That's what now, four Nobel laureates at Stanford in the time I've been here? I'm not saying it was me, but you can't prove it wasn't. Where's my check?
Lavar Edmonds
@lavaredmonds.bsky.social
Anything I ever do is to avoid doing something else Stanford Economics PhD Student lavaredmonds.com
Writing this job market paper has made me an expert in shift-share IVs, but only in the sense that I know a thousand that don’t work — no one tell Peter Hull of my shame
Shoutout to the 🐐GOAT🐐, respect greatness www.macfound.org/videos/2026-...
Ellora Derenoncourt - 2026 MacArthur Fellow
macfound.org
My latest hardline, oddly specific stance: There is absolutely no reason for Ginger ale to have all that sugar. Sugar-free genuinely tastes just as fine! Under an Edmonds Administration, this will be dealt with
You know, people don’t talk about it much, but a job market paper is a lot of work good Lord 🫨 why didn’t someone warn me??
I regret to inform that stretching after the gym does, in fact, make everything feel better. Was really hoping that was fake news all this time smh
For the education folks out there: so the NCES is still not taking applications for data licenses, right? Is everyone just blocked from accessing more recent SASS/NTPS data until then? The public-use files stop in 1999-2000 😭
Once again, I’ve learned the hard way I gotta be careful talking with rideshare drivers when I go home. I’m from Virginia, and inevitably it comes up I live in CA rn. I want to commiserate, but the conversation always goes south when it becomes clear we ain’t hating on CA for the same reasons…
I’ll complain about California till the end of time, but begrudgingly, after six years here and dozens of times flying all over the world, even I have to concede SFO* might be the smoothest airport in the country
I can't prove it, but I swear they're making Opus dumber to entice me into locking in with Fable permanently. Sorry, can't fool me that easily! You'll just have to settle for getting most of money, not all of it
DHS's Operation Metro Surge hurt Minnesota's leisure and hospitality industry in Jan-Mar 2026, destroying: - 4,600 jobs, - 3.8 million work hours, - $71 million in wages. New analysis by me & @aaronrosenthal.bsky.social @northstarpolicy.org northstarpolicy.org/leisure-and-...
I try not to make a habit of dunking on undergrads — they’re learning! Trying to find themselves — but it’s a kinda funny bit for your only two op-eds to be “Hey, let’s leave the billionaires alone! 🥺” and “Have you considered the Muslim students just have too much money? 🤪”
We get training on how to be good presenters, but not nearly enough on how to be good audience members. Imo, looking engaged and friendly is an important skill to develop!
Update: made it through the talk unscathed — I live to fight another day
Lavar Edmonds@lavaredmonds.bsky.social · 5mo agoIf there’s a God, may they spare me from slipping up during a job talk, inadvertently letting years of watching The Boondocks kick in, and accidentally pronouncing W.E.B. Du Bois like this man (Y’all I swear I know!)
If there’s a God, may they spare me from slipping up during a job talk, inadvertently letting years of watching The Boondocks kick in, and accidentally pronouncing W.E.B. Du Bois like this man (Y’all I swear I know!)
It’d be nice if more professors posted their syllabi/reading lists
Personally I like when the insufferable dweebs who I’ve long disliked for largely petty reasons get dunked on for more substantive critiques, but maybe some just ain’t got the heart of a hater like I do
Not to doom about automation and job destruction (I’m not even a doomer!), but leaving my apartment today and seeing the Latina custodial workers who usually clean the hallways have seemingly been replaced with a vacuum/deep cleaning robot *that speaks Spanish* feels… ominous
Just let the record show: when I mentioned missing the days of EconTwitter, I didn’t mean also the shitty takes Alas, many such cases
FWIW, I don’t think the major problem in my field, or related ones, is that people need to move faster & produce more. I read a lot of papers as part of the job, and I’m increasingly convinced we’d benefit from fewer papers and better ones, not more mediocre work produced ever more “efficiently.”
Here is what I find so interesting. The excellent work of scholars like @lavaredmonds.bsky.social shows that HBCU trained teachers closed gaps, but we’d rather focus on narratives centered on Black cultural deficits such as “role model effects” and this: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Self-Defeating Condescension of an Anti-Racist Education
How an “ideological purity spiral” derailed some of America’s most promising classrooms.
theatlantic.com
Has anyone written about how our fragmented television consumption environment has affected (political) advertising (in the US)? Probably, right? I imagine things have had to change dramatically from even 10 years ago, but curious what that’s looked like behind the scenes
I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining the Economics Department at Stockholm University as an Assistant Professor, following a postdoc at Brown University’s Economics Department and Watson School!
I was gonna give macro some credit bc I recently had to dig back in my memory and use some of their tools I'd learned in my own work (it's useful stuff!), but then I just saw an embarrassing number of folks in their feelings about the "credibility revolution," so I'd say we broke even this week
Update: A Nobel laureate said I’m a really good presenter, so that’s on the CV now
Lavar Edmonds@lavaredmonds.bsky.social · 8mo agoSure I’m biased, but, just as grad students send a + signal with published work on their CVs, I should be able to flaunt how many times I’ve had my papers rejected. Look at all this resilience I’m building! Pretend it’s 10 years ago and look at this ~grit~. That’s gotta count for something, right?
Aah, I see the (unnecessarily) angriest on here are still the most illiterate. Good equilibrium, very healthy
Lavar Edmonds@lavaredmonds.bsky.social · 10mo agoAstonishing how load-bearing this tweet continues to be I’m convinced now a frightening share of the anger on this site boils down to the fact that many posters can’t read, and, worse, they don’t know they can’t read
Day 1 of my cross-country voyage for archival work Austin: food has been fantastic, but on a “Terrible layout for interstate driving” scale from 1 to New Jersey, it’s registering at about a 7 — not great!
I think @lavaredmonds.bsky.social is tongue in cheek here, but I honestly love this. Easiest way to screw up as a grad student or especially junior faculty is to not submit any papers.
Lavar Edmonds@lavaredmonds.bsky.social · 8mo agoSure I’m biased, but, just as grad students send a + signal with published work on their CVs, I should be able to flaunt how many times I’ve had my papers rejected. Look at all this resilience I’m building! Pretend it’s 10 years ago and look at this ~grit~. That’s gotta count for something, right?
Sure I’m biased, but, just as grad students send a + signal with published work on their CVs, I should be able to flaunt how many times I’ve had my papers rejected. Look at all this resilience I’m building! Pretend it’s 10 years ago and look at this ~grit~. That’s gotta count for something, right?