Toman Barsbai
@tomanbarsbai.com
310 followers 310 following 8 posts
Professor of Economics ‪at the University of Bristol‬. Development, migration, culture, and behavior. tomanbarsbai.com
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Reposted by Toman Barsbai
dmckenzie.bsky.social
In today's blog, I discuss 3 ways for international migration to be part of a structural transformation policy: 1) as an industry itself; 2) training people abroad in the skills to develop a new industry at home; and 3) through immigration (eg Start-up Chile) blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...
International Migration as a Structural Transformation Policy
blogs.worldbank.org
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
yuliyakosyakova.bsky.social
📢 New publication out!
We introduce the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Refugee Survey — a high-quality, longitudinal household panel on refugee integration in Germany. Combining rich survey data with administrative linkages.

📰 doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

@iabnews.bsky.social @bamf.de @diw.de
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
collinsmatthew.bsky.social
Free Primary Education is widely seen as a tool to promote long-term growth, but in a new working paper (🚨),
@eleonoraguarnieri.bsky.social, Helmut Rainer and I show that the effects are more immediate and wide-reaching, with FPE leading to reduced fertility and greater female empowerment.
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
maxposch.bsky.social
✨Did markets make Americans more cooperative❓🔍

✅YES‼️

Between 1850 and 1920, the US became the largest and most integrated economy in the world 📶🌎

We show that this shift didn’t just move goods and affect prices—it fundamentally changed culture and behavior

🧵 👇 1/17
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
voxdev.bsky.social
🆕 Why ‘Brain Drain’ is an incomplete story of migration 📢

Today on VoxDevTalks, @catiabatista.bsky.social (@novafrica.bsky.social) & Caroline Theoharides (Amherst College) discuss the channels through which emigration can benefit origin countries: voxdev.org/topic/migrat...
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
profsimonfisher.bsky.social
"The human niche began to expand substantially ~70ka, driven by increased use of diverse habitats, from forests to deserts. Humans dispersing out of Africa after 50ka had distinct ecological flexibility as they encountered climatically challenging habitats." New from @elliescerri.bsky.social & co.👇🧪
Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature
Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...
www.nature.com
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
dmckenzie.bsky.social
How does high-skilled emigration affect countries of origin? I summarize our recent Science paper, &draw out lessons from where we need nuance (not all high-skilled is the same, & most studies lump together), what we don't know (especially how to do better policy) blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...
How does high-skilled emigration affect countries of origin? A new review highlights what we’ve learned and what we still don’t know
blogs.worldbank.org
tomanbarsbai.com
How does high-skilled emigration affect countries of origin? "The weight of the evidence suggests that migration opportunities often increase human capital stock in origin countries and produce downstream beneficial effects."

I love Figure 3, which summarizes the mechanisms.
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
alexmesoudi.com
Fascinating latest model of Homo sapiens evolution within Africa.

Interesting finding that cultural innovation was accelerated by both population size increases, but also recombination across partially isolated regions (e.g. Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa)
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
malengo.org
Malengo @malengo.org · May 15
Our scholars in Kenya are getting ready to start nursing training in Germany, supported by #Malengo. They've learned German & now seek forward-thinking employers. Know a clinic or healthcare provider hiring? Let us know!
📷 www.malengo.org
#Nursing #TVET #Migration
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social
Cross-species teamwork from @livingingroups.bsky.social reveals unexpected similarities in three social mammals 🤔

By lead author @pminasandra.bsky.social with Emily Grout, Katrina Brock, Meg Crofoot, Vlad Demartsev, Amlan Nayak, Eli
Strauss, Ari Strandburg-Peshkin🧵1/2

www.ab.mpg.de/679000/news_...
Very different mammals follow the same rules of behavior
Research hints at an underlying architecture that orders the movements of animals
www.ab.mpg.de
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
nber.org
NBER @nber.org · May 17
Reviewing the literature on the relationship between culture and political preferences, from Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini https://www.nber.org/papers/w33786
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
aeajournals.bsky.social
When ethnic groups within countries become more culturally distant from those holding power in the central government, their likelihood of rebelling increases significantly. We spoke with @eleonoraguarnieri.bsky.social of @bristoluni.bsky.social about why such conflicts arise. #econsky
The cultural roots of rebellion
Eleonora Guarnieri discusses the role of cultural distance in driving civil conflict in Africa.
www.aeaweb.org
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
paulhufe.net
Day 3 of the 2025 Bristol Applied Economics Meetings (BÆM)! After two fantastic days on development economics, we continue with the meeting on “Gender, Diversity, and Human Capital”. Stay tuned for some excellent papers!
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
eleonoraguarnieri.bsky.social
Welcome to the 2025 Bristol Applied Economics Meetings (BÆM)! We’re kicking off with Development Economics. We have an exciting lineup of speakers, incl. @saralowes.bsky.social as keynote and Devesh Rustagi & @deanyang.bsky.social as invited speakers. Stay tuned for one key takeaway per talk!
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
dmckenzie.bsky.social
The UCSD backstory podcast interviews me about doing applied methods work in development, whether there are private returns from producing public goods, how to select research problems, what a grad student could do in their second year summer, and more... open.spotify.com/episode/2i70...
Backstory: David McKenzie on Problem Selection and Public Goods Creation
Backstory: How Research Papers in Economics Get Made · Episode
open.spotify.com
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
roopekaaronen.net
Pleased to see our work published:

The Ties That Bind: Computational, Cross-cultural Analyses of Knots Reveal Their Cultural Evolutionary History and Significance

We analysed knots across 12,000 years and 82 societies.

Time to tie a thread 🧵 about why knots matter.

doi.org/10.1017/S095...
A circular dendrogram (phenetic tree) of knots, made using the ggtree package in R. A text-readable and high-resolution PDF-version of the tree is available as a supplementary material.
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
nber.org
NBER @nber.org · Mar 24
Over a century ago, 1.2 million Greek Orthodox refugees reshaped Greece. While initially lagging, they outperformed natives in education, favoring transferable degrees over local fields, from Michalopoulos, Murard, Papaioannou, and Sakalli https://www.nber.org/papers/w33586
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
carlmc.bsky.social
Very happy that this is out now! We find that railroad construction led to more separatism in Europe, showing strong opposition to modernization and state building among minorities. @robertovalli.bsky.social with a summary thread below👇
apsrjournal.bsky.social
Just published on APSR First View: "The Train Wrecks of Modernization: Railway Construction and Separatist Mobilization in Europe" by Yannick Pengl, Carl Müller-Crepon, Roberto Valli, Lars-Erik Cederman, and Luc Girardin. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
adreher.bsky.social
The Review of International Organizations invites papers using geocoded data on foreign aid for a special issue “Analyzing Global Development with the Geocoded Official Development Assistance Dataset (GODAD).” See godad.me, godad.uni-goettingen.de/uploads/RIO_...
Reposted by Toman Barsbai
nathannunn.bsky.social
Scott's Mixtape podcast is like no other: it’s 100% focused on the backstory behind the research. Neat idea and super fun for his guests!