Lukas Hensel

YouTube video by Centre for the Study of African Economies Graduate Study in Economics at Oxford: Scholarship Application Advice from CSAE Professors

Are you an African national thinking of applying for graduate study in Economics at the University of Oxford?

⏰ Deadline for 2026 entry is 27 Jan 2026

📽️ Watch our webinar round-up video to get expert advice from CSAE professors on how to make the best application.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9j5...

Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina Adam Scharpf Christian Gläßel Abstract: Autocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this article focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975-83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown.

Perennial reminder of this excellent paper about how secret police forces are swamped with underachievers

“We don’t want clever people. We want mediocrities.”

(Ungated summary here ajps.org/2019/10/08/w...)

Causal Inference Meeting in Oxford?

Here we go!

This year's European Causal Inference Meeting (EuroCIM / @eurocim.bsky.social) will take place in Oxford, UK.

What to expect?

1/

#CausalSky #EpiSky #EconSky #MLSky #StatSky

🚨 Deadline on Sunday:

🚀 4th CESifo Junior Workshop on the Economics of Education 🤩

👇

All three statements are true at the same time—

This Pluribus ad on a fridge caused a schizophrenic woman named Carol to be hospitalized.

Here me out but have you considered an 8 computer garage lan with Warcraft 3 installed.

We can save America one RTS at a time

End of The Line: how Saudi Arabia’s Neom dream unravelled Mohammed bin Salman’s utopian city was undone by the laws of physics and finance

Brilliant investigation into Saudi Arabia's discovery that the optimal shape for a city is not a 170-kilometre straight line ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

🚨 2-Year Postdocs in Dev Econ at Uni Copenhagen 🚨

Come work on some exciting experimental projects😀!

Dedicated time for your own research.

Reach out to hear more!

** PLEASE REPOST **🙏

Application deadline 🗓️: Nov 11

👉http://bit.ly/4q2Uehf

#EconSky

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7

In the second half of the paper, we develop a model with a new mechanism to explain firms’ lack of wage posting. Firms do not include pay information as bargaining offers an insurance mechanism against not being able to hire profitably at the posted pay.

Why? Not because they don’t know which skills firms want. Rather, because job seekers in this context and other contexts have limited information about their own skills (two of my working papers provide evidence on this in Ethiopia and South Africa: docs.iza.org/dp17761.pdf, tinyurl.com/3wsydrv6).

2. Pay information does not increase sorting by skills as high wage salaries do not receive higher-quality applicants. So firms’ worries about under-qualified applicants do not bear out. However, there is also no positive assortative matching of applicants and vacancies.

1. Pay information increase the wage elasticity of application numbers. That is, relatively high-wage postings attract more applicants, while low-wage postings attract fewer. . ➡️ Job seekers use pay information to decide where to direct their applications.

We recruit a diverse set of 314 firms with a total of 447 vacancies who agree for us to randomize whether they job adverts include salary information. We then track all applications and screen applicants before forwarding applications to our partner firms. Key findings below:

This project was motivated by a stark fact: only !4%! of job adverts in Addis Ababa had any information about the provided pay. We ask firms why: 68% say want to avoid attracting under-qualified applicants and 41% want to negotiate salaries. Can we support this empirically?

🚨🚨New WP Alert (tinyurl.com/4sesthst)%F0...
@marcjosefwitte.bsky.social , @balgovamaria.bsky.social , Tsegay Tekleselassie, and I have a new working paper using a field experiment to study the causal impact of pay information in job adverts on application numbers and applicant skills. A🧵

Research output after tenure drops off a cliff for business, economics, sociology, and other non-lab fields.

But it remains high post-tenure in lab-based fields such as chemistry, physics, computer science, and engineering.
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Never ask a man his age, a woman her salary, or GPT-5 whether a seahorse emoji exists

My 10-years old son is walking home from school alone for the first time. Kidnappers, drug dealers, strangers? Not worried. Other parents driving SUVs is what I am terrified of.

Submission deadline for this PEDL young scholars workshop (to take place the day before the Oct 24-25 @theigc.bsky.social/@yaleegc.bsky.social ‬Firms/Trade/Development conference) is Sept 7 (soon!). For researchers post-PhD but untenured (or <=8 years out). Hope to see many of you there.

From June 2025 -

Political Activists are Not Driven by Instrumental Motives: Evidence from Two Natural Field Experiments - cup.org/4kfEt2h

- @anselmhager.bsky.social, @lukashenselecon.bsky.social, Johannes Hermle & Christopher Roth

#OpenAccess

This is a great opportunity for any researcher based in Africa. Please share widely.

Read our VoxDev piece on how telling jobseekers about their comparative advantage in skills shapes their search decisions and earnings. The underlying paper just received an R&R at AEJ:Applied and an updated version will come out in a couple of months.

Fascinating post about a new painkiller that targets a specific sodium channel in the damaged tissue (rather than the brain). Wouldn't it be amazing if we eventually could treat pain without the risk of addiction?

@wzb.bsky.social is searching for new director for the study of democracy

These are extraordinary senior positions; tenured wth funding to establish a new dept & pursue big agendas

www.wzb.eu/en/jobs/dire...

🚨Please share widely!

#Polisky @epssnet.bsky.social
@ecpr.bsky.social @apsa.bsky.social

I am so happy that this is finally out! It was long process, but it feels great to also get null results published! Thank you to all the editors and referees involved.

🚨🚨 Vacancy alert 🚨🚨

Are you interested in doing a PhD 🎓🎓 in Economics 📈?

Then join us @tilburg-university.bsky.social! We have a vacancy for a PhD student in our department. Check it out here: tiu.nu/22836

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.

Thanks for the reminder @janemunday.bsky.social. Every summer, I repost this article DROWNING DOES NOT LOOK LIKE DROWNING. To date, I know of FOUR kids who were saved after someone who'd clicked on the link learnt how to spot actual drowning. Take time to read and pass on.

slate.com/technology/2...