flummoxed the US Now 25 years old, it is Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki's most complex work. But its mishandling in the West speaks of fundamental artistic differences, writes Stephen Kelly.

Great piece on Princess Mononoke: www.bbc.co.uk/culture/arti...

Thanks, I'll check those out.

Anyone know whether this would still work OK with a nutfree chocolate spread and, if so, what I could replace the hazelnuts in the recipe with? I'd like to give this a go for my kids but food allergies and all that...

On generalized CCE estimation The widely-used common correlated effects (CCE) estimator, pioneered by Pesaran (2006), is computed using least squares applied to auxiliary regressio…

A simple generalised Common Correlated Effects estimator that still works when the rank condition is violated (replacing it by a weaker condition, as far as I can tell from the abstract) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #EconSky

"Potential" and the Gender Promotion Gap (February 2026) - We show that subjective assessments of employee "potential" contribute to gender gaps in promotion and pay. Using data on 29,809 management-track employees from a large retail chain,...

Women are rated lower on potential despite receiving higher performance ratings, accounting for approx. half of the gender promotion gap. "Women's lower potential ratings do not reflect accurate forecasts of future performance" as they then outperform men www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=... #EconSky

Jad Abumrad’s new show - Fela Kuti: Fear No Man | Dolly Parton's America | WNYC Studios In a world that’s on fire, what do we do with art? Like, what can music actually do? Today, Jad Abumrad is back with his first major project since Dolly Parton’s America. Fela Kuti: F...

Jad Abumrad (of Radiolab fame) has a new podcast series on Fela Kuti (and on so much more, judging from the first two episodes) called "Fela Kuti: fear no man." Self-recommending. www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dol...

Counterargument: I did once get a paper accepted on the 1st (maybe 2nd) of January. I was more baffled than pleased if I'm honest (about the date, not about the paper getting accepted of course 😂)

Markets and Mobility: How Employers Structure Economic Opportunity

Intergenerational mobility, measuring the ability to achieve economic success regardless of family background, is a critical reflection of a society’s commitment to equality of opportunity. Rising income inequality has raised concerns about the potential erosion of upward mobility. While education has traditionally been viewed as the path to mobility, its transformative power is facing challenges in a rapidly evolving job market. This project reorients the focus of intergenerational mobility research by highlighting the labor market as an arena for the reproduction of advantage. It employs a comparative approach, using administrative data from four countries: Sweden, Austria, England, and the United States. It also incorporates evidence from a broader set of nations through cross-national surveys, longitudinal household surveys, labor force surveys, secondary data, and digital trace data. The project employs cutting-edge empirical methods, including quasi- experimental designs, event studies, within-family comparisons, decomposition analyses, counterfactual simulations, and diagnostic checks to rigorously assess the extent of inequalities in the labor market. The research investigates how family background influences the sorting of individuals to employers and workplaces, accounting for education and occupation, and explores variations in career progression within and between employers. It comprehensively catalogues and assesses mechanisms shaping workplace inequality, contributing to the development of social closure theory. Additionally, the project evaluates intervention strategies, encompassing both employer practices and government actions, to promote fair opportunity in the labor market.

JOB! I'm hiring a postdoc for 2 years on my ERC MaMo project.

Looking for someone with strong quant methods, ongoing work close to the project's aims, and a desire to publish in sociology. Start flexible in the next 12 months.

Formal call out shortly, but contact me first.

Airing my grievances with wellbeing science We have a streetlight problem

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-...

The Political Costs of Austerity Abstract. Using a novel regional database covering over 200 elections in several European countries, this article provides new empirical evidence on the political consequences of fiscal consolidations...

"Fiscal consolidations lead to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout, and a rise in political fragmentation. ... [A]usterity induces severe economic costs through lowering GDP, employment, private investment, and wages." direct.mit.edu/rest/article... #EconSky

What Do Economists Mean When They Say "Identification"? The foundational concept that holds empirical economics together

"What Do Economists Mean When They Say "Identification"?" substack.com/home/post/p-...

Some pictures I took on a foggy walk in Sheffield a few days ago.

"Migrants who came to the UK on skilled work visas in 2022-23 will make a net contribution of £47bn to the public finances over their lifetime, according to new estimates from the government’s Migration Advisory Committee."

Not surprising, but some observations (1/n)

www.ft.com/content/10da...

Welcome to Britain, a country so short of dentists that an MP's 87-year-old mum pulled her teeth out with pliers. Also a country with thousands of foreign-qualified dentists who can’t work until they pass an exam so oversubscribed it’s like trying to book Glasto tickets. www.ft.com/content/f4e5...

Full comic here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/red-3 #smbc

A great movie weekend, with Prey (I love the original Predator but Prey might be better!) and Laputa: Castle in the Sky (maybe my favourite Ghibli).

The ‘Danish model’ is the darling of centre-left parties like Labour. The problem is, it doesn’t even work in Denmark | Cas Mudde This week’s local elections are the latest reminder that when social democrats move rightwards, they’re making a mistake, says academic and author Cas Mudde

After more than 10 years of “the Danish Model”, nativism is hegemonic in the country, the far right polls near level highs again, and the Social Democrats lost Copenhagen and poll at historic low.

European Social Democrats should look at the facts, not the myths!

Me in @theguardian.com

VERY funny that Labour are being pointlessly cruel and haemorrhaging support from their base and yet none of what they're offering is ever going to be enough for the people whose approval they're seeking, WHO could have predicted it

happy cloudflare outage day to all who celebrate