Remy Levin 🌻

So once they identified today's Nobel prize recipients, they couldn't quite track them down.

Making sports gambling open and accessible to all will be seen as the "smoking is actually good for you" of our time

Whatever you're doing, STOP RIGHT THIS SECOND and watch a sperm whale gulp down a squid, I promise you will not regret it

Papers can still be viable.

bsky.app/profile/remy...

They are literally canceling culture

That’s what TAs are for.

Could be. Effective ad in that case.

Maybe? I guess if they’re written in google docs? Never used the tool, but it seems promising.

YouTube video by Study with J Just give me the grade I know I deserve

Ok, this is actually dope. First real solution I’ve seen to ensuring human writing in the age of LLMs.

Maybe the college essay isn’t dead after all?

youtube.com/shorts/AhA1l...

Hassett prepping lies for confirmation hearing.

Could not agree more with this piece

Opinion | Stop Acting Like This Is Normal

Excellent piece by Ezra Klein: if Dems really believe that Trump is creating an authoritarian government they should not continue to fund it. The shutdown is their only leverage right now to draw attention to what is happening and maybe force change.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/o...

Many studies claim a steady decline of cognitive ability with age, starting from as earlier as one’s twenties.

But this research is flawed, argues Aaron Dymarskiy—more accurate research finds it does not peak until at least age 60:

buff.ly/SiVx5ve

The biggest analytical weakness of Americans in trying to understand the current moment is that their powers of analogy begin and end with US history. The idea that something qualitatively different might be arising simply doesn’t occur to them.

We usually rely on GDP, trade, or wages to study the past. This amazing paper flips the script.

It analyzes 630,000 paintings (1400-2000) to extract emotions and shows how art tracks living standards, wars, inequality, and even climate shocks.

(How is this economics? Everything is economics!)

About this Florida vaccine story:

When they were little - 1 yr and 3 1/2 - my two older boys, who’d had all their shots, got whooping cough.

We asked their pediatrician what would’ve happened if they hadn’t been vaccinated.

“Oh, they’d have died.”

Interesting thought. The big challenge there is that we don’t have the underlying farm-level data in almost any setting (except our Kansas analysis), so it would be challenging to test. But it’s an intriguing question!

Take a look at section 7, the wave-by-wave distributions & maps are there. Also highly concentrated.

I don’t have a strong prior about how gradually preferences vary in space. But I agree it’s a good idea to look at the estimation noise & make an educated attempt at smoothing based on it.

+ a MUCH smaller share of the population works in ag, so the population you can actually measure with the method shrinks dramatically.

In principal we could extend the estimates forward, but the more appropriate settings to apply this to are developing countries in the past or in the present day.

It’s less about the data per se (it’s actually improving over time), and more about the plausibility of using the parsimonious structural model to infer risk preferences from it. Starting with the new deal, the linkage b/w crop prices/yields and actual revenue becomes attenuated. 1/2

Good thoughts. The link with migration is very much on deck for future analyses.

(Section 4 on the historical setting addresses this question in depth)

That’s fair. I do know >90% of the distribution is within 2SDs of the mean. And I strongly suspect that the outliers are not only in the high-noise counties. But it’s an empirical question that we should look into, and we might be able to improve the estimates that way.

Thank you! I don’t have a direct prior about this. Preference heterogeneity is just as plausible for me (and it’s not the only location it occurs). We’ll give some thought to shrinkage methods, though! It’s a good suggestion.

Very good reasons to. Read the paper for the full answer, but in short, that’s the last period before massive govt intervention in Ag, and while a large share of the population was employed in the sector.

Thanks Ethan! I think so too 😄

You know, I hadn’t considered your point before, but given its incisive nature I guess we have no alternative but to shelve the science. Much appreciated!

I’ve got a new working paper with @danielavidart.bsky.social, hot off the press. We develop a new method for measuring the risk preferences of agents in the past, and apply it to the U.S. from 1890-1920.

Check it out! Feedback is welcome.

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/chcof...

Essay which clearly outlines the scientific and ethical problems with selecting embryos for polygenic traits. Scientists associating themselves with embryo selection companies, and those who’ve previously defended sociogenomics but are staying silent on these companies, come in for criticism here

I think this is naive. Human curiosity isn’t going away, but science requires real resources. The US is the world’s largest economy, and US scientific output dwarfs that of any other country. A major contraction in US science means a major contraction in global science.