Julian Reif
@julianreif.bsky.social
Associate Professor Illinois Gies College of Business Coeditor, American J. of Health Economics www.julianreif.com
1/5 AEA journals have run a pilot using Refine, and author reactions were overwhelmingly positive: >90% favored incorporating Refine into the editorial process. Think of Refine not as a referee, but as a detailed technical proofreader. @aeajournals.bsky.social #EconSky
We are hiring at @cornelluniversity.bsky.social for the @aeadata.bsky.social / LDI Lab for the fall. Help make social sciences more reproducible! If you are a @cornelluniversity.bsky.social student with the necessary qualifications, read about it here www.ilr.cornell.edu/labor-dynami... and apply!
LDI Replication Lab
ilr.cornell.edu
Should you pay $500 in premiums to lower your deductible by $250? While classic models say never do this, our new AEJ: Micro paper shows buying a dominated plan can make sense for liquidity constrained people.
Using LLMs should allow us to think bigger, harder to grasp, difficult to execute, longer to develop, ideas. That idea that’s been in you brain since forever but you hadn’t had the time because you had to retool and what not. Trust yourself. Go for that shit. Now is the fucking time.
Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io · last wk."We're all worried," as what it means to do research (in my field, Theoretical CS) seems to be shifting, and shifting fast. What to do? Senior researchers must lead by example, knowing that not everything will pan out. What I'm suggesting below may not work everywhere, but here's my own advice: 1/
I'm interested in finding and potentially supporting people who are interested in doing long-form writing on the big efforts in global health: Gavi, Global Fund, PEPFAR, etc. If this is you or someone you know, please make yourself known!
“Two teams can find nearly the same fact. The paper with the higher general-interest ceiling may not have a dramatically more credible estimate. It may instead ask the estimate to do more.”
Jason Fletcher@jasonmfletcher.bsky.social · 2w agoHow to Write a Top 5 Paper: A Case Study open.substack.com/pub/jasonmfl...
Writing a paper introduction is more art than science, but a good formula gets you most of the way there. Today's blog post: a paragraph-by-paragraph template that is used pretty commonly, plus the mistakes I see most often. 🧵 #EconSky deryugina.com/a-two-for-on...
A two-for-one blog post on writing introductions – Tatyana Deryugina
deryugina.com
The narrative about the smallpox box is riveting.
Charles Louis Richter@richterscale.bsky.social · 3w agoWhen my wife was cataloging the NMAH medical collection, she came across this little gold compact filled with a waxy substance, and no documentation. As with so many unknown objects, she gave it a sniff to see if it had an identifiable odor. Then she realized what it was.
We know that hot days lead to worsening health outcomes. Surprisingly, we have very little info on the fiscal impact these hot days have on government programs like Medicaid. In this new paper, we match over a million Medicaid records across nearly 16,000 U.S. ZIP codes to daily temperature data (🧵)
Why? Scrubs Scene
ALT: Why? Scrubs Scene
static.klipy.com
The AEA is seeking nominations for journal coeditors and board members, and is deliberately trying to widen its search beyond the existing team's social networks. Nominate yourself or others! Nominations are simple (basically just names). You can submit them here: survey.sogolytics.com/r/QmAiqd
"The most efficient way to fund ambulance services would simply be to pay for the option the way that options are normally paid for: with a premium, collected from everyone the service stands ready to rescue. That’s how it’s done in the rest of the rich world." davidoks.blog/p/why-americ...
Why American ambulance rides are so expensive
The unfortunately botched economics of emergency care
davidoks.blog
Genuinely interested in your views: What is the future of teaching statistical programming language for data science in the age of AI? Will we even still teach programming R or Python?
Recorded my last Markus Academy video on AI and Economics research! In this capstone, I talked with Markus about how to use tools like git and Github to make workflows that help manage the verification debt come with supercharged tools like AI. substack.com/home/post/p-...
Integration and Collaboration in AI Research Work
Video 8 in a series on Claude Code
substack.com
🚨🚨 NEW ECONOMICS JOURNAL 🚨🚨 We are excited to announce the launch of The Review of Economic Studies: Insights, a new open-access journal in the REStud family. Mission: publish concise, high-quality research on important questions across economics and economic policy.🧵1/13
This is perhaps the most impressive #medical study I have seen in years: www.nature.com/articles/s41... It will save a lot of lives.
An ECG biomarker for sudden cardiac death discovered with deep learning - Nature
A deep-learning model trained on electrocardiogram (ECG) waveforms identifies an easily visible biomarker that predicts sudden cardiac death more accurately than the current clinical state of the art.
nature.com
We were delighted to select and present the Best Paper Prize for the 2nd time at the @cinchessen.bsky.social Economics of Mental Health Workshop, this year at @univdauphine.bsky.social to prizewinner Alden Chang for research with Martin Hackmann 1/9 stderr-editors.com/blog/cheng-a...
