Noel Johnson
@ndjohnson.bsky.social
Professor of Economics at GMU. Very mid practitioner of Brazilian jiu jitsu. I like dogs. https://noeldjohnson.github.io
This gorgeous new image from the Gemini North telescope 🔭 shows a spectacular view of Pa 30. This is likely the remnant of an historic supernova seen in the year 1181. Pa30’s unmistakable firework-shaped ejecta exhibits a cascading knot-like structure. More at noirlab.edu/public/video...
I joined the Silk Road Revival podcast to talk about how I ended up in economic history and about two of my recent papers. Here is the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tddw...
Podcast Interview with Professor Noel Johnson
YouTube video by Silk Road Rev.
youtube.com
We can't even make them read the syllabus!
Annaliese Paulson@annaliesep.bsky.social · 2mo agoNew Working Paper with Micah Baum and Joaquin Endara: Students tend to become more liberal during college. We study whether individual faculty make their students more liberal. We find no evidence that faculty affect student partisanship. Working Paper: edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1538 1/
Some days you just need to stay low and keep your eyes on things.
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 · 3mo agoOn 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.
Managed to image M51 and M13 from rural Ohio last night. Great conditions until the clouds rolled in!
The Swiss head coach is the most European looking person I’ve ever seen.
It is, once again, leaf blower season. As tradition dictates, a haiku… Blowers hum and wail, Thoughts drift like leaves in the gust— Workday blown away.
Unfortunately, a stunned Paris is how they all got into this whole mess to begin with
Pop Crave@popcrave.com · 3mo ago‘The Odyssey’ women Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong'o, and Charlize Theron stun in Paris.
I really enjoyed spending the last 30 minutes figuring out that in order to submit my paper to an Elsevier journal, the MS can be pdf, but the separate title page cannot be a pdf, but must be either a Word file or sent to them by post as cuneiform tablets.
Really awesome that schools and summer camps frequently have special dress-up “theme” days for my 11 year old. Nothing better than waking up and learning it’s “wacky Wednesday” and she needs to dress up as her favorite holiday. Really keeps me on my toes. Grateful.
🧵1/ The half-life of a grudge. Britain crushed the 1857 revolt in northern India with mass reprisals centered on Lucknow. For decades after, districts closer to that violence vaccinated their children less against smallpox and the effect faded as the generation that lived through 1857 died off.
I'm so disillusioned, I almost don't even care who gets the FIFA Peace Prize next year
The goals and sending-off won over countless American fans, but Flo Balogun's comments today should win over even more ❤️🤍💙 📸: @tombogert.bsky.social
In terms of its role in Europe's development, the Dominican order is perhaps most known for its part in the inquisition. However, it also had a more benevolent impact on regime change and the development of human capital 1/N
I'm not the best lip-reader, but I believe what she is saying is "I disagree with the offsides call" in Croatian.
🧵 1/ The most famous party trick in AI: take word vectors and compute "king − man + woman." You (often) get queen — evidence the model learned gender as a direction in space. Could you pull that off using nothing but the titles of books printed in Europe, 1450–1650?
Want a politically (and economically) productive investment? Absolutely massive universities in low population states. Land grant universities x1000
mtsw@mtsw.bsky.social · 4mo agoWhat no one ever considers is: What if "investing in Red America" is just politically hopeless? Can we maybe, for once, invest in blue America instead?
Way ahead of you, GMU Emergency Alert System. The World Cup is on and I've decided to limit all activities both outside AND inside.
Claude Code just told me that the version of Ruby I've been using on my laptop is "ancient". And now I feel old too.
Machine Learning is causing massive leaps everywhere. Also in Economic History. There is a conversation we need to have. What ought to be the new scientific standards? Together with two coauthors . Our argument: We should maybe care a bit less about accuracy 📝🧵
"The share of Harvard undergraduates receiving disability accommodations rose from roughly 3% in 2014 to 21% in 2024 — a sevenfold increase in a decade... Meanwhile, at community colleges, the rate is 3 to 4% and has not changed in a decade." www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/29/o...
The disability accommodation trap on college campuses - The Boston Globe
Once enough students receive extra time, private testing rooms, and deadline extensions, their classmates face a choice: seek the same advantages or fall behind.
bostonglobe.com
A new practitioner's guide to using LLMs in economic history covers the workflow, pitfalls, and validation, with four worked examples from paintings to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wartime speeches, from @andyferrara.bsky.social www.nber.org/papers/w35374
The great economist Alberto Alesina passed away unexpectedly six years ago. The next day, his former PhD student @sethsd.bsky.social posted an explanation for Alesina's incandescence as a scholar and mentor. I've thought about his words many times over the years. medium.com/@sethstephen...
Congratulations to Prof @selimgulesci.bsky.social on his promotion to Professor in Economics at TCD and to Kevin O'Rourke on his appointment as Honorary Professor of the Department of Economics! 🥳 Read more: www.tcd.ie/economics/ne... @tcdschoolssp.bsky.social
Was watching an instructional video on reverse de la riva and my wife walked in and looked at me like I'm weird. I have no idea why...
A couple things I learned doing research this week... The Thirty Years' War (1618–48) didn't simply shrink German printing — it redrew the map. After imperial forces sacked Magdeburg in 1631, the city's presses went nearly silent. Neutral Hamburg's boomed. The two cities traded places.
