Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome.bsky.social · 1d

Uh oh; "A fire at Novelis’s Oswego, N.Y., plant, which supplies about 40% of U.S. auto industry aluminum, will disrupt automakers for months"
www.wsj.com/business/aut...

Fortunately, imported aluminum can fill the void and mitigate this massive domestic supply chain disrupti-

Oh.

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 8d

The president just gathered the highest ranking officers in the military to tell them that he may order them to kill American citizens -- and that they better follow his orders. All in response to a series of crises that have no basis in reality.

I don't know how to yell any louder.

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Trade Diversion (Jonathan Dingel) @tradediversion.bsky.social · 9d

PhD students underestimate the value (and difficulty) of writing well.

Hiring faculty skim dozens of JMPs in a short time. If your contribution is unclear, you will get fewer interviews.

Editing improves economics papers (RCT): doi.org/10.1016/j.je...

I am happy to recommend www.amyedits.net

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Stan Veuger @stanveuger.bsky.social · 10d

Join this @budgetlab.bsky.social webinar on Tuesday at noon on “Tariffs in an Uncertain Legal Environment,” ft. @scottlincicome.bsky.social @anaswanson.bsky.social @natasharsarin.bsky.social

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nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · 12d

NYT simply failing to ask if kitchen cabinets are a national security emergency here, well done www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/b...

Higher costs from the new tariffs will be felt across sectors of the economy, from housing and health care to logistics. The president also said the United States would begin imposing a 50 percent tariff on imported kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and associated products, along with a 30 percent tariff on imported furniture and a 25 percent tariff on foreign trucks.

The tariffs will be issued under a national security related law, known as Section 232, that Mr. Trump has used to issue tariffs on steel, aluminum, cars and copper. On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced that it was beginning new investigations under the law into imports of robotics, industrial machinery and medical devices, which could result in tariffs.

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Trade Diversion (Jonathan Dingel) @tradediversion.bsky.social · 16d

New to me: Chipman (1965): "it would seem fair to say that both Torrens and Ricardo contributed in essential ways to the development of the law of comparative advantage; and that credit for the principal discovery should go to Torrens." doi.org/10.2307/1911...

A Survey of the Theory of International Trade: Part 1, The Classical Theory on JSTOR

John S. Chipman, A Survey of the Theory of International Trade: Part 1, The Classical Theory, Econometrica, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jul., 1965), pp. 477-519

doi.org

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 17d

Restricting visas doesn’t lead to hiring non-immigrants—it leads to hiring foreigners. For every H-1B visa rejection, multinationals add ~0.4–0.9 foreign employees, especially in R&D hubs like India, China, and Canada.

via @florianederer.bsky.social

How Do Restrictions on High-Skilled
Immigration Affect Offshoring?
Evidence from the H-1B Program
Britta Glennon
WORKING PAPER 27538
DOI 10.3386/w27538
ISSUE DATE July 2020
REVISION DATE February
2023
Highly-skilled workers are not only a crucial and relatively scarce inputs into firms' productive and innovative processes, but are also a critical resource determining competitive advantage. An increasingly high proportion of these workers in the US were born abroad and permitted to work on skilled worker visas. How do multinational firms respond when artificial constraints, namely policies restricting skilled immigration, are placed on their ability to hire scarce human capital? This paper combines visa microdata and comprehensive data on US multinational firm activity to demonstrate that firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate employment at the intensive and extensive margins, particularly in China, India, and Canada. The most impacted jobs were R&D-intensive ones, but there is some evidence that non-R&D employment was also affected. The paper highlights a means by which firms can circumvent constraining policies and mitigate country-level risk, but it also suggests that, for the average MNC, this means is imperfect; for every visa rejection, they hire 0.4 employees abroad. The most globalized MNCs are the most likely to respond to these restrictions by offshoring, highlighting that firm capabilities—in the form of prior internationalization-shape the decision and ability to offshore in response to skilled immigration restrictions; indeed, these firms hire 0.9 employees abroad for every visa rejection. More broadly, the paper provides evidence of a push factor for internationalizing knowledge activity: artificial constraints on resources result in firms circumventing restrictive policies in ways that may not be anticipated by policy makers.

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Trade Diversion (Jonathan Dingel) @tradediversion.bsky.social · 21d

Source for this news?

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Thiru Balasubramaniam @thirugeneva.bsky.social · 21d

Professor Robert Staiger, the Roth Family Distinguished Professor in the Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, has been appointed as the new Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization. @wto.org

Robert W. Staiger - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Trade Diversion (Jonathan Dingel) @tradediversion.bsky.social · 21d

Unsurprising because it’s Noto: this episode is fantastic. Students and junior faculty should listen about how to negotiate with chairs and deans.

Matt Notowidigdo @profnoto.bsky.social · 21d

I enjoyed this conversation; here's the summary of what we talked about:

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 23d

The thing to emphasize here is that this treatment is *utterly normal.* It's part of the system of detention which has existed for decades. Folkston has been like this for many, many years,

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 23d

korean reporting is nightmarish on the conditions Korean workers were contained in

Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink. The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours. Detained by US immigration authorities for eight days, the workers and their families expressed shock, describing human rights violations and absurdities they could not have imagined as ordinary Koreans living in 2025.

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Josh Gottlieb @gottliebecon.bsky.social · 26d

Predoc opportunity in health/labor/public economics at @beckerfriedman.bsky.social: job-boards.greenhouse.io/universityof...

