Bitsy Perlman

🎓 Navigating the economics job market?

Join the Sadie Collective Fall 2025 Job Market Seminar on Oct 21st at 6 PM EST. Hear insights from Morgan Townsend, Hareem Rauf & Monique Davis!

Register here 👉 tinyurl.com/sadiejobpanel

Patent citations: Tracing spillovers or chasing shadows? Measuring how ideas move across firms and regions

🔎 Patent citations are everywhere in innovation research. But do they really trace how ideas spill over between inventors—or are we mistaking legal paperwork for knowledge flows? 🧐

New on #ThePatentist: www.thepatentist.com/p/patent-cit...

#patents #innovation #spillovers

#BREAKING: #SCOTUS punts in the Lisa Cook case, deferring resolution of Trump’s emergency application seeking to remove Cook from the Federal Reserve Board pending argument on the application in January 2026.

Cook stays on the Board for now:

Lightning round of what’s closed and what’s open during this government shutdown.

Got questions?

Drop them in the replies and I’ll work to answer them through the day.

NIH races to spend its 2025 grant money — but fewer projects win funding Despite political obstacles, officials are on track to disburse all of the research funds allocated to US biomedical behemoth.

Staff members at the NIH seem to have done the impossible: spend the agency's $48 billion budget.

“Everyone has been rallying together to clean up the mess, but it’s a mess that did not need to be made,” an NIH program officer told me.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Similar/identical language for NSF. Here's my transcription of an email shared with me by staff.

Update: Commerce has now also posted its shutdown plan. BEA would completely shut down, and Census would shut down apart from some operations related to the 2030 decennial census. So no retail sales, international trade, PCE, GDP...
www.commerce.gov/sites/defaul... #EconSky #NumbersDay

Wonder what the one exempt BLS employee during a shutdown does

• The Census Bureau reevaluated the number of the HUs and GQs in the 2026 Census Test which reduces the estimated number of respondents and thus causes the total burden hours to be lower. The Census Bureau previously submitted a total of 631,850 respondents and 103,502 hours, but the new totals are 444,150 respondents and 72,180 hours. • The Census Bureau will no longer be conducting a GQE reinterview. • The Census Bureau adjusted the list of form numbers to only include questionnaires and information collection instruments. • In GQE, the Census Bureau will no longer collect information using an in-person interview by field staff or GQ administrator or collecting paper listing. • The Census Bureau is partnering with the United States Postal Service (USPS) to test postal carriers supporting the In-Field Enumeration operation for the 2026 Census Test. The Census Bureau will evaluate and assess the viability of using USPS postal carriers to increase efficiency in various capacities typically performed by temporary Census Bureau field workers. Postal carriers will serve as enumerators in two test site locations.

NEW: The Census Bureau says it plans to test using U.S. Postal Service mail carriers to conduct census interviews at two sites of next year's major field test for the #2030Census. It's also reduced its estimate of "2026 Census Test" participants by about 30%
www.federalregister.gov/public-inspe...

*realizes I don't know when or why this started *
hun www.gao.gov/assets/ggd-9...

HHMI adopts Plan U journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

a Southie bubble tea shop had to cut back its proposed hours to 9:30 p.m. because of opposition from a bar (of the many along that stretch) that stays open until 1 a.m.? www.axios.com/local/boston...

📢 Conference announcement!

Paolo Surico and I are excited to be organizing this @cepr.org conference on Public Policies for Innovation.

If you work in the #Economics of #Innovation and #InnovationPolicy, please submit + spread the word. Non-presenting attendees also invited.

I think the location at 1143 New Hampshire Ave NW

Kind of far away from places to eat lunch, imo

‼️‼️Voting in the @aeainformation.bsky.social election ends on September 30. The electronic ballot was sent on behalf of the AEA by Intelliscan, Inc. on August 1. Please look for aea@intelliscanvotes.com in your inbox.

Read my statement of purpose and bio at www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/le....

