Atheendar Venkataramani
@atheendar.bsky.social
5.3K followers 870 following 370 posts
Physician and health economist. @oppforhealthlab.bsky.social
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Reposted by Atheendar Venkataramani
wrigleyfield.bsky.social
New podcast episode where I talk about what's going on with mortality in the US

A wide-ranging discussion of what happened before the pandemic & what's happened since then; racial disparities and how to get our heads around their scope; why things might be going so badly for Millennials & Gen Zers
Prof. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field Discusses Excess Deaths
Because the US death rate has exceeded that of 21 other high income countries for over four decades, an estimated 14.7 million US lives have been lost since1980.
www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com
Reposted by Atheendar Venkataramani
daveevansphd.bsky.social
Is there a tool to assess risk of bias that economists commonly use or like?

Most tools I've seen seem to be built around medical studies (whether experimental or quasi-experimental). Some elements seem relevant but many others less so.
atheendar.bsky.social
I am currently living this reality on three different papers, one of which is 15 years old.
Reposted by Atheendar Venkataramani
economeager.bsky.social
(1) banger
(2) i wish non-economists would realise just how much time each economics paper takes to write (because of our norms about how thorough each paper has to be)
seema.bsky.social
We just spent 6 months to add 1 figure to this paper. Some people said, "Couples aren't prioritizing men's careers. Men just have better earnings opportunities when moving."

Earnings effects of moves for couples on the left, singles on the right. Negligible gap between single men and women.
Event study coefficients that show that men's earnings rise more than women's among couples following a cross-commuting zone move (left panels). The pattern is muted or reverses among single men and single women (right panels).
atheendar.bsky.social
I did a five month experiment where I signed off all social media. I felt smarter + less angry and distracted.
alexdecampi.bsky.social
A thought I keep having: what if I just log off all social media and subscribe to a few paper magazines and newspapers instead
Reposted by Atheendar Venkataramani
aschwartz.bsky.social
Today's Nobel Prize in Medicine went to the discoverers of regulatory T-cells. How could this discovery about our immune systems change the world?

Here is one possible way: leading to treatments for terrible neurological diseases. (1/3)
atheendar.bsky.social
Thank you for all these tips!! I like the manual car analogy
atheendar.bsky.social
Oh that's awesome! Thanks for the tip!!
atheendar.bsky.social
That's true. I left X some months ago because no one saw or engaged with my tweets. And it got weird.
atheendar.bsky.social
Why do people think this website is good? No one is engaging. There is little discussion. It's just all of us saying stuff in parallel.
Reposted by Atheendar Venkataramani
chelseaparlett.bsky.social
It’s not the method that makes you causal it’s the assumptions
Reposted by Atheendar Venkataramani
mirya.bsky.social
"Full-day kindergarten expansions were responsible for as much as 24 percent of the growth in employment of mothers with kindergartenaged children in this time frame."
atheendar.bsky.social
It's a really beautiful and important paper. Congratulations!
Reposted by Atheendar Venkataramani
jama.com
JAMA @jama.com · 5d
Atul Butte, MD, PhD, helped define the field of translational bioinformatics and inspired countless colleagues and trainees.

He will be remembered for his brilliant mind, infectious optimism, generous mentorship.
Remembering Atul Butte
This Medical News article is in remembrance of Atul Butte, MD, PhD, a pioneer in using data science to improve health.
jamanetwork.com
atheendar.bsky.social
Missing data means AI will be as dumb as we are?

Interesting paper: arxiv.org/abs/2509.12388
Reposted by Atheendar Venkataramani
trevondlogan.bsky.social
Good history helps us avoid nostalgia. The great article “Economic History and the Historians” (2020) by Anne McCants reminds me why nostalgia can get us in trouble. Two of her examples are very relevant to today: vaccinations and the popular narrative of some economic “good old days.”
Getting vaccinated is unpleasant. Dying of measles is worse. In the decade before the 1963 vaccine for measles emerged, an average of 475 Americans died from measles every year, most of them children. This (absolute) number had dropped to a low of 1 in 1981, despite a steadily increasing population that might have hypothetically contributed additional cases. Sadly, the number of measles cases in the United States has been steadily climbing upward again because we seem not to remember the ravages of the disease so much as the inconvenience of the shot—even without taking into account the absurd rejection of the solid scientific evidence in favor of vaccinations. Many people still have an elderly relative who survived a bout of severe childhood illness; not one of us has an elderly relative who did not. The blurring of the historical evidence for and against vaccination that arises from strangely incongruous historical narratives allows a seemingly inconsequential but nonetheless deadly nostalgia to run rampant. Another example of dangerous reverence for the past concerns the flurry of popular enthusiasm lately (at least if the pundits of the 2016 American election are to be believed) for the “good old days” of the 1950s when a family could live securely on just one income (in these nostalgic accounts, that one income is usually a man’s). Lest we forget, these are the same good old days of poor air quality and measles. Maybe trivial in comparison but certainly indicative of the scope of the cognitive problem that nostalgia presents, the average size of a new home built in America in 1950 was 983 sq. ft.; by 2010, the average size had risen to 2,392 sq. ft. Given that families were larger on average in the 1950s than they were in 2010, per capita space allocation had risen even faster than total area. Although we might not need that much personal space, many of us have become used to it. Older furniture now looks tiny compared to what is now on offer in showrooms, whereas older television sets were behemoths with miniscule screens showing programs in glorious black and white.
Reposted by Atheendar Venkataramani
kedseconomist.com
Can you get help when you lose your job?

A lot of Americans' introduction to Unemployment Insurance is anything but easy. Laid off, they have to navigate an application process that could result in not that much money.

Optimists, we can do better. Tune in:
rss.com/podcasts/opt...
Can We Fix America's Broken Unemployment Insurance System? | Podcast Episode on RSS.com
Just how broken is Unemployment Insurance? Consider this: During every recession since the 1950s, the federal government has had to step in and prop it up. Of people looking for work, only half qualif...
rss.com
atheendar.bsky.social
Ooh!! it wasn't the one I had seen but this one is new to me, looks awesome, and I'm really glad you posted this!
atheendar.bsky.social
Hi all!

A while back on X and here people circulated an article on mono-causal versus multi-causal explanations (couched in a discourse on complex systems) for different phenomena.

Does anyone have a link or citation?

#research #medsky #econsky
atheendar.bsky.social
This is an interesting article on the #NIH, the #future of #science, and whether science and #reason can thrive in this era of toxic information ecosystems and politics.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

(I know a lot of academics have issues with this piece. But there is a lot to think about here)
Opinion | ‘The Power of Science to Solve Problems Is Almost Limitless’
www.nytimes.com
atheendar.bsky.social
Congratulations Corinne! I pre-ordered this and am exciting to read next week!