Cheng and Hackmann receive mental health economics workshop Best Paper Prize for research on mortality effects of nursing home room assignments
The prize recognizes the authors’ outstanding empirical work and the direct applicability of their findings for improving patients’ health outcomes.
stderr-editors.com
Observational evidence can be deeply misleading in health settings. In our study of workplace wellness programs, RCT and observational analyses reached opposite conclusions, despite having access to rich administrative data. www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/u...
Workplace Wellness Programs Don’t Work Well. Why Some Studies Show Otherwise. (Published 2018)
nytimes.com
Saloni@scientificdiscovery.dev · 2mo agoUnpopular opinion but if you're interested in the effects of a medical product, it's 'RCT or bust' for me. I can see the case for observational analyses when randomization isn't possible, ethical, or the condition is too rare or some other such thing, but there's no such excuse here.
“Elon Musk’s personal wealth has jumped to $1.3trn according to Bloomberg. Even if that was reduced by $1trn he would still be the world’s richest person.” economist.com/the-world-th...
Business | Jun 20th 2026 Edition
The world this week
economist.com
Are you or one of your students going on the #EconJobMarket this year? If so, you should check out two new resources that I posted to my website today. lillyspringer.github.io/JobMarket_No... lillyspringer.github.io/JobMarket_Sl...
Nice review of John List's new book. Relatedly, for those interested in experimental methods, I'm a big fan of Gerber & Green's Field Experiments book: wwnorton.com/books/978039...
Field Experiments
A brief, authoritative introduction to field experimentation in the social sciences., Field Experiments, Design, Analysis, and Interpretation, Alan S Gerber, Donald P Green, 9780393979954
wwnorton.com
David McKenzie@dmckenzie.bsky.social · 2mo agoIn today's blog, I read through all of @johnlist.bsky.social's new mammoth textbook on experimental economics. I highlight the parts I think will be particularly useful to development economists, including great chapters on ethics, DUAs, ... 1/2 blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...
SHESG submission deadline is June 15! Great health economics conference, highly recommended.
David Bradford@bradfowd1.bsky.social · 3mo agoThe Call for Submissions for the 2026 SHESG is now live. SHESG will be held on Oct. 9-10 at the University of Georgia. Submissions from all areas of health economics are welcome. The deadline for abstracts is June 15. See the call below for more details. Submit early and often!
Wow, I didn't expect our paper on iPhones and fertility to generate this much buzz—thanks for all the feedback! Rather than scattershot replies, here's a compilation of thoughts and new robustness checks. 🧵1/15
Reminder, if you’re going to @ashecon.bsky.social 2026, come to our Wednesday session of creative uses of recession discontinuity with some of the best in the business, including @aschwartz.bsky.social, @vinisingh.bsky.social, @dzeltzer.bsky.social, and @mlbarnett.bsky.social!
Dan Ly@meddly.bsky.social · 5mo agoIf you're buying plane tickets to ASHEcon '26, make sure you stay for our session (last of the conference) of 3 RDs studying heuristics, stigma, & guidelines. With @aschwartz.bsky.social, @vinisingh.bsky.social, @dzeltzer.bsky.social, and @mlbarnett.bsky.social! ashecon.confex.com/ashecon/2026...
Another reminder that undertreated high blood pressure has real consequences. A physician bonus tied to blood pressure targets led to fewer medication increases for patients with borderline hypertension, and those patients then experienced more heart attacks and strokes.
Claire Boone@claireboone.bsky.social · 2mo agoNew diff-in-diff paper in @jamainternalmed.com. We document some unintended consequences of a hypertension control quality metric and financial incentive -- one that's widely used in US healthcare. In the overall population with hypertension there were almost no impacts, but..
This is a fantastic and rare (!) example of authors of a published paper and the author of a comment on that paper working together to fix the scientific record. Kudos to all involved. This is not easy, even with good faith all around. @droodman.bsky.social @i4replication.bsky.social #EconSky
Institute for Replication@i4replication.bsky.social · 2mo ago🚨 CORRIGENDUM ALERT 🚨 A decade after Star Wars: The Empirics Strike Back was published in AEJ: Applied, we've just published an official corrigendum with the AEA. This is a love story. 🧵
Remember that recent paper claiming to show that "ideological bias" determined the results obtained by immigration policy research teams? A careful, open-code reanalysis by @kauspurg.bsky.social & Josef Brüderl finds that the result arises from a coding error. —> doi.org/10.31222/osf...
I hate a bad haircut as much as the next guy, but this seems disproportionate....
Chicago Tribune@chicagotribune.com · 2mo agoCommentary: To get a license from Illinois to cut hair, aspiring barbers must complete the same number of training hours commercial airline pilots are required to log for flight training: 1,500. It’s nearly double the 640 hours required for Illinois State Police officers.
