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Kristina McElheran

@kmcelheran.bsky.social

1.9K followers 1.4K following 240 posts

Associate Prof at University of Toronto. Digitization scholar studying firm use of technology, productivity, strategy, and the future of work.

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Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · Sep 1

Beware of coverage of AI-related pre-prints...unless they are mine. ;-)

The A.I.-Profits Drought and the Lessons of History

Like the steam engine, electricity, and computers, generative artificial intelligence could take longer than expected to transform the economy.

www.newyorker.com

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Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 7h

Otherwise known as conference submissions, in my world.

Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 10h

DON'T. PRINT. LIES. IN. THE. NEWSPAPERS. 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Mark Jacob @markjacob.bsky.social · 10h

The New York Times knows crime is not “out of control” in major U.S. cities — in fact, crime is way down from past years and decades — but NYT amplifies JD Vance’s lie without a fact check.
It’s journalism malpractice that helps the fascists.

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 8h

I know it probably shouldn’t, but the fact that he’s wearing his Flamengo shirt, with his Flamengo birthday cake, it really hits me hard…

Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 11h

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility
By Marcela Rodrigues Globe Staff,Updated October 12, 2025, 44 minutes ago

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A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Everett after an interaction with members of the Everett Police Department and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia, according to his mother and immigration lawyer Andrew Lattarulo.

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested. After waiting for about an hour and a half, she was told her son was taken by ICE, Berto told the Globe in a phone interview.

“My world collapsed,” Berto said in Portuguese.

From the police department, the boy was taken to ICE’s holding facility in Burlington on Thursday evening, where he spent a night before being transferred by car to the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., on Friday morning, his mother said. The juvenile facility is more than 500 miles away from Everett.

The boy is a 7th-grader at Albert N. Parlin School in Everett, his mother said. The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, Lattarulo said.

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Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 2d

And sandwiches

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 2d

It might be hard to convey to people outside economics just how seismic this is. The Trump effect has most certainly arrived to US academia.

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 2d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Pema Levy @pemalevy.bsky.social · 3d

Remember, the Supreme Court okay’d this without explanation on the shadow docket

Julianne McShane @juliannemcshane.bsky.social · 3d

This is a crazy must-read from @nlanard.bsky.social:

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

ICE is sending people to a prison in Africa’s only absolute monarchy

Inside the “legal black hole” in Eswatini, where Trump is sending detainees.

www.motherjones.com

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Sam Thorpe @samthorpe.bsky.social · 2d

Incredibly useful new story by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com on the 'crisis' for young college grads. Most analyses compare mid-20s workers with/without a degree. But as John points out, the relevant comparison group is actually *new entrants* with/without a degree - most non-degree workers enter at 18-19.

What the graduate unemployment story gets wrong

People with a degree are faring better, not worse than their non-graduate counterparts

www.ft.com

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

ACLU @aclu.org · 3d

BREAKING: A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Trump from deploying federalized National Guard troops into Chicago.

This ruling reinforces what we already knew: It is illegal for the president to use manufactured emergencies to send soldiers into our cities.

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 3d

This is the genius of the Portland protests - they make the claims of lawlessness look not just wrong, but comical

The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 3d

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Heather Cox Richardson (TDPR) @hcrichardson.bsky.social · 4d

People ask what they can do in this moment: here's a crucially important election. There are 52,000 elections taking place next month, many of which will be determined by turnout.

Alex Burness @burness.bsky.social · 5d

Dispatch from Pennsylvania on a highly unusual state Supreme Court election—one of the few most consequential matters on the ballot anywhere in the country next month. New from me in @boltsmag.org: boltsmag.org/pennsylvania...

