isitcredible.com is my new website. You will find a public archive of automated reports on journal articles from across the full domain of human knowledge. You can also use it as a private service to get feedback on your own work.

@nature.com just allowed its authors to retrospectively alter a signed and dated pathologist's report after I pointed out that it contained major errors. 1/3

Academia will form these little pockets -- people whose theorizing is outrageous & supported by methods outdated since the 90s -- but once it reaches a critical size those people just review each others papers & grants, form societies, hand out awards etc, like a self-contained parallel society.

Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller (2015) is where the replication crisis comes to economics and political science. Simply put, this chart is impossible. It implies that West Germany’s real GDP per capita grew by almost 8% per year from 1960 to 1990. But it clearly didn’t… 1/20

“Why the South Fought” is my latest paper on American economic history. In it, I argue that white Southerners defended slavery because they had benefited from it. The idea that a mass of “poor whites” had been impoverished by slavery is a myth. 1/12

Logging out. Back to the manuscript.

The sad thing about historians being economically illiterate is that they either have to ignore what economic historians say or accept it on faith.

Public Service Announcement: Avoid Harvard University Press www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

I wrote a short essay reflecting on what “AI” means for academia. All my academic friends should probably now disown me. open.substack.com/pub/thepoorr...

Now Is Existential Question Time for Academia

The rise of the machines means that academics must ask themselves “Why Do I Exist?”

open.substack.com

Why are Homicides so High in Latin America? This essay is a literature review of the intersecting drivers of violence, including @chrisblattman.bsky.social's new book which I strongly recommend! :-) www.ggd.world/p/why-are-ho...

The man at left separated the mother and baby at right. The mother is now in Venezuela. Baby daughter, in foster care in the US, exact location unknown. Dad? He's in CECOT prison without trial — because he had tattoos.

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · last yr.

The Trump administration continues to ignore the courts. 278 men are still in CECOT prison without a trial, sentence, or any form of due process. Here's one of their stories. Dad is in CECOT. Mom, deported to Venezuela. Their beautiful toddler, in foster care in the US, whereabouts unknown.

This should be obvious, but my research on slavery is not “policy oriented.” Even if slavery contributed to growth in the US, it does not mean that it would contribute to growth anywhere today. And even it did, it is still an abomination and should be abolished for all time.

joseph francis@joefrancis.bsky.social · last yr.

In my new paper, I argue that slavery facilitated the growth of cotton exports in the 19th-century United States. To see why this is controversial, we must enter the rabbit hole of how economic history is currently taught in American universities… 1/20

In my new paper, I argue that slavery facilitated the growth of cotton exports in the 19th-century United States. To see why this is controversial, we must enter the rabbit hole of how economic history is currently taught in American universities… 1/20

In my new paper, I argue that slavery facilitated the growth of cotton exports in the 19th-century United States. To see why this is controversial, we must enter the rabbit hole of how economic history is currently taught in American universities… 1/20

Everyone has to make the difficult choice between cheap, high-quality electronics or… corn syrup?

Maia@maiamindel.bsky.social · 2y ago

> Japan says they won't join a US-led anti China trade bloc It's a nice century I just didn't expect it to be Chinese

Reviewer 2 says that I completely ignore the role of institutions. I say, “hold my beer.”🤣

"An Israeli attack on [a] freed Palestinian prisoner killed him, his wife & 4 children... the blast was so violent paramedics were unable to recover a single body from the family of 6, but were left to collect shredded flesh and body parts from the street outside the residence"

"The soldiers reloaded their magazines and kept shooting even after it was clear that no return fire was coming from the other side – and despite the cries of the aid workers who tried to identify themselves." From Haaretz. archive.ph/4vam4

Can any intrepid economist spot what was special about American cotton up to 1860?

I look at close to 100 stories a week and even more outside of work. I’ve done this ten years. This is among the most horrific things I’ve ever read — testimony from dying children whose access to medicine has been cut off by the Trump administration. www.npr.org/sections/goa...

Haunted by hopelessness: 12 Zambians share their stories as HIV drugs run out

Mothers and children, husbands and wives, doctors, truck drivers and religious leaders are all grappling with the fallout from the sudden U.S. cuts in aid.

npr.org

In São Paulo, I presented what I call “the Latin American paradox” Why is it that Latin Americans are actually quite supportive of gender equality, and yet we see high femicides? My answer: a weak state, drug wars & conflict give rise to generalized violence

My parents worked in factories. Spark plugs, poultry, plastics, etc. They told me in no uncertain terms not to follow them. Their attitude was representative of an entire generation. America CHOSE to deindustrialize. In part because few people enjoy factory work, especially in non-union shops!

Video footage shows the moment an Israeli airstrike struck a UNRWA flour distribution center in Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, earlier today.

“It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” (Acts 26:14)

My paper “Accounting for Slavery” presents a new database of state-level GDP divided into 15 sectors for every census year in the US from 1839 to 1899. I then use this new database to make a few gentle interventions in the slavery debates. 1/19

Version 1 of “Accounting for Slavery” will be the real banger, but my wife wants me to cultivate the vegetable patch, so it will have to wait until Monday.

Version 3 of my “Did Slavery Impede the Growth of American Capitalism?” is now available. The econometrics––an event study of abolition and a regression discontinuity design (RDD) of the free-slave state border––is the same, but I have improved the interpretation section. 1/3

Version 2 of my “p-Values on the Free-Slave State Border” is now available. To recap, it is a critique of a recent attempt to apply a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to the slavery debates. 1/4

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