Bitsy Perlman
@bitsyperlman.bsky.social
Economic Historian at the Census. 19th & 21st C innovation, sci of sci, urban/spatial, info spread. All views are my own or expressed for rhetorical exposition. Posts before 2025 were imported. (they/them) Brookline, MA
I highly recommend NABE’s Econ Career Week for anyone who’ll be on the Econ PhD job market this Fall… #EconJobMarket conta.cc/4yUpx2p
Entering the Econ Job Market? Hear Directly from Employers During NABE’s Econ Career Week!
Email from National Association for Business Economics NABE Econ Career Week | August 10-13 Greetings! Whether you're preparing to enter the PhD job market this year or planning ahead for a future job
conta.cc
This is an interesting essay, but I found myself getting increasingly frustrated as it tried to talk about power in the rental market without addressing the underlying role of local governments in creating monopoly conditions. democracyempowered.org/documents/Mi...
democracyempowered.org
Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 5d agoVery excited for this new essay at "Can We Still Govern?": The key claim is that planning for a progressive future cannot just focus on new policies. It also has to include - to start with - political power. What does a power-shifting perspective look like? 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rebuilding...
Very excited for this new essay at "Can We Still Govern?": The key claim is that planning for a progressive future cannot just focus on new policies. It also has to include - to start with - political power. What does a power-shifting perspective look like? 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rebuilding...
Rebuilding Democracy Requires Rebalancing Power
What does a power-shifting agenda look like?
donmoynihan.substack.com
My hot take is that this is telling us more about organizational immaturity to wield this technology than the tech itself. Anyone who has been inside a firm with proper process control (Toyota auto plant, e.g.) knows what I mean.
Karl Bode@karlbode.com · 5d agoI want you to notice how the New York Times does not think it's important to mention that both the OpenAI and Anthropic "AI gone rogue" hack events were completely avoidable and caused by human error
People are arguing between road design and enforcement. In the Netherlands, not only do they have both, but they have a third tool: presumed liability. Drivers who hit a pedestrian or cyclist are presumed to be at fault until proven otherwise. This would be a powerful tool in our litigious society.
@datageekb.bsky.social Can you believe that for the first time ever in memory, I saw a student write "Consensus Bureau," which is now by far my favorite social sciences typo
ICYMI, our new paper on inventor positioning in the space of ideas and what it might mean for growth. Thread here bsky.app/profile/jeff...
NBER@nber.org · 2w agoAnalysis of 11 million US patents shows inventions have spread out in idea space since 1836, helping explain weaker spillovers and lower research productivity, from Ina Ganguli, Jeffrey Lin, Vitaly Meursault, and Nicholas F. Reynolds www.nber.org/papers/w35499
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Associate Professor of Finance at the Yale School of Management, presented "Using AI in Household Finance Research: A Practical Guide" at the Household Finance Conference during the 2026 Summer Institute. www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5g6...
"Every one of the 13 principal federal statistical agencies has experienced staffing reductions since January 2025. Six agencies have lost at least one-third of their workforce, and two have lost more than two-thirds." (via @amstatnews.bsky.social) www.amstat.org/docs/default...
Analysis of 11 million US patents shows inventions have spread out in idea space since 1836, helping explain weaker spillovers and lower research productivity, from Ina Ganguli, Jeffrey Lin, Vitaly Meursault, and Nicholas F. Reynolds www.nber.org/papers/w35499
British Columbia to address cost of housing by legalizing polygamy
British Columbia to address cost of housing by legalizing polygamy
VICTORIA, B.C. - Minister for Housing and Municipal Affairs Christine Boyle has announced that the provincial government will legalize polygamy in an effort to address the ballooning cost of housing.
thebeaverton.com
Fascinating! (But my favourite bit was: "Estimating the value of housing services from long-term lease data is a complex task. ... a part of the payment was specified in live hens, which did not depreciate with the currency.")
Mauricio Drelichman@mdrelichman.bsky.social · 2w agoNew article in early view at RHE-JILAEH! Together with David González-Agudo and Valentina Ramírez, we reconstruct the cost of housing in Toledo between 1489 and 1810. This is one of the longest such series in existence anywhere in the world. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
The Trump administration is planning a backstage census change that's likely to depress participation from minorities, causing selective undercounts so the GOP can "steal congressional seats" and skew financial allocation against blue states. @crampell.bsky.social has the scoop.
