As DINKWADs (look it up) we were contractually obligated to make a big deal out of Stanley’s first birthday.

Encountered the peak of survey responses today:

Q: "What are your thoughts about the use of AI in teaching, research, or your broader academic work?"

A: "This survey took too long and I have to get to a meeting."

Feel like this response is more informative than intended...

Trump is slurring his words so bad we had to rewind to make sure he didn’t say “Hormone Straight”

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...

Bad year to be locked into a big summer road trip thanks to non-refundable hotel reservations!

The Swedish version of Finding Dory did it well!

Increasingly worried academic success in quantitative fields will be determined largely by your ability to drop $200/mo on a Claude Max plan.

Unrelatedly: it's frustrating that some departments, as a rule, won't pay for subscriptions.

Using an R language server with Claude Code – Christopher T. Kenny Giving Claude access to an R LSP to improve its interaction with your codebase.

Here's a quick guide to setting up an R LSP for Claude Code in #rstats: christophertkenny.com/posts/2026-0...

Note that it uses the `languageserver` package at the moment, since I don't believe ark is exposed for a standalone mode yet.

Based on my experience with a family member who's active on old school web forums... This is what a lot of old school hobby forums are actually like.

It ain't perfect, but with supervision it's the real deal.

Robustness checks that would've taken me weeks, done in hours.

Black History includes a profound oral tradition. In the Green Book Project, we’re using that oral history to map out how Black people navigated segregation. Your contributions to the community map preserve history. Share: greenbookproject.org.ohio-state.edu #GreenBookProject
#CommunityMap #EconSky

So, I've spent most of my professional life on what Bluesky would surely consider "the right," and I think what's going on here is that so much of the action there is top-down and ultimately donor-driven that some of these folks genuinely can't wrap their heads around...

From politics to theater to outright evil. I don't know when we made each transition, but politics and theater are in the rearview now.

Applications for the Economic History Association Graduate Dissertation Fellowships are due in two days (January 14)

eh.net/graduate-dis...

Finals?? Grading??

If you are at the Southerns, come say hi and listen to some interesting economic history presentations!

We will be in room “Edison” all day today

If you'll be at SEA and want more details, come to my session! I present on Monday, November 24 in Session 3.B.32. "Religion, Culture, and the State"

This paper investigates the impact of language mandates on linguistic transition, standardization, and national identity in Early Modern France. Using the Universal Short Title Catalogue, we construct a panel of printing activity in European towns from 1500 to 1650. We then estimate the impact of the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterˆets, an ordinance requiring the use of French—rather than Latin—in all legal documents, on vernacular language printing in France using a difference-in-discontinuities design. To account for the influence of religion on vernacular printing, we leverage a Large Language Model to classify selected authors from the time period as Protestant or Catholic and control for religious print output. Results suggest that the ordinance promoted the general use of vernacular language in print and led to an explosion of vernacular printing within France. We also study the impact of the ordinance on linguistic standardization, finding that the ordinance homogenized printed French to Parisian French standards, but only within France. To explore the long-run effects of language promotion and standardization on national identity, we estimate the impact of the ordinance on expressions of nationalism in the Cahiers de Dol´eances—a collection of grievances and suggestions filed by the three Estates on the eve of the French Revolution—finding more expressions of nationalism in Third Estate cahiers from print towns originally subjected to the ordinance. The findings have implications for the role of the state in shaping national identity, the legibility of the law, and the spread of ideas through language policy.

How did France become one of Europe’s biggest printers of vernacular books, and how did it shape its linguistic and political development?

My paper w/Jacob Hall, "The King’s French," shows how a 1539 language mandate changed printing, standardized French, and strengthened national identity. (1/12)

Check out our draft here, or on my website's research page! Would greatly value constructive feedback.

Email: at154@evansville.edu

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/tw1x9...

(fin)

Our takeaway:

The state, not the Reformation, acted as the key driver of the vernacular shift in France. This shift played a key role in the development of the French language and French national identity. (12/12)

Bin scatterplot of expressions of national identity in cahiers and the share of total print output printed in French (only French towns)

RDD plot of expressions of nationalism in towns that were within or outside France in 1500 (print towns only)

We find a positive correlation between French print share 1500-1640 and expressions of French identity in the cahiers. Further, in an RDD specification, print towns within the France when the ordinance was adopted were more likely to express national identity.

Printing + Policy = Identity. (11/12)

Cahiers de Doléances

What are the long-run consequences of the state-driven French vernacular shift? Taking on arguments from Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities," we investigate the long-run effect of the ordinance on national identity using the Cahiers de Doléances, grievances from the French Revolution. (10/12)

Linguistic distance event study

Slightly altering our main specification, we confirm linguistic convergence to Parisian standards. Towns further away from Paris, i.e. those with the largest potential for linguistic change, see a 90% decrease in linguistic distance relative to towns just across the French border. (9/12)

Bin scatterplot of linguistic distance and distance to Paris

We use titles in the USTC to measure the average linguistic distance of French titles printed across Europe from Parisian French.

Within France, we see a clear correlation between geographic and linguistic distance of towns from Paris... But it becomes much weaker after the ordinance. (8/12)

We see an effect of the ordinance on French printing, but what about on the language itself? While the ordinance did not require documents to be in a specific type of French, it could change incentives for French printers to match Parisian standards. (7/12)

Vernacular print share event study

Total vernacular print count (levels) event study

Total vernacular print output (logs) event study

We see a large, immediate increase in vernacular printing across several margins:

- 65 percentage point increase in vernacular print share
- increase of 100 vernacular editions (levels)
- 32% increase in vernacular editions

Villers-Cotterêts effectively flips printing from Latin to French. (6/12)

Map of print towns along French border in 1500

To establish causality we exploit the location of the French border in a difference-in-discontinuities design, estimating the difference in discontinuities between towns on either side of the HRE and Spanish borders before and after Villers-Cotterêts. (5/12)

Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts

What caused the vernacular shift in Catholic France? Our findings point to a key policy:

The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, which required all legal documents to be written in French rather than Latin.

We argue the policy caused spillovers and a subsequent explosion of vernacular printing. (4/12)

Cumulative vernacular editions printed in various European countries, 1500-1640

Vernacular print share in France vs. Germany, 1500 to 1640

Using the Universal Short Title Catalogue, we construct a town–decade panel of print activity, 1500–1640.

We found Reformation era 🇩🇪 clearly produced the most vernacular editions. But *Catholic* 🇫🇷 was a close second. As a share of print output, 🇫🇷 vernacular printing exceeded 🇩🇪 by 1560. (3/12)

The rise of vernacular languages is a puzzle in European history. Why would elites abandon a common language in favor of their local spoken one?

Other excellent scholarship emphasizes the Reformation in the linguistic transition. We give an alternative take, emphasizing state-building. (2/12)