Lexi Schubert

Cash Transfers Dramatically Cut Infant Mortality in Kenya, New Research Finds Berkeley, CA (18 Aug. 2025) — With the global development community facing financial upheaval, global development goals increasingly out of reach, and the need for aid greater than ever, new...

🚨 Evidence alert: RCT from a @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social / @ox.ac.uk team found that unconditional cash xfers led to 48% ⬇️ infant deaths in Kenya. 🧢 off to team behind this study: Michael Walker, @tedmiguel.bsky.social, Dennis Egger, Nick Shankar, and Grady Killeen.

go.cega.org/cashimpacts

A 🧵

🆕 What role can (should) economists play in shaping the future of AI? 📢

Today on VoxDevTalks, David Yanagizawa-Drott (@econ.uzh.ch) discusses how economists should think about the future of AI: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD7-...

🎉 Congratulations to @jyusof.bsky.social who has successfully defended his PhD Thesis: «Understanding Inequality and Redistribution: The Role of Perceptions and Preferences»!

🇩🇪 He will pursue a position as an assistant professor at the @unistuttgart.bsky.social

Congrats Gabriele!

Extremely grateful for the opportunity and the outstanding support from the @ubscenter.uzh.ch and @econ.uzh.ch on this academic journey!

Former UBS Center Scholarship holder @schubertlexi.bsky.social successfully defended her PhD Thesis. Congratulations!

Lexi will join @wesleyanuniversity.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor of Economics after a post-doc at @cega-uc.bsky.social.

#EconomicsForSociety #UZH #shareUBS
@econ.uzh.ch

Join us for an unique and inspiring event with the newly awarded @nobelprize.bsky.social laureate @dacemoglumit.bsky.social of @mitofficial.bsky.social on January 29, 6pm, at @uzh-en.bsky.social.

Register now → www.ubscenter.uzh.ch/en/news_even...

#EconomicsForSociety #UZH #shareUBS
@econ.uzh.ch

Recent policy proposals for universal access with automatic enrollment could increase participation by 19 percentage points in the lowest income quintile over ten years, from Motohiro Yogo, Andrew Whitten, and Natalie Cox https://www.nber.org/papers/w33256

Very excited to see this in print soon!

My economist husband spent the last couple days, jubilantly stating “Saturday the holidays begin! Vacation starts! No more work!” This morning he woke up excited: “no work today!!” He is now making slides for an intro trade class that doesn’t exist “for fun! This isn’t work!!”

Basic science is necessary for applied science, example #1000000

Thank you for sharing your paper, Davide! That sounds very related! Will check it out to see if that can help with the "black box" around fatigue and rest

I would even add: please shamelessly promote your work

One terrific thing I enjoyed on old Twitter was discovering new papers

Trust me, you will have an audience if you share your work on Bluesky

🚀 I'm on the job market! Curious how digital tech boosts productivity but still faces adoption barriers? Digital payments are powerful tools, yet data observability can be a double-edged sword—enhancing efficiency but deterring workers fearing tracking. My takeaways on @WorldBank blog! 🙂👇 #EconJMP

Thanks for including my JMP! With @deivyhoueix.bsky.social, we run an RCT studying search costs, adverse selection, and moral hazard between firms and suppliers in a large international import market.

More detail available in the paper, including model and estimation! tinyurl.com/4acf2uwm

Very disappointed in the slow growth of new starter packs being created every day. How do we expect more progress if only 300 starter packs are created every day.

Take a break to check out the fantastic work by my student on the market @schubertlexi.bsky.social!

In Lexi’s experiment, the vast majority of people prefer not to take breaks even though breaks pay for themselves. Misperceived returns to breaks play a key role in this decision.

And with that: take a [restorative] break! So you can get back refreshed to that pile of papers on your desk.

Implications?
If this holds across settings, workers are leaving money on the table: enjoy your break AND earn your income, too.

Aka there is no trade off.

And in our study, we can’t even capture any long-term health costs from overworking e.g., burnout

Limitations? Plenty!

What happens to demand if the task isn’t tiring? Is it task-switching or task-pausing? What if the break content changes? What if the compensation structure changes? Do people learn with experience? What if you add a boss?

Lots of open questions for the future!

How?
(1) Mentally fatiguing task, gig economy type set up, restorative audio script break
(2) Design allows us to link demand and returns at the individual level

Why Experiment?
B/c real world evidence on rest take up is confounded by concerns like wanting your manager to think well of you

What We Find?
#1: On avg breaks boost productivity by 23%. That’s enough to compensate for lost time.
#2: Only 19% of workers choose to take a break. We find no evidence of selection on returns.
#3: Workers underestimate the financial returns to rest.

What We Do?

At a high level: Online work experiment in South Africa where we match returns for rest with demand for rest.
For details: check out the paper!

#JMP Alert #EconTwitter

Restful activities can boost productivity, allowing you to earn more by working less. But do people get this trade-off right? In my JMP, we show they don’t.

lexischubert.github.io/uploads/Schu...