The Atkinson Conference on Economic and Social Inequality will take place on 10-11 September at Nuffield College (Oxford).
▶️Plenaries: Philippe Aghion, Janet Gornick & roundable moderated by FT's Sarah O'Connor.
🚩CfP Deadline: 22 May.
Join us in Oxford! Details here: atkinsonconference.github.io
He couldn't tell whether life was better. He publicly enjoyed his unbounded creativity, but was a bit busier at the moment, keeping track of all the updates. The robot reassured him that all was fine, he had absolutely no reason to be anxious. Would he like to start composing music, perhaps?
Was it any good? Was it even poetry? It seems that the authorities have stubbornly refused to agree on the definition of high poeticness, how could anyone say the robot wasn't doing it? He didn't bother. There was a chart of how much poetry he was doing per hour, and the line was upticking.
In no time, the robot had a multidimensional matrix of interconnected nodes representing the joint poeticness of all previous generations. Or something like that, he wasn't sure. The robot-makers were not sure either. But it came in many shapes and colors, it was unfair to call it a black box.
It was about 20 bucks a month, and it was probably worth it. The robot promised to do poetry much faster than he could. Another guy in the office was already using it and telling everybody about it. Somehow, it was always a guy. It was very much worth it.
But poetry was so hard, so slow, and he was so very busy. The blank pages staring at him were not helping. We only live once. He hired a robot to help.
Life was boring and busy. He would try to write poetry to make more out of it. It appeared to be a good thing. Some people know the names of dead poets, it must be a good thing.
Team "Elsevier Highlights Subversion" strikes again! Best one yet!
@deankarlan.bsky.social, Monica Lambon-Quayefio, Utsav Manjeer, @christopher-udry.bsky.social
Thrilled to see this at @ecmaeditors.bsky.social w/ @clementimbert.bsky.social!
Can developing cities create enough good jobs to accommodate climate migrants?
Spoiler: Yes!
Over a decade, drought-induced immigration ⬇️ informality and ⬆️ the of formal firms and jobs in Brazil.🧵👇
Minneapolis is a place that means a lot to me, so I wrote a short Substack about the city, its people, and what we all owe them.
benansell.substack.com/p/my-minneap...
Fulvia Budillon, Andre Gray, and I are hiring a field RA for a project in Mozambique, starting in the spring. Please see application information here: www.saralowes.com/resources.html. Deadline February 13. Please apply!!
International Fellowships 2026 The International Fellowships Programme enables researchers to work for two years at a UK institution with the aim of building a globally connected, mobile research and innovation workforce. Funding status Open for applications Career stage Early-career
Please help spread the word on this, especially to those who may be feeling cold winds towards their research.
We’ve opened the call for our International Fellowships, enabling early career researchers to work for two years at a UK research institution
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...
The Weiss Fund has a great new initiative for development economists on the PhD job market to support those taking up research positions in LMICs, offering supplementary income + research funds. Please share!
Excellent full time research assistant position in India with @jainr.bsky.social from @econ.uzh.ch.
This is a field-based, travel-intensive role rather than desk-based research. Application details: lnkd.in/e_YzfZEt
The anecdote about "true and non-trivial" ideas from social sciences leaves the impression that ideas other than comparative advantage are either trivial or untrue. Behold more basic ideas (from economics) that are true and non-trivial. #EconSky
mytwocentsandcounting.substack.com/p/true-and-n...
I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...
1. In Hamburg there is a "fully autonomous train" that for some reason has a human operator to press the ON switch first thing in the morning and the OFF switch at the end of the night. In a recent talk about AI in science, I asked the audience to consider whether they want to be like that operator.
Why impact evaluations are so important: not everything that sounds like a good policy actually has the desired impact. While many interventions are highly effective, others don't work at all:
"Humans aren’t very efficient movers—until you put us on a bicycle, when we become some of the most energy-efficient land travelers in the animal kingdom."
www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-hu...
What does a Nobel Prize on ‘innovation-driven economic growth’ actually reward?
A historian’s perspective on how to deal with the Nobel frenzy
beatricecherrier.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/w...
Or, "no one wanted to look at this thing because it's a hot, hot mess, and finally I did, and guess what? It's a hot, hot mess."
Reading rec:
"Challenges in Statistics: A Dozen Challenges in Causality and Causal Inference"
arxiv.org/abs/2508.17099
Great overview of both the state of the art and open question in causal inference!
I recommended a rejection of a paper because a key reference, mentioned 7 times as a closely related work with a similar methodology, simply does not exist. It was supposedly written by some plausible authors, with a plausible title, in a plausible journal, but it does not exist. Weird feeling...
My opinion about the historic verdict coming out of Brazil, with @stevelevitsky.bsky.social, is in the @nytimes.com today.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/o...
1. The philosophy of science sometimes gets an unearned reputation as a purely academic exercise that offers little by way of concrete tools for advancing research.
This is wrong.
And today, as we grapple with how AI is changing the nature of scientific activity, it's desperately wrong.
Our research was featured on @voxdev.bsky.social!
@olihanney.bsky.social, @emaansiddique.bsky.social and the stellar editorial board do a fantastic job in offering curated, accessible materials to the development research community.
As a devoted reader, I am very happy to have contributed to it :)
📢Applications are open for two Nuffield Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Economics, starting Sept 2026. A unique chance to pursue independent research at Oxford in a supportive, well-resourced environment.
Deadline: 30 Sept 2025
Find out more: bit.ly/4mcMxSR
#AcademicJobs #OxfordEconomics
Teaching or studying economics? This blog is for you...
@emaansiddique.bsky.social and I have updated @voxdev.bsky.social's series of blogs showcasing how economists use different econometric techniques to answer interesting and important policy questions.
Read here: voxdev.org/topic/exampl...
