Fiona Scott Morton

ICYMI: New paper for causal effects with panel data, subsuming other approaches. We generate realistic synthetic data based on commonly studied datasets, showing our method substantially outperforms others and providing insight about what in the data-generating process corresponds to gains.

"academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it... The dominant four collectively generated... $12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024."

If they win, Democrats will have to use their newfound authority to rethink, even dismantle, agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They may need to walk back the Bush-era decision to consolidate those agencies and others under a single department, given the wild abuses perpetrated under this administration and its predecessors. It will need to give serious thought to major political and social reform, including D.C. statehood, a federal ban on partisan gerrymandering, a new voting rights act and federal protections for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, including the rights of gender and sexual minorities. Democrats will also need to embrace the legislature’s constitutional authority to structure the executive branch and the judiciary, up to and including Supreme Court reform. If they win next year, Democrats will need to treat the next Congress not as a return to the status quo ante but as the beginning of a new era in which the principal task is to roll back the president’s effort to create and consolidate a personalist dictatorship. They’ll need to fortify the American political system against future attempts to play dictator and lay out a project of genuine democratic renewal. None of this is possible without a willingness to use power rather than just hold it. What we’ve seen this week is that there are still too many Democrats whose instinct is to retreat to normalcy rather than face the conflict at hand.

Jamelle was cooking.

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/o...

Just generally I wish there was more enforcement around scams and fraud. Maybe it’s a drop in the bucket, but enforcing the laws that protect our most vulnerable Americans from financial ruin seems like it’s always a good idea.

Let’s hear more of the dangers of democratic socialism under Mamdani

FIFA awarding a "peace prize" to Trump would be so absolutely on-brand, a truly genius innovation.

Can lawyers tell me if regular people are allowed to fight unidentified muggers if they do not know whether they are CBP or criminals?

It's been a few days since Trump announced his "deal" with Xi. It's now clear that Trump got fleeced. America gave up lots and got nothing.

It's a story you should know bc few things matter more than the U.S.-China relationship.

1/ So here's a🧵

I wonder which position in the Trump Administration Andrew will now pick?

The Netherlands finished burying all of its telecom and low/medium voltage power lines more than 20 years ago. When you look out at a Dutch street your view is not obstructed by overhead crap. Why is America still a primitive mess and why aren’t Americans even trying to fix it

museum of resistance to autocracy

Whoever is the next Democratic presidential candidate should vow to tear down the hideous ballroom and rebuild the Rose Garden, I bet there are a lot of votes in that

Reforming the GOP is indeed the best way out of America's crisis in the long term. The scary thing is that no one has even the outlines of a credible plan for how to do that

The president of the United States posted a video of him defecating on the American people. Many in my profession normalized it. This is a big reason why we are where we are.

Why are Starbucks tea bags made of plastic? Am I right about this? It seems so and I don’t want to be drinking microplastics. Who could fix this?

The Nobel Prize committee’s message for European innovation The award of the Nobel Prize to economists working on creative destruction contains a lesson that policymakers should be ready to let some firms go

🏅 The Nobel Prize committee’s message for European innovation

💡 It is time for Europe to embrace creative destruction as a necessary consequence of successful growth and #innovation

✏️ Will policymakers take note?

By @proffionasm.bsky.social
🔗 buff.ly/FVohLzz
#EconSky

On October 18th, millions of brave Americans will stand up and peacefully protest against the authoritarian disease metastasizing under Donald Trump.

No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings. @gtconway.bsky.social

Biofuels are a bad climate solution and a huge waste of land, food and millions in subsidies. Burning crops for fuel only pushes us further away from our climate goals.

But biofuel production is only growing across the planet.
4/

Should the New York Times be sold to Pennysaver and its editors sent to work in Amazon warehouses? It depends on who you ask.

Is it fun?

It almost ceases to be ideological, I think anti-moron could be a lane for a political party.

💻 Digital platform regulation: are we all included in the digital economy?
📅 25 September 2025 13:30-14:30 CET

Can smart regulation make digital markets fairer, more open and better for users? w/ @proffionasm.bsky.social, Coco Carmona & Emanuele Tarantino.

🔗 Sign up: buff.ly/iRu6jTx

What people can do right now: cancel their Disney+ streaming subscriptions. Disney is making an economic calculation here. Thus far -- they see only the benefits from cancelling Kimmel. We the media-consuming people have the power to make them see the costs.

Also, let’s note the absence of New Hampshire from the group, leaning in to its motto “Live free and die”

Maine, Northeastern States Formally Announce Northeast Public Health Collaborative Regional partnership of public health agencies and leaders will share expertise, improve coordination, and promote and protect evidence-based public health Several Northeastern states -- including Mai...

States are stepping up! Look at the Northeast Public Health Collaborative that is going to fulfill formerly federal functions like recommending vaccines. Yay. www.maine.gov/governor/mil...

Charlie Brown of course. And Lucy.

“It could put loyalties at risk” says Bloomberg. Really? American farmers and Republicans are like Carlie Brown and the proverbial football. They always come back so they can always be exploited.