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Nathan Wilmers

@natewilmers.bsky.social

Working on wage inequality, economic sociology, unions, and work. associate professor @MITSloan.

54 Posts1842 Follower840 Folgt
Per Engzell@pengzell.bsky.social · 5mo ago

New survey on tool use in quantitative social science: "AI-assisted research" now refers to radically different practices depending on whether you've crossed over to agents or are stuck with old chatbot interfaces.

Nathan Wilmers@natewilmers.bsky.social · 5mo ago

How are coding agents changing how we study the economy, society and politics? New results from a baseline survey with @tomlyttelton.bsky.social and Maxim Massenkoff, about who is using AI coding agents and what they're doing with them.

Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat)@restatjournal.bsky.social · 5mo ago

CVS's acquisition of Target's retail pharmacy business reduced pay, especially for low-wage workers. Just Accepted new paper by Enas Farag, Alaa Abdelfattah, Chris Compton, Anna Stansbury @annastansbury.bsky.social and Marshall Steinbaum @econmarshall.bsky.social zurl.co/NvgSz

A Retrospective Analysis of the Acquisition of Target’s Pharmacy Business by CVS Health: Labor Market Perspective

Abstract. We analyze the labor market impact of CVS Health’s acquisition of Target’s pharmacy business in December 2015 using Lightcast job postings data.

zurl.co

Tahir Enes Gedik@tegedik.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I adopted this workflow and created a simplified version using R, quarto, and only Claude (high effort sonnet 4.6). I kept the prompts with minimal changes, but executed them one after another, and checked the artifacts created (codes, reports, etc.).

Per Engzell@pengzell.bsky.social · 5mo ago

What can we learn from automating an entire quantitative social science paper, from prompt to finished product? Thread about ongoing work with @natewilmers.bsky.social 1/12 Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

This skeet will self destruct@pardoguerra.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Some quick thought on what this means for the way we communicate science: time to kill the peer reviewed article? pardoguerra.org/2026/05/09/i...

It’s time to get rid of the peer-reviewed paper

The peer-reviewed journal article, perhaps the single most important device behind the expansion of scientific knowledge in the last century, is an extraordinarily expensive way to share novelty: e…

pardoguerra.org

Per Engzell@pengzell.bsky.social · 5mo ago

What can we learn from automating an entire quantitative social science paper, from prompt to finished product? Thread about ongoing work with @natewilmers.bsky.social 1/12 Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

Joe Noonan@joenoonan.se · 5mo ago

This is a very good and thoughtful paper. I recommend reading the papers that this workflow actually produces. They are quite strange to read: signals of competence such as rigorously explained empirics but much more underdeveloped positioning of the research. www.nathanwilmers.com/paper_factory/

Paper Factory

nathanwilmers.com

Per Engzell@pengzell.bsky.social · 5mo ago

What can we learn from automating an entire quantitative social science paper, from prompt to finished product? Thread about ongoing work with @natewilmers.bsky.social 1/12 Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

Per Engzell@pengzell.bsky.social · 9mo ago

JOB! I'm hiring a postdoc for 2 years on my ERC MaMo project. Looking for someone with strong quant methods, ongoing work close to the project's aims, and a desire to publish in sociology. Start flexible in the next 12 months. Formal call out shortly, but contact me first.

Markets and Mobility: How Employers Structure Economic OpportunityIntergenerational mobility, measuring the ability to achieve economic success regardless of family background, is a critical reflection of a society’s commitment to equality of opportunity. Rising income inequality has raised concerns about the potential erosion of upward mobility. While education has traditionally been viewed as the path to mobility, its transformative power is facing challenges in a rapidly evolving job market. This project reorients the focus of intergenerational mobility research by highlighting the labor market as an arena for the reproduction of advantage. It employs a comparative approach, using administrative data from four countries: Sweden, Austria, England, and the United States. It also incorporates evidence from a broader set of nations through cross-national surveys, longitudinal household surveys, labor force surveys, secondary data, and digital trace data. The project employs cutting-edge empirical methods, including quasi- experimental designs, event studies, within-family comparisons, decomposition analyses, counterfactual simulations, and diagnostic checks to rigorously assess the extent of inequalities in the labor market. The research investigates how family background influences the sorting of individuals to employers and workplaces, accounting for education and occupation, and explores variations in career progression within and between employers. It comprehensively catalogues and assesses mechanisms shaping workplace inequality, contributing to the development of social closure theory. Additionally, the project evaluates intervention strategies, encompassing both employer practices and government actions, to promote fair opportunity in the labor market.
MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER)@mitiwer.bsky.social · last yr.

What happens when manufacturing companies regularly incorporate worker feedback and ideas into their production processes? Productivity is generally higher—and so is production worker pay. New findings from Dylan Nelson of UIUC & @natewilmers.bsky.social @mitiwer.bsky.social: tinyurl.com/4vhswpvr

The Effects of Worker Voice on Manufacturing Pay and Productivity | MIT Sloan

New research finds that when manufacturing companies regularly incorporate worker feedback and ideas, both productivity and worker pay are generally higher.

tinyurl.com

MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER)@mitiwer.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Nice new profile of MIT Professors @natewilmers.bsky.social @mitiwer.bsky.social @mitsloan.bsky.social & Rohit Karnik of MIT Mechanical Engineering, for their skill at mentoring graduate students: tinyurl.com/yajarpas

Cultivating confidence and craft across disciplines

Rohit Karnik and Nathan Wilmers were selected as “Committed to Caring.” These MIT professors encourage their students, advocate for meaningful, interesting research, and participate in their research ...

tinyurl.com

Jonathan Horowitz@jonathanhorowi1.bsky.social · last yr.

This paper from @tomlyttelton.bsky.social and @natewilmers.bsky.social is amazing. It shows that removing educational requirements can have big impacts for workers...except that employers don't really hire those workers below the normal education level anyway.

Sociology papers (journals + SocArXiv)@socpaperbot.bsky.social · last yr.

Are decredentialed jobs a route to upward mobility? Prominent employers, from Microsoft to the State of Maryland, are increasingly dropping college degree requirements when hiring. Does this provide upward mobility for workers without a college degree? Matching job postings to h #sociology link

Danny Schneider@dschneider.bsky.social · 3y ago

David Weil & I are hiring a full-time post-doc to work with us on new strategic enforcement research. Folks interested in computational methods, labor policy, industrial relations, labor economics, etc.. pls apply (+ don't hesitate to get in touch)! Apps due 1/8/24 shift.hks.harvard.edu/about/jobs/

Jobs - The Shift Project

Shift is hiring!   Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Opportunity   About the Position Professors Daniel Schneider (Harvard Kennedy School) and David Weil (Brandeis University) are recruiting one full-ti...

shift.hks.harvard.edu

Matt Beane@mattbeane.bsky.social · 3y ago

When it's time to change... we change. Here's my Substack: www.wildworldofwork.org I'll publish every couple weeks on this wild world of work we now inhabit: how we're handling intelligent tech and how we could do better. I couldn't ask for better early readers than you folks: please subscribe!

Aaron Sojourner@aaronsojourner.org · 3y ago

Some relevant lit abt workers dealing with imperfectly observed employer heterogeneity: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/28mbj... www.nber.org/papers/w29623 www.nber.org/papers/w30266 What else do you know in this area?

What’s the Inside Scoop? Challenges in the Supply and Demand for Information on Employers | Journa...

Workers struggle to understand prospective employers. Through experienced workers’ volunteered reviews, Glassdoor is a platform seeking to provide information about prospective employers to job seek...

journals.uchicago.edu