Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · May 31

Princeton University Press books are discounted by 50%.

I'd say that's a great deal!

press.princeton.edu?cq_src=googl...

Homepage

Princeton University Press is a nonprofit publisher with close connections to Princeton University.

press.princeton.edu

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · May 29

Got to read!

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · May 29

Immigrants increase innovation and economic growth [full stop]

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · May 20

Come and listen to me talk about my work on what consumers think about central bank inflation forecasts and how that affects inflation expectations and trust at the "Theories and Methods in Macroeconomics" Conference.

There are many other interesting projects too!

www.t2m.network/2025/program/

Program 2025

www.t2m.network

1

Reposted by Muhammed Bulutay

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · May 11

Thanks to everybody who chimed in!

I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist.

So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:>

69 280 1.1K

Reposted by Muhammed Bulutay

Arin Dube @arindube.bsky.social · May 2

The "unexpected compression" in wages continues!

Non-managerial wages (for around 80% of private workforce) continues to grow somewhat stronger than overall wages. This means the reduction in wage inequality post-pandemic has remained, and continued (at a slower pace).

1 6 30

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Apr 24

💡 TL;DR: We blend a behavioral bias into rational inattention — and find new welfare implications. Overprecision distorts attention, causing people to suboptimally underreact to information.

📄 Read the full paper:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

1

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Apr 24

We find
✅ Feedback reduces overprecision
✅ Higher attention cost → less updating and more error.

But here’s the twist:
❗️Overprecision amplifies the effect of attention costs

This reflects irrational inattention: suboptimal updating due to biased beliefs, not just costs.

1 1

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Apr 24

We ran a pre-registered experiment to test the model.

🎯Task: Guess average age of people in historical pictures (e.g., Solvay Conference) — before & after seeing info.

Treatments:
- Feedback on belief calibration (overprecision shifter)
- Noise on the info (attention costs shifter)

1 1

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Apr 24

We extend rational inattention theory to incorporate overprecision.

A new prediction: Reducing costs of info processing has asymmetric welfare effects.

Example: A central bank simplifies communication to reduce inattention.

✅ Overprecise households react more
❌ Underprecise households react less

1

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Apr 24

🚨New paper🚨

Classic rational inattention says people weigh costs vs. benefits when processing info.

We show that overprecision biases this evaluation — leading to misallocated attention.

📄 Theory + experiment
(link in last post)

#econsky @boschrosa.bsky.social

1 2 6

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Apr 18

This is something people undervalue about laboratory experiments. One can credibly boost the understanding of instructions, sometimes just by reading them aloud.

George Wu @geowu.bsky.social · Apr 18

(Study 2) They use lab participants instead of Prolific recruits. Study is pretty much identical to Oprea except for language and currency.

(Study 1) They run a variant, aimed at ensuring that subjects understand the task, in which "an experimenter ... read the instructions aloud."

1

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Apr 15

I want to try this 😂

Johannes Haushofer @johanneshaushofer.com · Apr 15

Remember the "Highlights" that some Elsevier journals require? Dean Karlan and friends developed an amazing way to troll them: haikus!

Reposted by Muhammed Bulutay

Lab² @labsquare.net · Mar 31

🔔 Call for Participation 🔔
Lab² is inviting researchers to take part in a multi-analyst study on the effects of having daughters on various outcomes.
Join this metascience project as a co-author and gain the opportunity to work with SOEP data!

#ManyDaughters

Many Analysts

www.manydaughters.com

2 13 18

Reposted by Muhammed Bulutay

Ivan Moscati @ivan-moscati.bsky.social · Mar 28

I’ve just completed a revision of a paper titled “Psychological narratives in decision theory: what they are and what they are good for.”

I believe it makes a contribution to the recent literature on the epistemic role of narratives in science, particularly in economics.

ssrn.com/abstract=476...

1 2

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Mar 27

This is a great opportunity to join us in the beautiful city of Heidelberg.

Let me note that experiments are a common method among the faculty, including macroeconomists and microeconomists.

