Jörg Oechssler

@oechssler.bsky.social

940 followers 240 following 38 posts

Professor of Economics, University of Heidelberg
http://oechssler.uni-hd.de/

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Economics 45%

Business 25%

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Jörg Oechssler @oechssler.bsky.social · Mar 3

After Trump´s disgraceful behavior last week, we thought we need to do something to help Ukraine directly. And you can help too…

Georg Weizsäcker @georgweizsaecker.bsky.social · Mar 3

If one person gives a euro to Ukraine, the result is €1.

If two people give 2 each, it is €4.

If 3,000 give 3,000 each, it is 9 million.

Let’s coordinate, here 👇

and please re-post to spread the word.

yourcontributionsquared.eu/en/

Your Contribution Squared

yourcontributionsquared.eu

Reposted by Jörg Oechssler, David R. Miller

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 3d

This is a video of federal immigration officers murdering a woman who was not attacking them. In Minneapolis, today.

The United States Constitution protects all people in the United States, Conservative and Liberal. Its suspension will eventually harm all people, Conservative and Liberal.

ICE officer fatally shoots driver in Minneapolis

Video taken by bystander Caitlin Callenson shows an ICE officer fatally shooting a driver in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026.

www.youtube.com

Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Jason Mittell, Rebecca Solnit , and 50 more Anne Applebaum, Jason Mittell, Rebecca Solnit, Richard S.J. Tol, Norbert Schwarz, Will Jennings, Jon Pierre, Brendan Nyhan, Martin Jung, Patrick A. Jansen, Tom Clark, Steve Peers, Tom Shakespeare, Michael A. Clemens, Mary Feeney, Maarten Vink, Bruce D. Baker, Marianne Hundt, Gernot Wagner, Jörg Oechssler, Valerie Mueller, John Foot, Ameet Sarpatwari, Bonnie Honig, Alan Richardson, Adrian Daub, Michael J. Taylor, E. Wayne Ross, Douglas Guilfoyle, Gerald Friedman, Alison Johnson, Jacob T. Levy, Stacy D. VanDeveer, Robert B. Reich, Els Torreele, Michael H. Whitworth, Samantha Brennan, Peter Jacobsen, Ben Rosamond, Mark Rice, David Bartram, Cyrus Samimi, Henry Jones, Henrik Skaug Sætra, Stefan C. Aykut, Halley E. Froehlich, Umut Özkırımlı, James Connelly, Klaus Oschema, Kirstin Drenkhahn, Matthias Schmelzer, Aidan O’Sullivan, Timothy D. McBride

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 7d

Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts.

Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.

Reposted by Jesse H. Kroll, Caroline Krafft, Chris Hanretty , and 24 more Jesse H. Kroll, Caroline Krafft, Chris Hanretty, Rebecca Sear, Manuela Boatcă, Jörg Oechssler, Michelle Everson, Christian Breunig, Robert Wolfe, Vincent Noël, Margot C. Finn, Will Lowe, Ben Crum, Bessma Momani, Jonathan Birch, Martin Kreidl, Graeme Warren, Aurélien Mondon, Mark Rice, Santiago Gassó, Catherine J. Frieman, Mauro Gatti, Catriona Seth, Juan Ramón, Césari Laurent, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, José Pina-Sánchez

Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 22d

This report in Nature on the costs of competing for & administering scientific grants is shocking: "In other words, European taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself, and the scientific ecosystem has been drained." www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding

With so little money to go round, the costs of competing for grants can exceed what the grants are worth. When that happens, nobody wins.

www.nature.com

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Martin Gaynor, Jörg Oechssler , and 1 more Richard S.J. Tol, Martin Gaynor, Jörg Oechssler, David L. Anderson

Georg Weizsäcker @georgweizsaecker.bsky.social · 24d

Our dept is hiring an associate professor in microeconomics / competition theory.

It is a wonderful department - do get in touch.

The job ad is in German but we teach more and more in English, so we‘re flexible.

www.hu-berlin.de/en/universit...

W2-Professur für „Wettbewerbspolitik“ - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

www.hu-berlin.de

Jörg Oechssler @oechssler.bsky.social · 27d

Nice job at Hochschule Heilbronn

👋 In meinem Büro wird ein Platz frei! An der Hochschule Heilbronn suchen wir in 2026 eine neue Kollegin oder einen neuen Kollegen in der Fakultät Wirtschaft für eine Professur in Allgemeiner… | Susan...

www.linkedin.com

Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw.bsky.social · Nov 30

Senator Kelly is correct.

Plus a Public Service Announcement:

KEY section of Department of Defense's Law of War Manual is 18.3.2.1.

