@benjaminkrause.bsky.social
Exec Director at UChicago's Becker Friedman Institute for Economics (BFI): 'Frontier Research. Global Impact.' My own research is on development and governance, primarily in weak states and ungoverned spaces. Also: SciFi, dad jokes, midwesternisms.
"Ayiti cheri pou jan m'adore w
Pa gen anyen kap janm fè mwen kite w"
Total Factor Productivity?
Willingness To Pay?
Why The Face?
Most of these and more now all together on Becker Friedman Institute for Economics' BFI Blackboard!
bfi.uchicago.edu/bfi-blackboa...
Spoiler Alert:
By more fully accounting for quality improvements in the tech we all know and love, "rather than slipping into a 15 year productivity slump, true [Total Factor Productivity] growth rate in the manufacturing sector has averaged 0.6 per cent since 2009."
www.ft.com/content/4efe...
An economic 'who done it' with a graphic reveal popping in pink!
The FT featured recent work from Chad Syverson, Ali Hortacsu, and co-authors trying to answer "Why Is Manufacturing Productivity Growth So Low?"
bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/u...
Shout out to @johnlist.bsky.social, @gubri.bsky.social and Sabrina Liu on this work!
I'm personally particularly pumped that @beckerfriedman.bsky.social will be helping build on these findings!
Do you have kids? Might college be a part of their future?
As someone who tends to overthink and underact on parenting decisions, this write-up (and the underlying research) really hit home.
money.com/saving-for-c...
. . . we delivered more than 2,000 healthy babies into this world without losing a single mother - including once in the middle of an all staff meeting when a tap-tap came honking into the crowd of us gathered in the office parking-lot with a mom minutes from delivery.
I got to work quite closely with @doctorswithoutborders.org in Port-au-Prince when overseeing the J/P HRO hospitals. In addition to patching up a whole lot of people up from all of the dangers and tragedies that unfolded over those years . . .
A great reminder of why we need more rigorous evidence in public policy! Special shout out to our Emanuele Colonnelli and his findings that corruption is also internally self-defeating and does not actual succeed in greasing the wheels.
voxdev.org/topic/mythbu...
In the hope that sharing this here isn't entirely self-defeating, check out this potential tool for overcoming our collective action problem of excessive social media use . . . brought to you by our own Leonardo Bursztyn.
www.wsj.com/tech/persona...
If you're a government official in a Middle Income country working to overcome the 'Middle Income Trap', join us next summer in Chicago!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da49...
HUGE congrats to Philippe Aghion who shared the Nobel Prize in Economics this morning!
Philippe and his work with fellow laureate Peter Howitt on "sustained growth through creative destruction” have been instrumental for the Growth Academy co-hosted by
@beckerfriedman.bsky.social & the World Bank
Bringing nonvoting representatives of red-state perspectives into the congressional Democrats’ deliberations would be a strong signal of Democrats’ commitment to work for people in every part of America."
thehill.com/opinion/camp...
"To ensure that views from these Republican-dominated red states are not ignored, the House Democratic Caucus should invite these states’ Democratic parties to designate a recent congressional candidate to serve as a liaison with the House Democrats.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Nobel laureate Roger Myerson recently explore some of his ideas like these (our interview will be coming out soon, but in the meantime I wanted to share with you this):
The entire conversation is just fantastic, but jump straight to Joel's remarks here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueR9...
They explored the very topic he was recognized for this morning: “the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress” -- or as we called it at the time: "Culture and Markets: The Potent Mix that Fueled Growth from the Industrial Revolution to the Present"
HUGE congratulations to Joel Mokyr who shared the Nobel Prize in economics this morning!
We at Becker Friedman Institute for Economics hosted him just last fall along with Nobel laureates James Robinson and James Heckman as well as Deirdre McCloskey.
I've already got my copy and am excited to be kicking off this conversation. If you're in Chicago on Oct 29, please join us on campus!
I realize #Chicago is in the news quite a bit these days, but in case it might be for reasons other than this one, I want to make sure you know we're building the global hub for #Quantum #Innovation!
#SiliconValleyByTheSweetWaterSeaShore
news.uchicago.edu/story/ground...
We're all struggling to feel our way through the swamp of AI slop that is flooding the internet. Check out the latest from Alex Imas and Brian Jabarian testing AI detection tools bfi.uchicago.edu/insights/art...
-- spoiler: some solid reasons to check out www.pangram.com if you haven't already.
While we've seen much less reporting during this disaster here in the US, the tragedies unfolding in hundreds of thousands of children's lives are no less unconscionable.
Today in #Haiti, nearly as many people have been displaced by the human disaster of #EconomicCollapse, failing #StateCapacity and #OrganizedCrime.
The 2010 #earthquake in #Haiti, by some estimates among the largest natural disasters in history, left nearly a million-and-a-half survivors homeless and surrounded by the rubble.
The need for this "#Gang Suppression Force" (GSF) www.bbc.com/news/article... is very much connected with actions that further antagonize the spiral like this www.wsj.com/world/americ...
The vicious downward spiral in #Haiti of #instability to #economicStagnation to #violence to #economicIsolation is heart wrenching as I watch what my friends are subjected to.
It was quite an honor and a ride to sit down with Jim for this conversation! Take a listen or have a watch and let me know your thoughts.