Inside Trump’s Stealth Trick to Rig the Census—and Congress
The administration’s latest power grab is disguised as boring technical guidance.
thebulwark.com
When I ran BLS, I was asked constantly about the impact of AI on jobs. It's still one of the most common questions I get. So we put together a policy brief - for policymakers, journalists, and anyone trying to sort through what is happening with AI and jobs: siepr.stanford.edu/publications...
What is really happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality
Other
siepr.stanford.edu
As the US industrialized, workers and businesses entered protracted labor disputes over what a fair pay increase would be to keep up with the cost of living. Workers thought businesses were gaslighting them about how much prices were going up...🧵
Lemondrop 👉 anime arbor! 📚@lipstick-lemondrop.bsky.social · 3w agoholy moly @hausofdecline.bsky.social in @inthesetimes.com ???
There's a weird horseshoe theory for credulous headlines about the Trump administration: breathless headlines from left and right converge to radically overstate what is actually happening. This is just a policy memo for science agencies, which still receive their budgets from Congress.
New CBO paper: every $1 of federal R&D returns ~$3–$4 of GDP in present value over 30 years www.nber.org/papers/w35472
I’m presenting this paper Tuesday 1:40pm at the NBER SI and live on YouTube. Tune in! www.nber.org/conferences/...
SI 2026 Macroeconomics and Productivity
nber.org
Jeffrey Lin@jeffrlin.bsky.social · last mo.On February 14, 1876, Bell & Gray each filed for a telephone patent. Such collisions were once routine — up to 1 in 20 patents triggered an "patent interference." Over the next 150 years, that rate fell by more than 98%. In a new paper, we explain why — and what it might cost.
New in RSUE: The costs of access: Freeway disamenities across US cities, by Jeffrey Brinkman, Jeffrey Lin. #econsky #urbanecon
The costs of access: Freeway disamenities across US cities
Publication date: Available online 18 July 2026 Source: Regional Science and Urban Economics Author(s): Jeffrey Brinkman, Jeffrey Lin
sciencedirect.com
Power law distribution. So much of human life
Evan Roberts@evanrobertsnz.bsky.social · 3w agoAll of this is to illustrate that when you get out to the right tail of the running times distribution you can be better than > 99% of the world, and still experience being dispiritingly far behind the winner.
@robinsonmeyer.bsky.social at @heatmap.news points out that the smoke days we're experiencing were not foreseen by climate models & so nobody has reckoned on their cost in lives, health, & economic disruption—which appear to be MORE than EVERY OTHER climate impact PUT TOGETHER.
Last week the NSF introduced a new policy that would prohibit collaboration with 'restricted entities'—including numerous top universities in China. At a hearing Wednesday, House Republicans pushed NIH and DOE to adopt similar measures. My reporting on the hearing and research security, broadly:
US politicians push agencies to restrict research collaboration with China
Republicans and Democrats worry about research theft and exploitation — but don’t agree on how to solve the problem.
nature.com
Open access in QJE!📢 Using newly assembled archival data, we show how the AMA's nationwide campaign against national health insurance, labeling it "socialized medicine" and promoting private insurance, helped steer the U.S. away from universal health care academic.oup.com/qje/article/...
Why Doesn’t the United States Have National Health Insurance? The Political Role of the American Medical Association
Abstract. This article examines how the American Medical Association (AMA) helped shape the development of the U.S. health insurance system in the critical
academic.oup.com
If 2016 San Francisco housing discourse could only see this paper. The paper's estimates imply that stringent IZ ordinances, like what San Francisco used to have, likely halved San Francisco's housing construction from 2017 onwards -- a loss of like 20K units.
Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse.bsky.social · 3w agohere you go that's for the average (California) IZ policy, many existing policies have even steeper estimated effects on the scale of a 50% reduction bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.uci.ed...
Hmm. Europe, Canada and Australia can once again win from this if we avoid being just absolutely bottom of the barrel stupid.
Ben Allen@evodynamics.bsky.social · 3w agoCongrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...
"Corresponding authors who are men exhibit a small but significant advantage at Science, while authors based in China have a significant disadvantage. These associations are generally stronger in editorial review than in peer review" funded by 4 different NSF awards
Javi Ibarrondo@jibarrondo.bsky.social · 3w agoEditorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪
Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:
OH MY GOD EVERYBODY I just learned about reciprocard.com , which lets you enter your public library and find out all the places you can get a card on Libby. I had not known my Minuteman card actually gave me *every network in the state*, including the flawlessly-named CLAMS?!?!
ReciproCard - Reciprocal Library Cards for Libby
Discover which reciprocal library systems you can access based on where you live. More cards means more books on Libby.
reciprocard.com