The VERY rule on the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders gives as its paradigmatic example of what is "clearly illegal:
"orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, Dan Brockington , and 5 more Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, Dan Brockington, Navin Ramankutty, Jörg Oechssler, Valerie Mueller, Catherine J. Frieman, Ben Greiner

Paolo Crosetto @paolocrosetto.bsky.social · Nov 30

Since AI slop is again all over Scientific Reports, a thread on the economics of grey-zone publishing.

Why does slop keep getting published? What does it mean for science? How can we stop this?

Background readings:
Understand the strain: tinyurl.com/2b6wxx5r
Stop the drain: tinyurl.com/3jfscscy

An obviously AI-generated figure with AI slop and fake text all over it, recently published in Scientific Reports.

Reposted by Tim Bale, Stuart Elden, Nils B. Weidmann , and 4 more Tim Bale, Stuart Elden, Nils B. Weidmann, Jörg Oechssler, Brett Christophers, Todd Pugatch, Bartosz Bartkowski

Mark Fabian @markfabian.bsky.social · Nov 24

Recently did around 30 requests to ppl who'd published very similar papers to the one I needed reviews for. 3 declines, 25 no response. Please at least decline guys it slows stuff down so much otherwise.

Bartosz Bartkowski @bartoszbartk.com · Nov 24

I'm still relatively new to this journal associate editor business, but it already sucks… I've had a paper on my desk for more than a month now:

Reviewers invited: 12
Of those…
Declined: 5
No response: 7

Reposted by Tim Bale, Alistair Munro, Stuart Elden , and 1 more Tim Bale, Alistair Munro, Stuart Elden, Jörg Oechssler

Bartosz Bartkowski @bartoszbartk.com · Nov 24

Reposted by Jörg Oechssler

Paolo Crosetto @paolocrosetto.bsky.social · Nov 18

So it's back to the lab! And we are ready in Grenoble since we did not dismantle them, we rather invested in better subject pool recruitment and management.

Josh McCrain @joshmccrain.bsky.social · Nov 18

new paper by Sean Westwood:

With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

Reposted by Jörg Oechssler

Manoel Bittencourt @manoel-bittencourt.bsky.social · Nov 14

Heidelberg, Germany, from the castle, on a Friday evening.

Reposted by Jörg Oechssler, Mirco Tonin, Kathleen J. Mullen

JKU Department of Economics @jku-economics.bsky.social · Nov 12

🚨JOB OPENING🚨

JKU Linz is hiring an Assistant Professor in Microeconomics (non-tenure track, 6 years).

The target date for applications is Nov 15, the hard deadline Nov 20.
Please share within your network!

Job ad and application (requires EJM login): econjobmarket.org/positions/11...

Reposted by Jacob Montgomery, Juan Cole, Jörg Oechssler , and 4 more Jacob Montgomery, Juan Cole, Jörg Oechssler, Paolo Crosetto, W. Andy Knight, Adrian Vickers, Bessma Momani

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Nov 12

A staggering statistic: "North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year." What are we doing?

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Nov 11

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below.

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time.

1. The four-fold drain

1.2 Time
The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce,
with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure
1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material
has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs,
grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for
profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time.
The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million
unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of
peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting
widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the
authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many
review demands.
Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of
scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in
‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow
progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to
volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier,
local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with
limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging
with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks
intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below:

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised
scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers
first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour
resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Jörg Oechssler

Georg Weizsäcker @georgweizsaecker.bsky.social · Nov 11

14 postdoc fellowships for 2yrs, in Freiburg, Tübingen or Konstanz

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Nov 11

Three German universities offering post-docs for researchers "who cannot conduct or continue their work in the USA appropriately because of actual political pressure. "
www.uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskoll...

Early Career Rescue Fellowship

www.uni-konstanz.de

Reposted by Hans‐Theo Normann, Jörg Oechssler, Georg Weizsäcker

Tobias Werner @tfwerner.com · Nov 3

📣 New paper! "Delegate Pricing Decisions to an Algorithm? Experimental Evidence" with @normann.bsky.social, Nina Rulié, & @ostypa.bsky.social

We study what happens when humans delegate to a collusive algorithm, and AI pricing adoption becomes a strategic choice!

arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2510.27636

Delegate Pricing Decisions to an Algorithm? Experimental Evidence

We analyze the delegation of pricing by participants, representing firms, to a collusive, self-learning algorithm in a repeated Bertrand experiment. In the baseline treatment, participants set prices ...

arxiv.org

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Alistair Munro, Jörg Peters , and 1 more Richard S.J. Tol, Alistair Munro, Jörg Peters, Jörg Oechssler

Sebastian Kranz @sebkranz.bsky.social · Nov 2

Here is a rock song "HC1 Heartbreak" (MP3 and Lyrics)

econ.mathematik.uni-ulm.de/aisongs/hc1_...

based on my research paper arxiv.org/abs/2411.14763 on robust standard errors and large scale methodological replications. Made with Suno and ChatGPT. AI amazes me again and again.

