Lukas Mergele
@lukasmergele.bsky.social
Policy consultant @ BSS Economic Consultants, Basel | Economist: Public Sector, Labor Markets, Education | Dad of 3 | German-Swiss musings | trains. https://sites.google.com/view/lmergele/home
📢New working paper:🚨 “Integrated vs. Separated Schooling for Refugee Children: Long-Term Effects on Education and Assimilation” w/ @caterinapavese.bsky.social and @meulensimon.bsky.social 👉 Does direct integration into native schools or temporary placement in separate schools … 1/5
Did a (very scientific, much unbiased) poll of the audience at the <<Empirical Methods in the Age of AI>> conference I just attended. Here were the results! hai.stanford.edu/events/empir...
Switzerland's glacier report 2026 is out. Swiss glaciers have lost 5% of their ice volume this year. Only the last 5 years accounted for nearly 20% of the total ice loss across Switzerland. The numbers are devastating. Full report → doi.glamos.ch/pubs/annualr...
First they came for our two-way fixed effects. Now they're coming for time fixed effects! #EconSky www.nber.org/papers/w35807
Very interesting project: Living Science uses an AI agent to reproduce key findings from seminal papers in economics, document what holds up and extend the analysis with newer data. It's like a follow-up paper with robustness checks and extensions. New paper every week.
Vast majority of Chinese children do not enrol in global PISA test • China only enrols pupils from Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang (BSJZ) to PISA • After adjusting for this, score for China as a whole for maths could stand around 536, or 4th place globally www.economist.com/china/2026/0...
Great moments in Scottish engineering history: James Watt tries to work out how his phone attaches to his selfie stick.
Mainstream narrative of China shock decimating EU industry may be overblown • Over past decade, China accounted for just one quarter of growth in bloc's extra-EU imports • China's share of EU’s imports has barely moved over past decade, rising from 20.5% to 22.3% www.economist.com/business/202...
About to get thrown out of here for obvious reasons
An LLM workflow that reproduces, improves, and extends economics research has been applied to over 4,000 published replication packages, from Matthew Schwartz, Isaiah Andrews, and Jesse M. Shapiro www.nber.org/papers/w35782
School Math Olympiad in #Kyiv these days, held in a bomb shelter. Russia keeps attacking Ukrainian cities, so these kids solve geometry problems between pipes and ventilation ducts. Every solved problem is a small act of defiance. 🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine
In a Swiss referendum, a majority voted against tightening neutrality rules. Far-right groups had proposed the measure, but 70.2% of the Swiss people voted NO, so Switzerland can now continue its sanctions against Russia www.tagesschau.de/ausland/euro...
Volksabstimmung in der Schweiz: Mehrheit gegen verschärfte Neutralität
In einer Volksabstimmung hat sich in der Schweiz eine Mehrheit dagegen ausgesprochen, das Neutralitätsgebot für das eigene Land zu verschärfen. Ein Ergebnis, das in Russland für Unmut sorgen dürfte.
tagesschau.de
Like electronic music? You might be delighted to hear that Bonobo's new album is out. A pleasure, as always. My favorite so far on.soundcloud.com/u14XQ4UX5dk2...
Shokoufeh
'Distance in Static', out now on Ninja Tune: https://bonobo.lnk.to/disSo Follow Bonobo - Spotify: https://found.ee/bonobo-sp Apple Music: https://found.ee/bonobo-am Amazon Music: https://found.ee/bo
soundcloud.com
Data from France show that firms respond to increases in the minimum wage not only by employing fewer workers, but also by increasing training and flattening management hierarchies. Nicholas Lawson, Claire Lelarge, Grigorios Spanos cepr.org/voxeu/column...
Die Baumkronen der Pfalz leuchten in ihrem herbstlichen Kleid im warmen Licht der aufgehenden Sonne. Guten Morgen, liebes Basel 🧡
I know we’re focused on looming AI-driven extinction now, but can you spare a thought for what’s going on with labor demand? I have a new paper about that doi.org/10.26509/frb...
#EconSky What German reunification reveals about how we really find work, and the one connection that makes the difference. https://www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/25077.pdf Only 3 to 4% of displaced East German workers moved west within five years of losing their jobs, despite 1/4
Displaced workers relocate toward former coworkers, driven by relevant, job-specific information rather than social support.
rfberlin.com
every now and then, on X i’ll see someone joking about how bluesky doesn’t have an AI community bro, i switch from X to bluesky because the AI takes here are more interesting. My feed is almost entirely AI-positive
1/In den sozialen Medien ist nach der Rede von Bundeskanzler Merz ein Sturm der Entrüstung ausgebrochen. Warum eigentlich? Ich halte mal dagegen, denn ich fand die Rede angemessen, ruhig, zugleich kämpferisch und selbstbewusst. Natürlich wäre es für unsere Demokratie ein großer Schaden,
Three historical results today in two German state elections: 1) The extremist right continues to win elections in the East with pluralities, if not yet majorities; 2) in Berlin, the city where the Holocaust was planned, won a deeply antisemitic islamosocialist party a plurality and may well lead
Global Per Capita Wine, Beer, and Spirits Consumption, 1961–2025
A field experiment with 10,000 professionals shows that female students get more information on work/life balance than male students when asking the same questions about careers, from Yana Gallen and Melanie Wasserman www.nber.org/papers/w35750
❗️Our next workshop will be on October 1st, 10 am CET on Visualising High-dimensional Data with R by @visnut.bsky.social Register or sponsor a student by donating to support Ukraine! Details: bit.ly/3wBeY4S Please share! #AcademicSky #EconSky #RStats
