Machine Learning is causing massive leaps everywhere. Also in Economic History. There is a conversation we need to have. What ought to be the new scientific standards? Together with two coauthors . Our argument: We should maybe care a bit less about accuracy 📝🧵

#histmed friends, it's time to speak up about how much the National Library of Medicine means to our subfield! 🗃️

American Historical Association@historians.org · 3mo ago

Take action by May 26. The NIH is accepting public comments on its FY 2027–31 Strategic Plan. Tell the NIH to support the National Library of Medicine through investment in research infrastructure, digitization and preservation, and stewardship of medical history. Submit comments:

Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics: "Scars of War: The Legacy of WWI Deaths on Civic Capital and Combat Motivation" by Felipe Carozzi, Edward Pinchbeck, and Luca Repetto.

Scars of War: The Legacy of WWI Deaths on Civic Capital and Combat Motivation

(Forthcoming Article) - We study how the legacy of WWI deaths affected British communities and the next generation of soldiers. Our instrumental-variable estimates show that servicemen from localities that suffered heavier losses in WWI were considerably more likely to die or win gallantry medals in WW2. To contextualise these findings, we show that the mortality shock increased communities’ inter-war civic capital as demonstrated by the creation of war memorials, veterans’ associations and charities, and increases in pro-social participation. Our results highlight the importance of past conflicts in fostering pro-social behaviours which, in turn, can shape the motivation of soldiers in future wars.

aeaweb.org

This is absolutely fascinating, and well worth a read.

Michela Leonardi@mikleonardi.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I am so happy to share our #newpaper on how human #distribution in #Africa was shaped by #malaria for tens of thousands of years. A wonderful work led by @margheritac17.bsky.social @elliescerri.bsky.social and @eegcam.bsky.social. I loved contributing! #prehistory #humanevolution #disease 1/2

New in Git, ✨ git history ✨ (I don't mean the Git history 🫠 ) 😰 Oh shit, that old commit's message had a typo! 😌 git history reword <commit-id> 😰 Oh shit, that old commit is too big! 😌 git history split <commit-id> (to split it into two commits) github.blog/open-source/... (h/t Hugo Gruson)

Highlights from Git 2.54

The open source Git project just released Git 2.54. Here is GitHub’s look at some of the most interesting features and changes introduced since last time.

github.blog

Be sure to check out some new work by our own Professor Peter Nencka @peternka.bsky.social

Peter Nencka 📊@peternka.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🎉🏫New paper! 🏫🎉 "High Schools and the Uneven Rise in American Opportunity" by myself, Alison Doxey, and Ezra Karger (@ezrakarger.bsky.social) www.peternencka.com/assets/high_... www.nber.org/papers/w35068

Our new paper challenges a bleak picture of U.S. state longevity gaps: universal cohort gains (1941–2000) & a more nuanced regional story than recent estimates. News: eurekalert.org/news-release... BMJ Open: bmjopen.bmj.com/content/16/4...

Examining how the World War I agricultural commodity price boom affected human capital accumulation during the early decades of the high school movement in the US, from Taylor Jaworski, Carl T. Kitchens, and Luke P. Rodgers www.nber.org/papers/w35032

Congratulations to my @BU_Tweets colleague Bob Margo, newly elected AEA Distinguished Fellow. A superb scholar and a fantastic mentor, very well deserved! aeaweb.org/about-aea/hono

Wrote another post based on a video with Markus Brunnermeier Use LLMs to lessen the large fixed costs of managing and organizing large databases. I use the setting of HMDA mortgage data to show how a massive 250m row db can turn into a trivial data exercise thanks to DuckDB + Claude Code.

Large Datasets and Structured Databases: Claude Code for Economists

Video 4 in a series on Claude Code

open.substack.com

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...

Getting Started with Claude Code: A Researcher’s Setup Guide

Video 1 in a series on Claude Code

open.substack.com

EconReporter@econreporter.bsky.social · 4mo ago

@paulgp.com teaches Claude Code for Economists

Correct link! deryugina.com/what-to-teac...

Super excited to have Shari Eli from UToronto in town today to present at the first* Harvard-BU Economic History Seminar of the semester *not actually the first, the first I remember to tweet about, so that's basically the same thing

Welcome to our new co-editor, Andrew Goodman-Bacon! Andrew is an economist at the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and specializes in health economics, public economics, and applied econometrics.

In case folks are looking for a convenient way to containerize their claude code instances, here's a way to use Docker on your mac machine to isolate YOLO-ing claude instances. github.com/paulgp/claud...

GitHub - paulgp/claude-container

Contribute to paulgp/claude-container development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Restrictive immigration quotas in the 1920s reduced intergenerational mobility for US-born white men, and had imprecise but positive effects on intergenerational mobility of Black men, from @jamesfeigenbaum.bsky.social, Yi-Ju Hung, Marco Tabellini, and Monia Tomasella www.nber.org/papers/w34775

🧵 New version of our paper (@bcegerod.bsky.social) is finally online: "How Many is Enough? Sample Size in Staggered Difference-in-Differences Designs" We show that even well-identified DiD studies are often underpowered; sample sizes needed are surprisingly large Paper: osf.io/preprints/os... 1/6

⏰ Deadline approaching! Submit your work to the RFBerlin Conference on Health and Economic Well-Being.

ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin@rfberlin.bsky.social · 8mo ago

📢📄🩺 RFBerlin invites submissions for the upcoming conference on Health and Economic Well-Being. Submit your work now and share this call with colleagues. Submit now: app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/80349/submitter About the event: www.rfberlin.com/event/health-economic-well-being #CFP #PublicHealth

Forthcoming in AEJ: Economic Policy: "Flood Risk Mapping and the Distributional Impacts of Climate Information" by Joakim A. Weill. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Flood Risk Mapping and the Distributional Impacts of Climate Information

(Forthcoming Article) - This paper examines the provision of official flood risk information in the United States and its distributional impacts on residential flood insurance take-up. Assembling all ...

aeaweb.org

IT LIVES! First draft: 2011 This draft: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xh3sg... In between: 12 years of being under review (of which half are on us). +1 coauthor. For me personally: a few moves, a few jobs, a few kids.

Our paper with @fcinnio.bsky.social @hornungerik.bsky.social “Flow of ideas: Economic societies and the rise of useful knowledge” is out in print @theeconjournal.bsky.social 🚨🚨🚨 In it, we investigate the effect of knowledge sharing societies from the 18th century on long-run innovation. Read on ->

Check out this Economic History Workshop in Uppsala (co-hosted by our @erikprawitz.bsky.social) 👇

@erikprawitz.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Happy to announce a 4th edition of the Workshop in Economic History in Uppsala, with the great @essobecker.bsky.social as keynote! Workshop takes places on May 28-29, 2026, in Uppsala. Apply by January 31, 2026. Here is the Cfp: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6xdmp...

School equalization in the shadow of Jim Crow: Causes and consequences of resource disparity in Mississippi circa 1940 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... "We estimate large positive marginal effects of local educational spending on Black students’ enrollment, attainment, and lifetime earnings."

School equalization in the shadow of Jim Crow: Causes and consequences of resource disparity in Mississippi circa 1940

Mississippi’s 1920 school finance equalization program failed to benefit many of the state’s Black students—an outcome emblematic of broader patterns …

sciencedirect.com

"global warming induces mechanical trends in extreme temperature exposure that correlate strongly with a location’s baseline temperature. Substantial bias emerges if trends in the outcome variable also correlate with baseline temperature for any reason"

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham@paulgp.com · 8mo ago

Interesting paper highlight that binning can be misspecified in panel settings - this drives misinterpretation of extreme temperature shocks. #linkoftheday www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1ya6z...

I'm John Fallon, a labor economist on the job market. My JMP uncovers something wild: when chiropractors got licensed in the early 1900s, medical boards responded by making it HARDER to become a doctor. Why would competition lead to stricter regulations? 🧵 john-fallon-econ.com (1/9)

Don't spend your Black Friday chasing deals. Read job market papers (and hire my students) instead @john-fallon-econ.com studies both occupational licensing AND the bizarre world of early 20th century healthcare, w MDs and chiropractors competing over patients to fix (or at least make less worse)

John Fallon@john-fallon-econ.com · 8mo ago

I'm John Fallon, a labor economist on the job market. My JMP uncovers something wild: when chiropractors got licensed in the early 1900s, medical boards responded by making it HARDER to become a doctor. Why would competition lead to stricter regulations? 🧵 john-fallon-econ.com (1/9)

Now forthcoming at Quarterly Journal of Economics Enlightenment Ideals and Belief in Progress in the Run-up to the Industrial Revolution: A Textual Analysis Available at: digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_... (See thread below for an overview)

Jared Rubin@jaredcrubin.com · 3y ago

**NEW WORKING PAPER** Enlightenment Ideals and Belief in Progress in the Run-up to the Industrial Revolution: A Textual Analysis w/ Ali Almelhem, Murat Iyigun & Austin Kennedy Available at: docs.iza.org/dp16674.pdf Short 🧵 below… 1/7

The space race produced great feats of engineering, yet contrary to conventional narratives, it failed to boost the wider economy. We spoke with Shawn Kantor and Alex Whalley about why this technological push didn't translate into big productivity gains. www.aeaweb.org/research/pub...

Technological spillovers

Shawn Kantor and Alexander Whalley discuss the long-term effects of public R&D investment made during the Cold War–era space race.

aeaweb.org

Agricultural innovation increased dramatically in response to environmental damage from the American Dust Bowl, substantially mitigating its economic impacts, from Jacob Moscona www.nber.org/papers/w34438

Shari Eli, Nicholas Li & Janki Shah use new complete count data to assess what can & cannot be learned about socio-economic status from the Canadian census 1871-1901. They analyze the non-reporting of earnings despite having an occupation & the characteristics of people at different earning levels.

Measuring socioeconomic status in historical censuses of Canada

We use the new complete count Canadian Census records spanning from 1871 to 1901 to explore measures of socioeconomic status including income, occupation, and literacy, which scholars commonly use ...

doi.org

Kris Inwood@kris-inwood.bsky.social · 3y ago

Socio-economic status! What does it mean and how do we know? Shari Eli analyses evidence from Canadian census and social registers in a session devoted to the thecanadianpeoples.com project at the 2023 SSHA conference in Washington DC. #EconSky #history #demography #geosky #sociology #polisky 🗃️