Inside the Clunky Elections to Control Pennsylvania's Supreme Court - Bolts

The GOP is making an expensive push to end Democrats’ majority on a court at the center of election lawsuits, sparking a fledging campaign season with little precedent or template.

boltsmag.org

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

The Onion @theonion.com · 4d

Industrial Revolution Provides Millions Of Out-Of-Work Children With Jobs https://theonion.com/industrial-revolution-provides-millions-of-out-of-work-1819571223/

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 5d

“The effects can be unintentionally hilarious: CPAC Hungary, for instance, proclaimed itself to be ‘the epicenter of the global fight against globalism.’” www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Is America contagious?

Scholars in political extremism are documenting the global spread of right-wing populism.

www.motherjones.com

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Melanie D’Arrigo @darrigomelanie.bsky.social · 5d

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

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Reposted by Kristina McElheran

KOJAMF🤘🖤🤘 @kojamf.bsky.social · 7d

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

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Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 7d

This is really good!

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 8d

Time to repost a classic.

clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/

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Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 7d

My students, who are forced by me to grapple with the economic and social implications of AI, often gravitate towards”explainable AI.” This clip will be excellent for that discussion…it’s more convincing than when I say it.

⚡️🌙 @dystopiabreaker.xyz · 8d

anyway, here is 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics winner Geoffrey Hinton discussing what we know about large AI models on 60 Minutes.

Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 8d

This is so good from Cory Doctorow on all the tricks Amazon uses to get both consumers to pay more, and how businesses on the platform end up paying it 45-51 cents on every dollar.

Plus he rightly calls for regulatory change, not just individual consumer action
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...

www.theguardian.com

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Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 8d

This exact impulse is why I’m so stressed and tired almost all the time. Know Thine Enemy.

Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 8d

i wish i had infinite lifetimes to learn all about this stuff

Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 8d

*This! Thank your for articulating why I think this is a terrible model for studying firms.

Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 8d

Good fit for my morning writing on why this is a deeply problematic mental model for how we think about technology use in firms. Exogenous shocks/random assignment of tech to organizations is a weird thing to want to extrapolate off of…

Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · 9d

Mini thread trying to debunk the "RCT or bust" propaganda. Looking forward to a chilled Saturday morning on Bluesky. 😉

Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · 9d

I disagree. That's exactly where the "RCT is the gold standard" metaphor goes wrong, in my view. RCTs are a powerful tool, but they don't exist in their Platonic ideal. In reality, you'll need to make trade-offs, e.g., with respect to the population you can expose to randomization.

Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 9d

"Solar energy is anticipated to be the world’s main source of energy by 2050" hell yeah

Solar: main source of EU electricity in June with 22%

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Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 8d

I don’t like to make predictions about the future of AI, but my guess is that the replication-focused journals are going to come into their own very, very soon…

Beth Popp Berman @epopppp.bsky.social · 8d

Interesting article/paper.

I'm much less anti-AI than a lot of people on my feed. But pretty skeptical it can simulate human behavior effectively for social scientific purposes -- at least in cases where variation among humans, rather than acting like an average human, is what's important.

AI-generated ‘participants’ can lead social science experiments astray, study finds

Data produced by “silicon samples” depends on researchers’ exact choice of models, prompts, and settings

www.science.org

Reposted by Kristina McElheran

Ben Casselman @bencasselman.bsky.social · 12d

Three responses I'm hearing a lot of here:
1. "Aha! Any excuse to hide the bad numbers!"
2. "The numbers were cooked anyway so who cares?"
3. "Fine, we'll just rely on private data."
Let's address all three in a 🧵:

Ben Casselman @bencasselman.bsky.social · 12d

Friday's jobs report will provide key evidence on whether slower hiring is turning into deeper weakness in the labor market.
If there is a jobs report on Friday at all.
My story on how a shutdown could leave us flying blind at a vital moment for the economy. #EconSky
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/b...

Government Shutdown Could Delay Economic Data at a Critical Moment

www.nytimes.com

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Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 13d

It’s the “experiment” part that implies causal inference.

Kristina McElheran @kmcelheran.bsky.social · 13d

I’m ready to lose it over folks who still think the Solow Paradox was unresolved and that AI is the first novel technology ever encountered by firms.