Valerie Mueller

When my kid in college gives me the time of day and calls me for 45min, I’m in heaven.

February 28, 2026 Early this morning, the U.S.

February 28, 2026

23 years ago I thought I could not hate a politician more than GW

I know it is easy to doomscroll, especially today. Please plan for yourself at least one or many more offline activities. Buy a pastry, read a book, go to a museum, see a friend, cook a meal, play with a pet, or even a trip to Costco. Try to limit time on your phone and avoid stewing in anxiety.

Our Congress has the sole power to enter into warfare, whose horrific consequences are always beyond the imagination of any small group of men.

The suspension of our Constitution under an authoritarian regime is an emergency that will harm all of us.

Every Conservative and Liberal American.

It was 104 degrees in parts of Texas today. That's the post. It's February

The hubris 🤬

Harvard has determined Summers is unfit to teach its students…

...SO Summers concludes he shouldl now spend all his time advising the world on public policy

www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Sock monkeys holding signs that say “STOP ICE” and “STOP KILLING OUR NEIGHBORS”

Things feels calmer now in Minneapolis but the ICE siege is far from over. Many families are traumatized and remain in hiding, we still have over 900 ICE agents in Minnesota, and the economic impacts on our city—and especially on our targeted neighbors—are staggering.

Cover of The Lancet:

@thelancet.com
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Monkey holding stuffed monkey

That coauthor who won’t let go of the manuscript*

*is usually me

Why Biden-era clean energy investment policies had limited political returns | PNAS The Biden Administration enacted the largest federal policy framework to incentivize clean energy and decarbonization in U.S. history. We examine w...

Our paper is out in PNAS.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The Nazis stopped Jewish doctors from practising, so thousands of them left the country (my great grandfather was one of them). So many left that this was a good natural experiment for estimating the causal effect of losing doctors on infant mortality (& thousands died)

Infant mortality increased following the Nazi expulsion of Jewish doctors, according to Helge Liebert and Beatrice Mäder in a new REStat paper!

Education inequality has declined in South Africa, but this has not translated into declines in earnings inequality, from David Lam, Murray Leibbrandt, Arden J. Finn, and Nicola Branson www.nber.org/papers/w34869

U.S. will be the leading exporter of operas soon as

The Biden Admin directed hundreds of billions to clean energy/manufacturing.

Did these investments shift public opinion?

We find that these projects are visible but not traceable: People notice nearby investments, but connect them to Governors, not Biden.

Thread 👇
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Adding home visits to a social safety net programme providing cash transfers and parenting information led to sustained improvements in child development, health behaviours, and education outcomes in Burkina Faso, whereas cash alone produced fewer lasting effects.

Read today's article to learn more

🌟 New @novafrica.bsky.social Working Paper!

"From Destination to Origin: Experimental Evidence on the International Spillovers of Migrant Integration"

By @catiabatista.bsky.social #NovaSBE #LaraBohnet #NYU @gazeaud.bsky.social #CNRS & @juliaseither.bsky.social #UofC

🔗 tinyurl.com/627brza4

🚨 A defining moment for global health data.

The termination of the #USAID-supported Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Program has wide-ranging consequences. We reflect on the collapse and argue what should come next in a new PNAS: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2…

📊 9,000+ studies

#EconSky

Wow, I’m loving the new QJE articles today. This paper looks at the impact of drought-index insurance on conflict. A nice extension to Jensen et al. (2017), one of my favs www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Incredible findings on the importance of aspirations in future success. #EconSky @ifpri.org

The Future in Mind: Aspirations and Long-Term Outcomes in Rural Ethiopia* Abstract. Aspirations may condition the future-oriented choices of individuals and thus may play a role in the persistence of poverty or the effort to brea

Recently accepted by #QJE: “The Future in Mind: Aspirations and Long-Term Outcomes in Rural Ethiopia,” by Bernard, Dercon (@gamblingondev.bsky.social), Orkin, Schinaia, and Taffesse (@astaffesse.bsky.social): doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

My job market paper is now available as a preprint! 🚨

Using survey evidence with a conjoint experiment, I test how state-level immigrant integration policy features affect perceptions of fairness and support.

3 key points, the big takeaway, the link, and a bonus below⬇️🧵

New work w/ @kbroussard.bsky.social in @prpr-journal.bsky.social! We find that women with reproductive health conditions (like fibroids or endometriosis) are *more* likely to want a child but, conditional on wanting a child, *less* likely to intend to have one. 1/2 rdcu.be/e5BE6

🚨 Please share widely! 🚨

I'm hiring a postdoc (from Aug 1) to help build a new research program on politically sustainable immigration policies at Notre Dame.

Looking for a social scientist with strong quant skills, familiarity with new computational tools, and interest in public-facing research.

Fiscal Year 2026 Appropriations Bills Enacted, Drastic Funding Cuts Averted!

Good news from @popassocamerica.bsky.social on federal funding for demography and many other fields! The newly signed FY26 appropriations bill actually *increased* NIH's budget by nearly 1%, among a number of other wins.

www.populationassociation.org/blogs/paa-we...

Best practices for moving from correlation to causation in ecological research - Nature Communications Different scientific traditions offer seemingly disparate approaches to inferring causal relationships in ecological systems. This Perspective unifies the causal assumptions and methods from...

Excited to share our new paper in @natcomms.nature.com We synthesize causal discovery & inference approaches across traditions (regression adjustment, quasi-expts, SEMs, Granger causality, convergent cross-mapping, and more) into a unified workflow for ecologists. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Paper out today in PNAS!

Transmission build-out could bring electricity generation cost reductions.

But market integration saves costs *because* it pushes out high-cost suppliers, so:

generators in some regions have incentives to block or delay transmission.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We could have replaced the journal system years ago and just publish all research on GitHub. But we didn't. There is pretty strong institutional lock in to these systems which makes me skeptical that Claude Code will blow it all up. Institutions are sticky.