From Replications to Revelations: Heteroskedasticity-Robust Inference

Analysing the Stata regression commands from 4,420 reproduction packages of leading economic journals, we find that, among the 40,571 regressions specifying heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors, ...

arxiv.org

Reposted by Stephen P. Jenkins, Jörg Oechssler, Kris Inwood , and 5 more Stephen P. Jenkins, Jörg Oechssler, Kris Inwood, Aaron Sojourner, Davide Dragone, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Todd Pugatch, Georg Weizsäcker

Joshua Goodman @joshua-goodman.com · Oct 30

I'd love to help make BlueSky one of the places where young scholars introduce themselves and their work to the world.

If you're a PhD student whose work at least partially focuses on economics of education or education policy, reply to this thread and I'll highlight your work.

Reposted by Jörg Oechssler, Mirco Tonin

Maria Bigoni @mbigoni.bsky.social · Oct 24

🚨 Job Market Alert 🚨

The Department of Economics of the University of Bologna invites applications for a fixed-term Assistant Professor position
**any field**
starting AY 2026/27.

📅 Apply by Nov 10

💼 6-year contract, low teaching load, no Italian required.

Info: econjobmarket.org/positions/11...

Reposted by Jörg Oechssler, Georg Weizsäcker

Andreas Ortmann @impartialspectator.bsky.social · Oct 21

A useful summary.

aethermug.com/posts/famous...

Famous Cognitive Psychology Experiments that Failed to Replicate

A quick reference

aethermug.com

Reposted by Jörg Oechssler, Joshua Goodman, Dietmar Fehr , and 1 more Jörg Oechssler, Joshua Goodman, Dietmar Fehr, Peter Bergman

Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · Oct 21

New paper by Rivera Mora & @philippstrack.bsky.social Strack challenges everything we thought we knew about mechanism design beyond expected utility. The results are wild. 🤯
Paper: "Mechanism Design Beyond Expected Utility Preferences" (Sept 2025) static1.squarespace.com/static/62d2f...

static1.squarespace.com

Reposted by Georg Weizsäcker

Jörg Oechssler @oechssler.bsky.social · Oct 12

Deadline coming up tomorrow! Join us in Heidelberg.

Jörg Oechssler @oechssler.bsky.social · Sep 25

We have an opening for a professorship in Heidelberg in labor economics, political economy, or more generally in applied micro. Please share!

Full Professorship (W3) in “Labor Markets / New Political Economy” (f/m/d) | INOMICS

The position is to be filled by the Winter Semester 2026/27 at the Alfred-Weber-Institute for Economics of Heidelberg University.The successful candidate will have an outstanding and internationally v...

inomics.com

Reposted by Jörg Peters, Jörg Oechssler, Valerie Mueller

Richard Tol @richardtol.bsky.social · Oct 5

Some more words on Energy Economics open.substack.com/pub/richardt...

Autopsy

Lessons for editors

open.substack.com

Reposted by Georg Weizsäcker

Jörg Oechssler @oechssler.bsky.social · Sep 25

We have an opening for a professorship in Heidelberg in labor economics, political economy, or more generally in applied micro. Please share!

Full Professorship (W3) in “Labor Markets / New Political Economy” (f/m/d) | INOMICS

inomics.com

Reposted by Jörg Oechssler, W. Andy Knight

Kara Swisher @karaswisher.bsky.social · Sep 18

I am actually sad to have to say this since I have admired much about Disney CEO Bob Iger over the years, but what a profoundly quisling move this is by someone who knows better. It’s shameful and he has tarnished his once proud reputation.

Jörg Oechssler @oechssler.bsky.social · Sep 16

Nice summary.

Americans have 400 days to save their democracy | Timothy Garton Ash

I never thought I’d see fear spread so far and fast. Next year’s midterm elections are now crucial for the Democratic party – and for democrats everywhere, says Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Joshua Gans, Christian Odendahl, Ashish Arora , and 9 more Joshua Gans, Christian Odendahl, Ashish Arora, Alistair Munro, Paul Lehmann, Jörg Oechssler, Arik Levinson, Joshua Goodman, Valerie Mueller, Janne Tukiainen, Paolo Crosetto, Cullen S. Hendrix

Richard Tol @richardtol.bsky.social · Sep 15

All is not well at Elsevier richardtol.substack.com/p/fraud-and-...

Fraud and cover-up

richardtol.substack.com

Reposted by Jörg Oechssler, Christian Breunig

Christina Felfe @christinafelfe.bsky.social · Sep 8

### Full Professorship in Applied Economics - 1 week left to apply ###

Succesful candidates will enjoy 3 positions at once - professorship at the UKonstanz, PI at the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality” and the directorship of TWI!
stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/a...