Petra Moser

When I got tenure, I decided to use it start a new research agenda, studying US science in the 20th century, how it became dominant, what held it back, and what we can do better. Here's the first pub (with Scott Kim).

Immigration Research Shows Stephen Miller Wrong About American Science Stephen Miller, the chief architect of Trump immigration policy, argues that American scientific achievement owes little to immigrants.

Stephen Miller is Wrong about American Science www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

Jacob French and I are hiring a pre-doc in Applied Micro apply.interfolio.com/166572

This, from my colleague
Brent Neiman says it all.

Trump admin used the results from his paper to justify tariff rates. Except they used the completely wrong number.

Staggering 🤯

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/o...

A personal anecdote: a Syrian surgeon amputated my step-Dad's leg last Christmas, assisted by a Syrian surgeon. There's an enormous shortage of doctors in our rural town, long wait times, even with life-threatening disease. Zero capacity. And I did not see a single German-born physician.

Effects on US innovation were disastrous. After the quotas US scientists patented 30% less in the pre-quota fields of ESE-based scientists relative to other fields. Research with @mulysan.bsky.social & Sahar Parsa: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/h80j9...

Eastern & Southern Europeans (ESE) had the same response to the 1920s quotas act. Intended to limit low-skilled immigration to the US the quotas exempted university scientists and students. Still, the US lost an estimated 122 ESE-born professors & 670 scientists who would have come as students 2/n

6,000 Syrians work as doctors in Germany. Some weigh whether to stay or go. Syrian doctors have established themselves in Germany, filling critical health-care gaps. But Assad’s fall and anti-migrant sentiment have some torn.

Some Germans want Syrians to return home - unless they are doctors. That won't work: "If my family and friends aren't allowed to stay, then I don't want to either." 1/n wapo.st/3DDxUYd

Review: ‘Moby-Dick,’ the Opera, Cuts the Blubber Streamlining Melville’s sprawling novel, Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s moody, monochromatic 2010 adaptation has come to the Metropolitan Opera.

Dunno what this says about me, but I saw "Moby Dick" at the Met last night and absolutely loved it, down to the "squarely undulating minor-key references to Philip Glass, John Adams and Britten..." Go see it if you can!
www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/a...

The Curious Surge of Productivity in U.S. Restaurants 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...

Phew. All that takeout I'm buying is increasing productivity. Thank you @goolsbee.bsky.social, Chad Syverson, NYUStern PhD student Rebecca Goldgof & Joe Tatarka www.nber.org/papers/w33555

When German Alexander rammed his car into a group of people in Mannheim on Monday, killing two, wounding 25, he was stopped by Afzal from Pakistan. It's funny how we only hear names and place of birth when they match our fear and prejudice.

Are Birkenstocks a Work of Art? A German Court Says No. The famous sandal company lost a battle over copyright law, leaving room for imitations to spawn.

There is still some sanity in this world, at least when it comes to footwear. Birkenstocks argued that their sandals are "art" to get copyright protection. German courts said "nope" www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/s...

USDA accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is now trying to rehire them An Agriculture Department spokesperson told NBC News that officials are "working to swiftly rectify the situation."

the grownups are back in charge

USDA accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is now trying to rehire them www.nbcnews.com/politics/dog...

Opinion | Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew, Janet Yellen: DOGE Is a Threat to U.S. Democracy. (Gift Article) Former Secretaries Rubin, Summers, Geithner, Lew and Yellen argue that DOGE is a threat to America.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/o...

A plagiarism check did not find evidence of plagiarism, so is publishing accusations of poor citation practices in footnotes (25 years ago, please check mine). And when that's not working they go after the dissertation of @robert-habeck.de wife. Ok....

ESA now puts the probability of Earth impact at 1.8%, NASA (miraculously not dismantled yet by Musk and Trump) at 1.9%.

NASA data suggest a yield of roughly 8MT TNT equiv. Big, but Tsar Bomba was bigger 🤓

tl;dr: it's very unlikely to hit. And there's zero chance we'll be wiped out as a species.

Opinion | A sample of the government webpages Trump doesn’t want you to see Dozens of government webpages disappeared as part of his plan to reshape the U.S. government to his liking. Not even NASA was spared.

Felt this, as we were trying to estimate how seeing Marie Curie affected girls' choice to pursue science. Part of our data was gone. I never thought that in this country censorship would prevent me from doing my research. wapo.st/4hPMU3A

Germany needs about 400,000 immigrants per year to keep its economy going. IAB's Enzo Weber & @yuliyakosyakova.bsky.social explain why (in German) www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...

Kim is great, really smart and thoughtful. And like @tkehoe.bsky.social I admire Kim for his service and very much hope he succeeds in influencing US economic policy.

"The feeling of not being wanted in that country" is an issue not only in Germany but also in the US, historically and today. In "Immigration and Innovation. Lessons from the Quota Act" we find that students, who were exempted, did not come to the US after the quotas if their countries were targeted

Sounds fascinating!

Overlooked No More: Annie Easley, Who Helped Take Spaceflight to New Heights (Gift Article) She broke barriers at NASA and contributed to its earliest space missions as a rocket scientist, mathematician and computer programmer.

Inspiring: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/o...

I'm shocked by the implied decline in inequality between 1913 and 1958. Did WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII disproportionately destroy top wealth? Using the same measures for 1913 and the rest of the graph, 1913 may look as bad as today. So what happened in the first half of the 20th century?

What's up with 1913 and 1958?

Parents' Earnings and the Returns to Universal Pre-Kindergarten 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...

Access to pre-k increases parental earnings by over $5,400 per year, show bsky.app/profile/john..., Chris Neilson, Xiaoyang Ye, Seth Zimmerman). Could you do this for publications? For women vs men? nber.org/papers/w33038

A much bigger shift towards gender equity. This may just be my very small sample of junior colleagues, but I see more of them taking care of kids.

Not what I had expected to see: www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/u...

YouTube video by Brooklyn Conservatory Chorale Brooklyn Conservatory Chorale and Community Orchestra perform selection from Messiah

No, I don't think so. They'll record parts and post, like here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiGz.... I just joined but the chorale has been around for 19 years. It's a really nice group of people and the new director Conrad Chu is doing an amazing job

Everyone using #CensusData should be worried, no matter your politics. Political interference will introduce bias not only in choosing questions but also in response rates and accuracy, if ppl are concerned about reporting true immigration status and other traits. We need good data to design policy

Santos started his 5-year appointment in 2022, and was preparing the 2030 census, which is "set to be used to redistribute political representation and trillions in federal funding across the country over the next decade."