During a recent seminar visit, a number of people asked about use of AI in the refereeing process. Every AEA journal includes the following in the email you get after agreeing to do a review. If you have any doubts about what constitutes appropriate use, please ask!

Universities Can Abdicate to AI. Or They Can Fight. Too many school leaders have been reluctant to impose harsh penalties for unauthorized chatbot use.

Colleges and universities are going way too soft on policing AI, Tyler Austin Harper argues. “Institutions of higher learning can abandon their centuries-long educational project,” he writes. “Or they can fight.”

For no obvious reason one of Kei Hirano's classic economics haikus just popped into my head. Apropo of nothing:

T-stat looks too good.
Use robust standard errors--
significance gone.

I'm sure it could be updated to reflect modern methods.

Just published in @jpube.bsky.social:

"The undoing of economic sanctions: Evidence from the Russia–Ukraine conflict"

By @rfisman.bsky.social, Giovanna Marcolongo, & Meng Wu

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#econsky #publiceconomics

I should say that his was a non-partisan statement about the practice of politics in general. And certainly not specific to the U.S.

Speaker Johnson says he misspoke about Trump being an FBI informant in the Epstein case House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday that he didn’t mean to suggest in a recent interview that Trump had or had not been an FBI informant in the case against disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

I have a friend who had a successful career as a politician. When he retired from politics, I asked him what he was happiest to get away from. Without a moment's pause he answered, "The constant lying."
www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

Seriously lots of people have read that opening paragraph and liked it just fine. But I have to say all of his comments were right on the money. Maybe the kids are alright

My 15 year old is proofreading my latest book manuscript. After the first paragraph he asked, “do people really consider you to be a good writer?”
It’s only gone downhill from there.

Is @wbur.org (very subtly) trolling the Trump administration ?

If you think this is possible you don’t know much about bill ackman…

Dev Econ people: I was trying to access the DHS data, and got the message below. Can anyone help and/or have ideas for access? Any suggestions much appreciated!

The Institutions Protecting US Democracy Have Turned Into Traps America’s two-party system has long been intended as a barrier against an extremism. Polarization is making it an accelerant instead.

As a 4th of July special, here's another piece with @rfisman.bsky.social, on how some of the institutional features we used to think as protective of American democracy are now accelerating its decline. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Talking to my wife - a 3rd generation American - I realized that something many people here don’t understand is that the immigrant mentality is a willingness to move. I was an immigrant. My parents were. Their parents were. It feels easy to move again. She doesn’t feel the same way.

(Though sometimes it can end up okay financially, if you pay off the right people. So maybe that's the right way to think about this.)

Nippon Steel could offer Washington golden share to seal U.S. Steel deal, Nikkei reports Nippon Steel is considering offering a so-called golden share in U.S. Steel to the U.S. government in order to finalise its long-sought acquisition of the iconic American firm, Japan's Nikkei newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Dear Nippon Steel: You would be insane to buy US Steel with the current American government holding this much control: www.reuters.com/business/us-...
Signed - someone who used to teach business in emerging markets, where this sort of thing happened a lot and rarely if ever ended well...1/2

Congrats and well-deserved!!

Preferably both

thanks!!

thanks!!!!!

A bit of personal/professional news: I'm sad to be leaving the wonderful editorial team at @restatjournal.bsky.social now that my terms are up, but excited to be joining AEJ: Applied as editor in January. www.aeaweb.org/news/member-...

Corruption Watch: Trump Media edition

It's amazing that markets these days are so completely driven by whether the U.S. president says he'll do something completely unhinged, or says he *won't* do something completely unhinged.

The most jaw-dropping thing that came up in this week's Freakonomics story was Phil Zimbardo, in recounting the story of the Stanford Prison Experiment, casually mentioning that he'd just started dating his PhD student like it was no big thing, and the podcast just continuing without a beat.

Thanks. Given the comovement in stocks these days, trading on individual companies is of secondary importance. A simple fix would be public disclosure of any purchases or sales of any equities etc X days in advance?

A question about the proposed bill on stock trading in Congress (www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...). It wouldn't prevent someone from trading on macro news anyway, right? If I could have had inside info on tariff announcements, e.g., I still would've minted a fortune trading index funds.

Summer office is open for business

Since, until 2016, he had little to do and no one who would listen to him, he used to sit in their offices and natter on and on and on about his crank theories. But then, I'm afraid we all know the rest of the story...

Be careful what you wish for. 🙁

A little story I once heard, on good authority, about Peter Navarro. Some faculty at UC Irvine joked back in 2016 that they hoped Trump would get elected because then they'd at least be rid of Navarro, who was then an econ professor there. 1/2

From what I have heard doctors at VA hospitals are doing some of the same

Yes I keep saying something like this. It ain’t 10 dimensional chess