Presenting a model of university organization and sketching the evolution of the university’s products and conflicts over the last 900 years, from @davidmcutler.bsky.social and Edward L. Glaeser www.nber.org/papers/w35079
Standard theories of electoral competition predict that politicians should converge toward the centre as elections approach. This column challenges this prediction, using 3.4 million tweets from 367 political leaders across 21 Western democracies. Rhetorical polarisation between populist and non-populist leaders rises sharply in the two quarters before an election and reverts to average levels once it is over. Both groups adopt a more emotionally direct communication style as elections near, but they increasingly talk about different topics. The findings suggest that social media turns electoral campaigns into an engine of political polarisation.
T Boeri, N Nikiforova, & G Tabellini find rhetorical polarisation between populist and non-populist leaders rises sharply in the 2 quarters prior to an election, challenging standard theories that politicians should converge toward the centre as elections approach.
cepr.org/voxeu/column...
#EconSky
Personal setbacks have more permanent effects on households’ lifetime earnings than a general economic downturn; but macroeconomic shocks are still critical because they set the stage on which microeconomic shocks play out - research by Richard Blundell et al
ucleconbrief.co.uk/2026/04/16/h...
Stacked bar chart of government spending by category (social protection, health, education, economic affairs, public services, other, defense) as a share of GDP for a selection of OECD countries, where it compares spending composition and shows totals of 28% to 57% of GDP with an OECD average of 43%. Data source: OECD (2026). License: CC BY to Our World in Data.
📊 How much do governments spend, and what do they spend it on?
In the chart, we see total government spending broken down by purpose, such as health, education, and defense, relative to the size of the economy (as measured by GDP).
This is shown for a selection of OECD countries.
Forecasts of how AI will affect the US economy, from Karger, Kuusela, Abaluck, Bryan, Halperin, Jones, Murphy, Trammell, Reynolds, Mayland, Viswanathan, Mittal, Ceppas de Castro, Rosenberg, and Tetlock www.nber.org/papers/w35046
I coded up an open-source, not-for-profit AI paper reviewer that rivals the performance of
@reviewer3com.bsky.social, Refine.ink, and Stanford Agentic Reviewer (according to Gemini 3.1). Costs <$2!
Live @ coarse.ink. Plug in paper, @openrouter.bsky.social key, and email. #econsky
Forthcoming in the AER: "Ideological Alignment and Evidence-Based Policy Adoption" by Jorge García-Hombrados, Marcel Jansen, Angel Martínez, Berkay Özcan, Pedro Rey-Biel, and Antonio Roldán-Monés.
New Working Paper! 📢
Read it here: cemfi.es/ftp/wp/2605....
Congratulations to Barbara Petrongolo for being appointed as AER coeditor, handling papers in labor and related fields. Her term will start on September 1. I’m delighted to have her on our team. @aeajournals.bsky.social #EconSky
Two thoughtful essays about the impact of LLMs on graduate education:
ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...
economics.mit.edu/sites/defaul...
From personal experience I think the self-control problem mentioned in the first essay is very real.
New in the American Economic Review: migration doesn't hollow out the home economy — it builds it up.
More than 75% of the long-run income gains from migration are domestic. The home economy itself grows.
Here's what we found: 🧵
🧵1/ Our first meta-science paper (with 350+ coauthors) is published today in Nature. It presents one of the largest-ever reproducibility projects in economics & political science.
Here’s what we found 👇
Did a series of videos with Markus Brunnermeier on Claude Code (more to come)
Video 1: Getting Started with CC
open.substack.com/pub/paulgp/p...
Banco de España cerró 2025 con un beneficio de 234 M, transferidos al Tesoro Público. Vuelve a resultados positivos tras las pérdidas de 2023 y 2024, en línea con el Eurosistema. www.bde.es/wbe/es/notic... #bdePublicaciones
Fin de epoca. Comienzo de otra.
Querido Anxo, somos nosotros los agradecidos. Tus entradas en NeG, en especial sobre el cambio climático, fueron excelentes. Y nunca olvidaré que fuiste el único no economista de la junta de la Asociación NeG, que aceptó ejercer de… ¡tesorero! Un fuerte abrazo
Ya lo dije en su momento, pero lo vuelvo decir. Debo tanto a @nadaesgratis.bsky.social ... En particular a los dos caballeros que firman esta despedida. Antonio me lío para hacer de científico residente en este blog, y @samben8.bsky.social me aguantó cuando era editor en mis primeros posts. Gracias
In spite of all the talk of Claude Code and Codex meaning the end of humans writing code, software job adverts are actually going up, according to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com's crunching of millions of job ads for this week's The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/7325...
"Después de usar la IA en una tarea cotidiana y observar su eficiencia, es inevitable preguntarse por lo que viene: ¿cuánto más productivos seremos?"
Applications for the CEMFI Summer School 2026 are welcome.
Sharpen your skills this summer with advanced training in Economics and Finance, taught by world-class academics and industry experts.
Apply now: www.cemfi.es/programs/css...
Wealth is highly concentrated and largely inherited in countries such as Spain, Italy, Austrian and Germany. Inheritances and gifts play a considerably smaller role in net wealth in countries such as Portugal, Hungary or Latvia.
GDP per capita, 1820 to 2022 — line chart showing GDP per person for Spain and Argentina from 1820 to 2022, with the vertical axis in dollars from $0 to $35,000 and the horizontal axis in years. For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries Argentina has higher GDP per capita than Spain; the two lines meet around the mid 20th century and after about 1960 Spain’s GDP per capita rises sharply and moves well above Argentina’s. By 2022 Spain is near $35,000 per person while Argentina peaks near $20,000 in earlier decades and is around $17,000 by 2022. Data source: Bolt and van Zanden – Maddison Project Database 2023. A note explains that the data is expressed in international-$ at 2011 prices. The license is CC BY.
Until fifty years ago, Argentina was richer than Spain—
(This Data Insight was written by @eortizospina.bsky.social.)
In a recent Data Insight, I wrote about how Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world at the beginning of the 20th century.
¿Cómo podemos hacer que la investigación en economía tenga impacto en las políticas públicas? nadaesgratis.es/marcos-vera/... Vía @nadaesgratis.bsky.social #Economía
Forthcoming in AER: Insights: "Cool Cities: The Value of Urban Trees" by Lu Han, Stephan Heblich, Christopher Timmins, and Yanos Zylberberg.
New Acemoglu et al. paper: AI may boost short-term decision quality but can erode the learning incentives that sustain collective knowledge in society, creating a risk of long-run knowledge decline or collapse.
Azar y género en la universidad: qué se pierde cuando las mujeres no consiguen la plaza nadaesgratis.es/admin/el-aza... Vía @nadaesgratis.bsky.social #Economía