Please share widely!

#EconSky

Research Professional – Josh Gottlieb and Matt Notowidigdo (Full-Time, Benefits Eligible)

Chicago, IL

job-boards.greenhouse.io

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Michelle Ye Hee Lee @myhlee.bsky.social · 27d

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said during press conference that 316 Korean nationals (310 men, 6 women) are set to be released from the Georgia detention facility at 3pm. He also says that this incident would make Korean companies hesitant about investing in the U.S.

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Trade Diversion (Jonathan Dingel) @tradediversion.bsky.social · 28d

Congrats @jordanrk.bsky.social and Ari!

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#urbanecon @urban-econ-papers.bsky.social · 28d

New in RSUE: How local is local development? Evidence from casinos, by Ari Anisfeld, Jordan Rosenthal-Kay. #econsky #urbanecon

How local is local development? Evidence from casinos

Publication date: Available online 8 September 2025 Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics Author(s): Ari Anisfeld, Jordan Rosenthal-Kay

www.sciencedirect.com

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Gothamist @gothamist.com · 29d

New York City’s expansive train system currently has two-person crews on nearly all of its lines, unlike the one-person or fully automated trains in major cities like London, Paris and Washington, D.C.: https://bit.ly/4nnEhQF

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Andy Sellars @sellars.bsky.social · Sep 8

The Crimson, scooping every news outlet not run by undergraduates working in between classes, gets into how court orders mandating return of research funding have been flaunted, and makes a clear case for contempt proceedings against DOGE officials. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

"Young ordered the restoration of $783 million in federal funding for fiscal year 2025 — a portion of which, totaling millions, was allocated to Harvard — before the Supreme Court stayed the order nearly two months later. (The total multi-year funding pool affected by Young’s ruling included $3.8 billion in grants, many of which were partially paid out before the freeze. According to a Crimson analysis of court filings, Harvard was awarded more than 140 grants within that pool, with a combined multi-year value exceeding $60 million.)

Harvard expected the grants listed in Young’s ruling to flow back to researchers, according to a person familiar with the matter, even though the White House had imposed a block on all Harvard grants as part of its initial funding cut in April.

But the funds never arrived, and Harvard wrote in an August press release from the School of Public Health that the NIH was continuing to “block disbursement of any funds to Harvard University.”

According to one person, Harvard has been unable to access any funds from the NIH since April because of the restrictions imposed by DOGE through its oversight of the NIH’s payment system, including in the two-month period in which Young’s ruling mandated that grant awards listed in the ruling be resumed."

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · Sep 5

Trying to explain why international trade is good to an American: okay so imagine a burger

(yes this is a real ad on the Canadian embassy in DC)

A picture of the Canadian embassy ad saying “we make great burgers together!” with a picture of a burger and an ad saying “we make great planes together!” with a picture of a F-35 c

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Simon Lester @simonlester.com · Aug 31

"Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services company led by the sons of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, is creating a way for investors to bet that President Donald Trump’s signature tariffs will be struck down in court."

Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · Aug 31

Id heard that Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm formerly run by Commerce Secy Lutnick and now run by his sons is one of the big buyers of these refund rights. Turns out it’s already public back in July when they were buying them at 20 to 30 cents on the dollar. www.wired.com/story/cantor...

Trump’s Commerce Secretary Loves Tariffs. His Former Investment Bank Is Taking Bets Against Them

A subsidiary of Cantor Fitzgerald, which is run by the sons of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, is letting clients essentially bet that President Donald Trump’s tariffs will be struck down in cou...

www.wired.com

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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · Aug 29

By a 7-4 vote, the full Federal Circuit has *affirmed* a lower-court ruling holding that many of President Trump’s tariffs exceed his statutory authority.

The ruling won’t go into effect until October 14, though—which gives the Trump administration plenty of time to seek intervention from #SCOTUS:

storage.courtlistener.com

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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · Aug 29

That… is the entire point of the Federal Reserve.

The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · Aug 28

Vance on undermining the Federal Reserve: "I don't think we allow bureaucrats to make decisions about monetary policy and interest rates without any input from the people that were elected to serve the American people...POTUS is much better able to make these determinations."

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Tatyana Deryugina @tderyugina.bsky.social · Aug 27

Over 125 economists signed the open letter calling on the President, Congress, and the American public to uphold the principles of Federal Reserve independence and not remove Lisa Cook without due process.

There's still time to sign! And please share.

#EconSky

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Open letter

Click here to add your signature. An Open Letter from Economists in Support of Governor Lisa Cook and Federal Reserve Independence To the President, Members of Congress, and the American public: We wr...

docs.google.com

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Oren Samet @osamet.bsky.social · Aug 28

I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

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The Associated Press @apnews.com · Aug 23

Multiple postal services around Europe say they are suspending the shipment of many packages to the United States amid a lack of clarity over new import duties.

European postal services suspend shipment of packages to US over import tariffs

Multiple postal services around Europe say they are suspending the shipment of many packages to the United States amid a lack of clarity over new import duties.

bit.ly

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John Cawley @johncawley.bsky.social · Aug 22

If you'll be on the #EconJobMarket this coming year, you may want to join this webinar by @aereorg.bsky.social, titled, "Navigating Uncertain Waters: Advice for the Current Job Market," with Min Gong & @adrienneohler.bsky.social. 29 Sept 2025 @ 11am ET.

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