Omar

Revisiting Adam Smith and the Division of Labor: New Evidence from U.S. Occupational Data, 1860–1940: Nicholas A. Carollo; Elior Cohen; Jingyi Huang

Do Markets Believe in Transformative AI? Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

Great exercise and apparently the answer is ‘no.’ Which is interesting given the magnitude of investments taking place. www.nber.org/papers/w34243

If you'd like an economist's introduction to Agentic AI:

www.genaiforecon.org/JEL-2025-Aug...

Perhaps of interest to folks with social science PhD programs: at Rotman, we added an experimental 3 session "tech stack" training in addition to the math boot camp. My lecture was "how to do reproducible, open, quick research", aka version control, LaTeX, AI. 1/2 kevinbryanecon.com/techstack.html

The Skill Inside the Task: How AI and Robotics Reshape the Structure of Work.

If AI and workers were strong complements, what would we see? The answer is pretty much what the initial data is showing

If AI and workers were strong complements, what would we see?, by @joshgans open.substack.com/pub/joshuaga... Does the latest data tell us AI is a substitute for human work? Nope. Is that comforting? Also nope. My comments on @erikbryn and co. (and @Noahpinion

Next up: Ian Calaway on early mentors for exceptional students.

This excellent conference is live streaming! 1/N

www.nber.org/conferences/...

Awesome paper finding huge benefits from relaxing zoning constraints in NYC, even once you account for the big costs of redevelopment
vrollet.github.io/files/city_...

Structural Estimation Under Misspecification: Theory and Implications for Practice* ABSTRACT. A researcher can use a tightly parameterized structural model to obtain internally consistent estimates of a wide range of economically interesti

#QJE Aug 2025, #3, “Structural Estimation Under Misspecification: Theory and Implications for Practice,” by Andrews, Barahona (@nanobarahona.bsky.social), Gentzkow, Rambachan (@asheshrambachan.bsky.social), and Shapiro: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

With unique data from a large global manufacturer, we were able to study how product markups vary along the supply chain and over time.

One thing that surprised us: though manufacturer and retail markups bounce up and down, total (manufacturer + retail) markups are stable.

For example, we've recently learned that virtually all state-level DiD's are probably incredibly underpowered.

I've built a bunch of tools this summer to move my whole workflow to using things that are "pure text" so I can use AI on top. Here's the first: a modern paper reader. PDFs suck. Ugly, terribly interface, big files, fixed. I want papers that are adaptive, interactive, pretty. 1/5

Are you teaching behavioral economics this semester?

Just a reminder that I produced a 5-episode podcast series with Behavioral Grooves on the origins, growth, and future of behavioral economics.

AND we developed some helpful note-taking and discussion guides for use in the classroom...

Re-upping my advice about how to write a good title and abstract for an academic paper, appropriately called:

"How to Write a Title and Abstract"

Feel free to share this thread, which will focus on titles.

#EconSky #AcademicSky

Call for papers, 4th UK Workshop on Digital Economics, London 28 November 2025: competitionpolicy.ac.uk/events/4th-w... This is always a great event

Using ggplot in Python: Visualizing Data With plotnine In this tutorial, you'll learn how to use ggplot in Python to build data visualizations with plotnine. You'll discover what a grammar of graphics is and how it can help you create plots in a very concise and consistent way.

🐍📰 Using ggplot in Python: Visualizing Data With plotnine
#python

GitHub - gregfaletto/fetwfePackage: Implementation of fused extended two-way fixed effects (Faletto 2024) Implementation of fused extended two-way fixed effects (Faletto 2024) - gregfaletto/fetwfePackage

NEW R PACKAGE: I created the {fetwfe} package to implement fused extended two-way fixed effects (FETWFE), my estimator for difference-in-difference under staggered adoptions.

You can install and use it by following the instructions on GitHub here: github.com/gregfaletto/....

Short thread:

From the fixest NEWS file: the new default VCOV is iid for all estimations. To change the default to the way it was, place setFixest_vcov(all = "cluster", no_FE = "iid") in your .Rprofile.

#rstats #econsky PSA: The next release of `fixest` will include some important changes (plus cool new features).

E.g. Fixed-effects regs will now default to 'iid' SEs rather than clustered. github.com/lrberge/fixe...

You can install and test drive the dev version from R-universe; see the README.

Very pleased that our local projections dif-in-dif paper is now out in the Journal of Applied Econometrics. Joint with @dgirardi.bsky.social, Jorda, and Taylor.

It's a tool that we think many applied economists will find useful (indeed many already have).

🧵

SI 2025 Digital Economics and Artificial Intelligence

Naked self-promotion: My fantastic co-author @kmcelheran.bsky.social will present our empirical paper on "Industrial AI" (self-driving forklifts, self-optimizing production lines, autonomous quality control) and its effect on productivity in US manufacturing.

www.nber.org/conferences/...

This is the best table making package for #rstats! It has *the best* latex and typst support

In October I'll be giving a 2-day workshop at @stathorizons.bsky.social about how to make beautiful websites with #QuartoPub! Learn how to make and deploy personal websites, research websites, an course websites all with minimal HTML/CSS

Call for Papers:

The 4th Annual Zurich Workshop in AI+Economics

to be held Dec 5-6, 2025, hosted by ETH Zurich and University of Zurich.

Info: eash.cc/AI-econ
Submit (by Aug 15th): eash.cc/AI-econ-sub-2025

Polars DataFrames for the new era

🤖 Software discovery of the week 🤖

I just started using Polars for datawrangling in Python, and am really impressed how fast it is when handling large datasets (orders of magnitude faster than Pandas).
Also, the syntax feels very natural, coming from dplyr in R:

pola.rs

Super interesting new WP by @raffasadun.bsky.social and coauthors: incorporates firm-level managers and the diffusion of plant-level management practices, and reconciles firm- and plant-level patterns in productivity, dynamism and M&A activity.

PyViz: Python Tools for Data Visualization #python

This is a great article in the latest issue of the JEP for anyone teaching panel methods (any level). Love this history of economic terms and ideas feature. #Econsky

pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...

Think suspensions are key to classroom order? Think again. Evidence from Chicago public high schools shows that reducing suspensions through restorative justice doesn’t harm learning—and improves school climate, especially for Black students. By @aadukia.bsky.social .

Read more: bit.ly/4jstK5j

Typst: Compose papers faster Focus on your text and let Typst take care of layout and formatting. Sign up now and speed up your writing process.

Some folks are excited about typst.app . Looks interesting, but I'm not switching any time soon: (1) LaTeX is deeply embedded in my workflows & works fine for me, (2) although typst is open-source (github.com/typst/typst), I'm concerned about lock-in to the app (cf Overleaf)