Scott Gehlbach
@sgehlbach.bsky.social
University of Chicago, Political Science and Harris School. Director, PhD Program in Political Economy. Autocracy/Eurasia/HPE. Blogging at scottgehlbach.bearblog.dev. Cards fan but o/w Chicago patriot. 🇺🇦
Our paper on the electoral benefits of Trump's ag payments is out now at the Journal of Public Economics. authors.elsevier.com/c/1nWEVAlwA2... tl;dr - We use the natural experiment from 2019's massive increase in spending to compare 2020 Trump vote in over-compensated vs. under-compensated counties.
Congrats to amazing recipients of 2026 SIOE prizes for best book, best thesis, best paper www.sioe.org/news/2026-si...
The 2026 SIOE Awards – SIOE
Angela Zhang wins the Douglass North Best Book Award, Matteo Tranchero the Ronald H. Coase Dissertation Award, and Ngoma, Sievert, Jaravel, Nunn and Weigel the Oliver E.…
sioe.org
Organ intro at Music Box in Chicago as we prepare to watch The Odyssey on 70mm with 700 other aficionados.
Bravo! Excellent conference and great gala to close it out. Here, @ksonin.bsky.social staging Napoleon’s surrender to Kutuzov (in fact, Napoleon surrendered to Wellington, which Kostya knows full well).
Sascha O. Becker@essobecker.bsky.social · 3w agoThe 2026 edition of the @sioecon.bsky.social conference at INSEAD Fontainebleau organized by the amazing (dancing) Maria Guadalupe was extraordinary. Thanks, Maria and team ❤️ Presidential address by my wonderful co-author @paulinegrosjean.bsky.social on masculinity norms and patriarchy 🚀
Your regular reminder that market economies are archipelagos of central planning.
Juraj Medzihorsky@medzihorsky.bsky.social · 3w agoSome comparisons between today's tech sector and industrial SEOs in command economies under state socialism practically offer themselves: • bureaucratic targets with questionable economic value [see here] • soft budget constraint [see Kornai] • legitimization by value for the power of the state
Fantastic conference on “The Soviet Legacy” at UCLouvain next January. Cfp here: www.uclouvain.be/en/research-...
“From a political perspective…we should have serious concerns about a sweeping elimination of moral-hazard rents from large political and economic organizations.”
Roger Myerson@rbmyerson.bsky.social · 4w agoA new note considers challenges of AI from a perspective of political-economic theory. home.uchicago.edu/~rmyerson/hu... A key concern: With substitution of artificial intelligence for human intelligence in management, our world may be dominated by larger organizations managed by fewer people.
Folks, here’s the program for the 2026 Summer Workshop in the Economic History and Historical Political Economy of Eurasia, to be held July 17–18 at the University of Chicago Center in Paris. So looking forward.
Scott Gehlbach - 2026 Summer Workshop in the Economic History and
Schedule All sessions will be held at the University of Chicago Center in Paris. Friday, July 17 8:45–9:00 Opening remarks 9:00–10:00 Kristy Ironsi...
scottgehlbach.net
Iowa City on the Fourth. “Cities may be large without being urbane, as when segregation discourages mixing outside of one’s narrowly defined group. And communities may be urbane yet still small, as with the quintessential college town.” scottgehlbach.bearblog.dev/urbanity-her...
The Obama Center is more than a museum. For many Chicagoans, it is first and foremost a major investment in the South Side. A few thoughts and photos after visiting this afternoon.
The South Side of Chicago Is the Nicest Part of Town
The Obama Presidential Center is a world-class investment in Chicago's South Side.
scottgehlbach.bearblog.dev
The Obama Center is more than a museum. For many Chicagoans, it is first and foremost a major investment in the South Side. A few thoughts and photos after visiting this afternoon.
The South Side of Chicago Is the Nicest Part of Town
The Obama Presidential Center is a world-class investment in Chicago's South Side.
scottgehlbach.bearblog.dev
They say that Chicago is where fun goes to die, but I can’t imagine a crowd here on a Sunday afternoon like the one that Tianguang Meng assembled last week at Tsinghua University. Thanks for the audience—and for PhD Panda!
Had an excellent time at the UChicago-Beijing Political Economy of Governance Conference, at the UChicago Global Center in Beijing! Top notch papers and amazing hospitality. Huge thanks to Zhaotian Luo, Scott Gehlbach, and Tianguang Meng for hosting!
Group photo on Day 2 of the UChicago-Beijing Political Economy of Governance Conference.
Scott Gehlbach@sgehlbach.bsky.social · 2mo agoDay 1 of the UChicago-Beijing Political Economy of Governance Conference kicks off with two of our most prominent democracy scholars: Carles Boix and Adam Przeworski.
Congratulations to Giorgio Farace and Lingnan He, now PhD alumni of the University of Chicago!
Day 1 of the UChicago-Beijing Political Economy of Governance Conference kicks off with two of our most prominent democracy scholars: Carles Boix and Adam Przeworski.
Celebrating my birthday in Singapore, having just spent the day discussing Zeren Li’s book manuscript on business-state relations in China.
Congratulations to Giorgio Farace, who just defended his dissertation in political economy (Poli Sci + Harris) here at Chicago. Next stop: a faculty position at Stanford GSB. Not pictured but on Giorgio’s committee: Konstantin Sonin. You can read more about Giorgio here: www.giorgiofarace.com.
Either arXiv’s new policy on LLM-generated text changes nothing, or you should be asking yourself some hard questions about work with your human coauthors.
On arXiv, LLMs, and What It Means to Put Your Name on a Paper
All you have is your name.
scottgehlbach.bearblog.dev
Either arXiv’s new policy on LLM-generated text changes nothing, or you should be asking yourself some hard questions about work with your human coauthors.
On arXiv, LLMs, and What It Means to Put Your Name on a Paper
All you have is your name.
scottgehlbach.bearblog.dev
For all but the dogmatically pro-terminal, this is a fantastic interface for Claude Code (or whatever). So many nice touches. agents.craft.do
Craft Agents - The Open Source Agent Interface
An open source desktop app for working with AI agents. Connect any API or MCP server. Multitask naturally. Make it yours.
agents.craft.do
The Anti-Corruption Foundation highlights Maria Pevchik’s April visit to Chicago in their monthly update. It was a highlight for us as well!
New article: Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones meets James Scott’s legibility It’s actually about how states tapped archaeologists for early intelligence capabilities Check it out! “History, archeology, and espionage as improvised legibility” in @ejir.bsky.social coauthored with @asaxton.bsky.social
Adam Saxton@asaxton.bsky.social · 3mo agoExcited to announce the publication of my first peer reviewed academic article at EJIR! Co-authored with @carsonaust.bsky.social and available @ejir.bsky.social here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... See a quick summary below!
1/ Something I’ve been working toward for a long time. Virginia just signed the first state legislation directing a formal study of Independent Verification Organizations for AI. Bipartisan votes of 84-14 in the House, unanimous 40-0 in the Senate.
Stata code to implement the MW2024 methods 👉 pauldavidboll.com/research/pub... and a forthcoming Stata Journal article with a practitioners guide (with @pdavidboll.bsky.social and @jvoth.bsky.social)
Testing and Correcting for Spatial Unit Roots in Regression Analysis
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pauldavidboll.com
Econometrica@ecmaeditors.bsky.social · 4mo agoEconometrica is pleased to announce the 2026 Haavelmo Prize for the best econometrics paper, awarded to Ulrich K. Müller and Mark W. Watson for “Spatial Unit Roots and Spurious Regression.” www.econometricsociety.org/society/news...