Jörg Oechssler @oechssler.bsky.social · Mar 27

I have a postdoc position in Behavioral/Experimental Economics available for 6 years, at the oldest university in Germany in beautiful Heidelberg. Please forward to anyone who might be interested!

#EconJobs #AcademicJobs #HigherEd #Economics #JobAlert

1

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Mar 27

That sounds like a good idea. I just hope it doesn't have unintended effects like discrimination.

Econometrica @ecmaeditors.bsky.social · Mar 27

We are pleased to announce an experiment intended to stimulate academic discussion and exchange, centered on papers published in Econometrica 1/5

Reposted by Muhammed Bulutay

John A. List @johnlist.bsky.social · Mar 25

I finally have a publication date for my new Experimental Economics textbook: December 12. Equally as important, I am proud to have negotiated a low price for the book: $38.10...for a nearly 800 page book!
You can find the book here: www.amazon.com/Experimental...

5 28 130

Reposted by Muhammed Bulutay

Zeke Hausfather @hausfath.bsky.social · Mar 24

Whenever I post about climate, skeptical folks inevitable respond with this graph. So I decided to do something radical: actually read the underling scientific paper and ask the authors.

As it turns out, it actually says the opposite of what skeptics claim: www.theclimatebrink....

50 350 1K

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Mar 5

Much of the recent literature uses non-incentivized measures of beliefs and attitudes. The typical justification is based on simplicity. This study seems to show otherwise.

NBER @nber.org · Mar 5

Experimental validation, which links economic preferences to choices in incentivized elicitations, may fail to produce reliable new measures, from Jonathan Chapman, Pietro Ortoleva, Erik Snowberg, Leeat Yariv, and Colin Camerer https://www.nber.org/papers/w33520

1

Reposted by Muhammed Bulutay

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

10 72 96

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Feb 28

This is the summer school that got me interested in macroeconomics and finance. I highly recommend it.

And it is in Barcelona!

www.upf.edu/web/beslab/h...

16th BESLAB Experimental Economics Summer School in Macroeconomics, June 16-22, 2025

16th BESLAB Experimental Economics Summer School in Macroeconomics

www.upf.edu

2

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Feb 28

I wonder if they would behave differently if there were some humans in the market. The common knowledge of rationality may be what's driving their outcome.

Sandro Ambuehl @sandroecon.bsky.social · Feb 28

LLM agents behave unlike humans in standard experimental finance (bubble) experiments.

2

Reposted by Muhammed Bulutay

Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · Feb 25

After a long wait, the working paper for the Many-Economists Project: The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics. We had 146 teams perform the same research three times, each time with less freedom. What source of freedom leads to different choices and results? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics

We use a rigorous three-stage many-analysts design to assess how different researcher decisions—specifically data cleaning, research design, and the interpretat

papers.ssrn.com

12 160 350

Muhammed Bulutay @mvbulutay.bsky.social · Feb 25

This is a very interesting result.

My opinion: RCTs remain one of the more robust methods for p-hacking because the results are more verifiable due to data availability, pre-registration, and simplicity of analyses. In contrast, IV, structural, and simulations are much more flexible for p-hacking.

Prashant Garg @prashantgarg.bsky.social · Feb 24

There is large variation by Methods.

RCTs and RDDs have relatively high null results across all fields. Typically, with RCTs it is harder to do specification mining to get your desired large result.

Sadly, the scandal shows there may be other research malpractice that can get you there.

1 1 3

Reposted by Muhammed Bulutay

Iikka Korhonen @iikkakorhonen.bsky.social · Feb 25

The 2025 Annual Meeting of the Central Bank Research Association (CEBRA) will be co-organized with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Harvard Business School

Deadline March 20!

Also a session organized by @suomenpankki.fi !

cebra.org/events/annua...

Annual Meeting - CEBRA

2025 CEBRA Annual Meeting: Call for Papers The 2025 Annual Meeting of the Central Bank Research Association (CEBRA) will be co-organized with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Harvard Business Sc...

cebra.org

1 3