Yes, we should try to design systems to allow for this, indeed that encourage it. But also, in modern scientific discourse often accepted ideas are accepted for a reason, and it is not because some prestige fairy (e.g. family money) came down and anointed someone with bad ideas the leader of a field

Of course, scientific discourse is dominated by high prestige people. How could it be otherwise? What human endeavor has not had discourse dominated by high prestige people?

Yes, scientific discourse is at its best when someone with new ideas can gain prestige by showing evidence to back them up.

If Schulman want an animating spirit, I would suggest he read “Science: The Endless Frontier” by Vannevar Bush. Including in his vision that led to this “golden age of innovation”, Bush wrote:

54/n

The Census Bureau is now headed by a Trump official in an acting position George Cook is the Trump administration's new acting director of the Census Bureau, which has been thrust into the middle of a renewed attempt by President Trump to alter the national head count.

SCOOP: The Trump administration has installed a new acting director of the Census Bureau, @npr.org has learned. George Cook takes over the federal government’s largest statistical agency after it's been thrust into the middle of a renewed attempt by President Trump to alter the national head count

YouTube video by NBER 2023, Trevon Logan, "Whitelashing: Black Politicians, Taxes, and Violence"

Two years ago, @nber.org asked me to talk about my research on political violence during Reconstruction. Political violence is not just about intimidation, it is also related to thwarting and violently penalizing political success. Seems appropriate to revisit that today.

youtu.be/Wrdj4oLq4wk

Harvard vs Trump: research funds still mostly frozen despite court win US funding agencies might violate a judge’s ruling if they continue to withhold money.

New: More than two weeks after a court order ruled the Trump administration's termination of 1000+ grants illegal, Harvard's research funding is still frozen—with one exception. On Wednesday, NSF reinstated both Harvard's grants and access to funds. My reporting:

i just want to convey the depth of my appreciation to our colleagues, in the broad sense, in the american and UK university systems, for continuing to teach the fact that trans people exist even though you are all going to be ceaselessly punished alongside us for it. thank you.

CDC stops work-from-home disability policy The change was made after the attack on CDC's headquarters in August.

The rise of remote work coming out of the pandemic led to a historic rise in employment rates for those with disabilities. Return to office policies, in general, could reverse that trend."

Thanks @emilypeck.bsky.social for interviewing me. www.axios.com/2025/09/17/c...

Despite fear of retaliation, hundreds of federal workers urge Congress to protect medicine and science Federal workers send Congress a letter pleading for help, but their trouble attracting signatures reflects fear of retaliation.

"We took an oath. You did too. Will you uphold yours?” Nearly 900 federal workers, including CDC and NIH staff, signed a letter to Congress urging it to protect medicine and science. Story via @angusrohan.bsky.social and @aniloza.bsky.social for @statnews.com
www.statnews.com/2025/09/18/f...

Graph titled "value of grants awarded in 2025 has caught up to average of previous years." Graph shows average of 2016-24 spending and how much has been spent so far in FY25

Graph titled "Amount of first-year R01 and R21 grants." Graph compares average of 2016-24 to 2025.

It's been a busy time for NIH grants staff — the agency seems on track to spend its budget this fiscal year

But, because of multi-year funding, fewer projects are being funded than in previous years.

The number of R grants has fallen from 5,633 to 3,758

analysis by @jaspar.bsky.social

A graph showing nearly 500 million dollars of NIH investment in 4-year R01s since July 2025.

Here is a plot of 4-year multi-year funded new R01s for 2015-2025. NIH has made some 4-year R01s late in the fiscal year to invest the last of the appropriation, but what is happening this year is quite different.

I estimate that these new R01s are ~25% of the multi-year funding since July 1.

🚨NEW RESULTS (w/ Slattery & Nober)
- When gov't engineers retire, highway projects cost more: the engineers pay for themselves 6 times over
- Improving gov’t engineer quality from the 25th to 75th percentile reduces costs by 14%, equal to 3x avg. engineer pay

Paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....