Write left, pretty much everything else right.

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.

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I don't say this often, but if you follow me, I'm asking you to read this:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Startling conclusion here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dogs-4
#smbc

New in the JPE: RCT evidence that exercise (via a free gym card) improves academic performance www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... #EconSky

"These results suggest that should a referendum be held, making the public aware of the empirical analysis could markedly influence the outcome" Laugh-cries in Brexit 😂

Showing people in Japan empirical evidence on the negative effects of emergency clauses in the Constitution changes their opinion quite markedly against adding emergency clauses. link.springer.com/article/10.1... #econsky

Not even 9am. So far on Radio 6, the news bulletins have featured a mother saying her daughters aren't safe because of asylum seekers, a Tory politician lambasting Labour for crossing numbers & Badenoch encouraging councils to lodge legal challenges against hotels. An endless stream of hateful bile.

Ultimate dad joke last week. We were in a safari/zoo type of place and it was difficult to see the bears, as they were sleeping far away. Without missing a beat I said you could barely (get it) see them. I don't care, it made my son smile :).

Been listening to the same three Nick Cave albums for weeks now so think that's Spotify wrapped sorted...

"How the Institute for Replication is making social science more robust and reliable:" www.openphilanthropy.org/research/how...

Actually WWII was a hallucination that just got way out of control.

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/good-7
PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/c/ZachWeiner...
STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Replication Crisis

xkcd.com/3117/

Listening to a 3h+ podcast on the dysfunction in Britain's government probably doesn't sound that appealing but this interview with Ian Dunt is really engaging and very interesting. My beliefs keep shifting in the direction that Britain is royally screwed though. 80000hours.org/podcast/epis...

when i was a young boy (sorry MCR pilled) law students at melb uni would tear out important pages in library books for high stakes assignments to hinder other students.

now as an academic ive seen people obviously insert needless obstacles into their replication files. it's even more sad.

This paper uses the biographies of historical figures to estimate historical GDP per capita of countries and regions: econpapers.repec.org/paper/arxpap... #econsky

This paper looks at a policy change in Egypt that decreased completed years of schooling, finding no adverse effects on health or labour market outcomes from the reduction in education: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #EconSky

If a country has a series of consecutive failing prime ministers, it's perhaps time to look beyond the individual qualities of each of them to find the root cause.

"While not discounting the advantages that a well-functioning state can provide for economic progress, we draw attention to an alternate mechanism: the presence of private institutions and practices that may contribute to both state formation and ec. dev." link.springer.com/article/10.1... #econsky

"reduced tariffs on input goods sign. decrease the distortionary effect of political connections, as trade reduces firms' dependence on politicians for sourcing inputs. [...] new margin for gains from trade through reduced politically driven misallocation" www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=... #econsky

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🚨 We have finalized our DID textbook!
You’ve run out of excuses for sketchy pre-trends and mysterious TWFE coefficients.

📘 Credible Answers to Hard Questions: Differences-in-Differences for Natural Experiments
By Chaisemartin & D’Haultfœuille.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I'm late to this excellent piece by @ryancbriggs.net on the extent to which we can trust results from social science research: asteriskmag.com/issues/10/ca... #econsky

Gifts and inheritances are highly unequal but don't seem that important a source of income flows (except if you have very wealthy parents): academic.oup.com/jeea/article... #econsky