@laurakgee.bsky.social
Economist 📈📉at Tufts University. I like to study topics in behavioral economics, gender discrimination and public goods provision (including charitable giving). http://laurakgee.weebly.com/ (she/her)
Great talk today by @joannavenator.bsky.social about contraceptive choice (eg pill vs IUD) and how it is affected by uncertainty from things like the 2016 election or individual state abortion restrictions.
Something you almost certainly won’t see in the national news is how many tiny protests are all over the Twin Cities today.
They’re at stoplights. Parks. Bridges. Just everywhere. And people walking by are joining in. The solidarity is so deep.
It’s beautiful and brave. I love this city.
The issue is that the RA labels are coarsened & neutral-by-default, while model scores are more dispersed & lean positive. Looking for guidance on validation, bias checks, and whether post-training or calibration makes sense in this setting. OR should we be trying something else?
#econsky ‼️ Seeking guidance on quantifying the tone of emails. Currently using a continuous score from RoBERTa 3-sentiment model (a transformer-based pre-trained language model) and human-RA labels.
Looks like schooling really does causally shift voters to the left. Neat looking work by @danielfiroozi.bsky.social
Are there any US lawmakers fighting to protect the rights of Black/African immigrants that I/we can support? Because oof- what a dismal way to end the year/start 2026 and I've heard not a peep from any of our representatives: abcnews.go.com/Internationa... #Blacksky
All research is exploratory if you’re confused enough
Much missing data in November report on inflation, CPI.
Hard to know what really happened to prices in November.
All this due to government shutdown and refusal to allow these workers to come to work.
November jobs report weak, and shows nearly no job growth last few months
Almost all of the job growth is in health care
Large job losses in federal government
"“If a bloke in Bonnyrigg needs six high-powered rifles and is able to get them under existing licensing scheme, then there’s something wrong,’ he said."
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
The US Administration has banned Americans from *adopting babies* from much of the African continent.
Adopting.
Babies.
What trait do those babies have that, when they grow up as fully American adults, would make them a threat to our country in any form?
DEADLINE TODAY: The NBER Race and Stratification Working Group will have its annual meeting on Friday, March 27, 2026. @franciscaantman.bsky.social, Bocar Ba, Robynn Cox and I are organizing the program. Submit your paper today! @nber.org #Econsky www.nber.org/conferences/...
Such a great piece. And if Meer and I ever update this handbook chapter will try to see how we can include this www.nber.org/papers/w25938
I argue in this piece that the nonprofit sector should be thinking more about the counterfactual when assessing fundraising success: winning a $2M competitive bid over capable peers advances the cause less than convincing someone to donate $1M they'd have spent on a yacht.
Our affiliate, Seema Jayachandran, argues in this blog post that, when fundraising, nonprofits shouldn't just care about how much they raise. They should value new funds they attract to the cause more than competitive grants they win that would have otherwise gone to an equally capable peer.
The brilliant Kate Ho has passed away.
She was an amazing economist and a genuinely kind human being. Her work shaped how we think about healthcare markets and her generosity touched everyone lucky enough to know her.
The profession and the world are poorer without her.
Devastating news. Kate was a great economist and a generous person.
Ughhh
Fascinating things happening on Econ Twitter
Amazing things happening on X
He is asking so politely, why not give the man what he wants?
I really loved Allison Daminger’s book! Highly recommend. She helped me get a handle on the current state of “mental load” work outside Econ (and bonus seems to mention my work with @olgastoddard.bsky.social @kbuzard7.bsky.social in the concluding chapter 🥰)
I'm at the @nber.org Education meeting today, ready to learn from a fantastic lineup of papers (attached).
I'll try my best to live-post the discussion for those who'd like to follow along here.
The meeting is also being streamed on YouTube (link below).
www.nber.org/conferences/...
#EconSky
Fully agree!
Enjoy this huskie + basketball french toile wallpaper) from a great visit @uconn.bsky.social including pizza with @davidesimon.bsky.social @danielavidart.bsky.social @remylevin.bsky.social and a visit to the Dairy Bar with @deliafurtado.bsky.social, bonus was seeing @nataliemillar.bsky.social
Exciting news on @malengo.org, the NGO that helps East African students move to Europe for education: Our research team has given us a glimpse of their early findings!
Here is the full writeup, joint with @richardnerland.bsky.social:
forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CpZYHk...
Thread follows!
@andresbafer.bsky.social came and gave an interesting talk about the effects of immigrants on native students (positive!) @tufts.edu today. Thanks for stopping by!
1/ Egalitarianism should begin at home. I link to this article by @bencasselman.bsky.social in light of the communications between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein that have just been released. The released emails and the fact of friendship are vile.
www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/b...