💗 Meet the new postdocs at @um-psc.bsky.social! @nathanfranz.bsky.social, @jessiehimmel.bsky.social, and @michaeltopping.bsky.social shared their research projects (summary in the link!) at PSC's kick-off brown bag seminar. @umisr.bsky.social @burgards.bsky.social psc.isr.umich.edu/news/meet-th...

Meet the Post-Docs: Nathan Franz, Jessie Himmelstern and Michael Topping Join the Population Studies Center

Three new postdoctoral fellows introduced themselves and their research at this fall’s kickoff brown-bag seminar at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center (PSC). Here’s a look at their w...

psc.isr.umich.edu

I have no way of knowing how close the labs are to RSI other than what they say, and they say they're close. Everything on the other side of RSI looks Yudkowskian to me. I can't visualize an alternative.

Something I realized today: "All models are wrong, but some are useful" applies in economics, but the usefulness is mainly rhetorical, not in describing reality. Models are engines of persuasion.

The disdain with which some people smack and kick the buttons for automatic doors really bothers me

Two self-driving cab brands at the same intersection. How long before one company starts running adversarial displays to mess with the other's vision model?

A senior academic using mentoring as leverage to obtain sex is a contemptible abuser of power.

Prof Dynarski@dynarski.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Summers conferred with Epstein frequently about how to extract sexual favors from a Harvard econ grad (AB '04, PhD '09) The grad is from China Epstein and Summers referred to her by the codename "Peril" Racism and sexual exploitation in one efficient package bit.ly/3LHpin8

I am delighted to share that my job market paper was featured in the World Bank's Development Impact blog today: blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva... Summary below. 👇

Fostering Trust to Save Lives: Evidence from Organ Donation in Tunisia: Guest post by Christina Sarah Hauser

blogs.worldbank.org

I am excited to announce I am on the #EconJobMarket this year! 🎉 My research explores economic barriers for people with disabilities at the intersection of labor, public, and health economics. My #EconJMP examines how reliable transportation transforms outcomes for this population. 🧵1/6

I'm on the #EconJobMarket!🥳 My research examines how childhood trauma from violence shapes household violence in adulthood. My #EconJMP asks: How do trauma histories interact with their partners' experiences to shape intimate partner violence and violence against children? 🧵

Your regular reminder that measles vaccines are the most lifesaving childhood vaccine in the schedule, and save over a million lives globally per year. ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...

Measles vaccines save millions of lives each year

Measles once killed millions every year. Vaccines changed this, preventing disease, long-term immune damage, and deadly outbreaks.

ourworldindata.org

Excited that Open Phil is funding this @metaculus.bsky.social forecasting tournament on the future budgets and spending of NIH and NSF, and surprised that forecasters are expecting basically no cuts www.metaculus.com/tournament/...

Applying to NEUDC Feels like they're trying to tell me something

Nathan Franz, PhD student at UT Austin - he’ll be on the market this fall! Paper is about the trade off between public and private facility deliveries, leading to a situation where private and more expensive facilities have worse health outcomes Website: nathan-franz.github.io

🚨New Paper🚨 Valuing statistical absences? Why benefit-cost analysis cannot avoid population ethics" My new paper with regulatory legal scholar extraordinaire Andy Stawasz is out in Ecological Economics! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Valuing statistical absences? Why benefit-cost analysis cannot avoid population ethics

Policies subject to BCA sometimes prevent premature deaths. If survivors would later have children, those policies not only prevent deaths; they cause…

sciencedirect.com

After the Spike by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso will be published on 8 July. www.amazon.com/After-Spike-...

By the way, for anyone wondering why we have imports on the books from Heard Island and McDonald Islands, the answer is that someone logged imports from Honduras incorrectly.

David@yonderdavid.bsky.social · 2y ago

The databases really do claim that we imported "INSULATED COAXIAL CABLE AND OTHER COAXIAL ELECTRICAL CONDUCTORS" from HM/HMD. That doesn't make sense, but do you know what one of the top exports of HN/HND is? Insulated wire. I'd love to know the *mechanics* of the error but the result is obvious.

Even if you think that having an overall trade deficit is bad, trying to zero out trade deficits with each country individually doesn't make sense. A quick example:

Pakistan: 29% Sri Lanka 44% Bangladesh 37% China 34% Vietnam 46% India 26% Thailand 36% Indonesia 32% Cambodia 49% South Africa 30%

*Please repost* @sjgreenwood.bsky.social and I just launched a new personalized feed (*please pin*) that we hope will become a "must use" for #academicsky. The feed shows posts about papers filtered by *your* follower network. It's become my default Bluesky experience bsky.app/profile/pape...

A timely, important, and wonderfully written piece on the Demographic and Health Surveys by Caren Grown. So much learning stands on the shoulders of the DHS. Donors must step up and step in— and soon— especially to rescue the 18 surveys currently in the field. www.brookings.edu/articles/an-...

An ode to the Demographic and Health Survey Program

Caren Grown reflects on the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program and its 40-plus years of impact.

brookings.edu

BREAKING: By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court LIFTS its hold on a lower court order compelling the Trump administration to resume nearly $2 billion in foreign aid funding. The funds MUST be disbursed. Roberts and Barrett join the liberals. Obviously, this is huge. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

NEW: USAID's acting asst administrator, Nick Enrich, has been placed on leave after sharing a memo detailing how political appointees have "wholly prevented" staff from continuing life saving aid.

Haven't tried it yet but www.aid-archive.org

Our group has been hard at work to release a new tool: The Data Rescue Tracker. The tool aims to provide a consolidated overview of who is downloading which dataset from which government websites. Please share! www.datarescueproject.org/data-rescue-...

The Data Rescue Tracker

We are excited to introduce the Data Rescue Tracker, a collaborative tool built to catalog existing public data rescue efforts so that we can coordinate better across initiatives. At this stage, you c...

datarescueproject.org