Matt Tarduno

four stick figures on sleds, one is sliding face first, face down, marked "skeleton", diagonally opposite to it is one sliding feet first, face up, marked "luge". The other two combinations are drawn and labeled with question marks

given the existence of skeleton and luge, i postulate the existence of two other, yet to be discovered, winter olympic sports

devastating news

Postdoctoral Fellow in Economics of Education in Medford, for Tufts University Exciting opportunity in Medford, for Tufts University as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Economics of...

Postdoc posting: Economics of education at Tufts with my colleague Elizabeth Setren.

main.hercjobs.org/jobs/2203818...

In today’s NZ Herald

Nearly 85% of Harvard Undergraduates Oppose Proposed Cap on A Grades, HUA Survey Finds | News | The Harvard Crimson Nearly 85 percent of Harvard undergraduates who responded to a Harvard Undergraduate Association survey opposed a proposed cap on A grades, signaling broad student resistance to major changes in gradi...

Today in the worlds least surprising news www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

fwiw, famously, many cap and trade systems feature a phased/gradual introduction to ease this kind of adjustment...

chart

coming soon to @chicagocityscape.com: this chart showing new construction homes permitted per ward per year

the * asterisk indicates that the ward saw fewer than 100 homes in the 8-year period shown

If you’re not using Claude Code, now’s the time to jump in!

Are female economists treated differently than males in academic seminars?

These authors wanted to know whether gender shapes how scholars are treated when presenting research.

So they built a massive dataset of 2,000+ economics seminars, job talks, and conference presentations from 2019–2023...

Woah this NYC isometric map (looks just like Simcity 2000) is blowing my mind! cannoneyed.com/isometric-nyc/

Hey JMCs, I know the waiting can be stressful.
Good news: @billingsecon.bsky.social, @schnepel.bsky.social, & I are hiring a postdoc on our project funded by Arnold VentureS
📢 Apply here: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDetail…
#EconSky 📈📉

they don't make AER titles like they used to

Investigating whether economic hardship undermines preferences for honesty in Kenya, from Livia Alfonsi, Michal Bauer, Julie Chytilová, and Edward Miguel www.nber.org/papers/w34695

every day the Financial Times asks me questions i am frankly unqualified to answer

Deputy Policy Director Chicago, Illinois, United States

Big, big news! This is probably the coolest of the many jobs I have shared here!

🚨COME BE MY DEPUTY🚨

🚨JOIN THE BEST TEAM WORKING IN CLIMATE POLICY AND POLITICS!🚨

This. Will. Go. Fast.

Everyone talks about the "credibility revolution", but I think one of the most valuable shifts in econ over the last decade has been the rise of rigorous descriptive historical work like this in top journals:

"Big 3 Not So Big"

Q: There’s a regression with three coefficients: b1, b2, b3

A theory says b1 > b2 > b3

What statistical test should I perform to test this joint prediction?

The point estimates are such that b3 > b1 > b2, if that matters

E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution

The EPA will stop considering lives saved when setting pollution limits and instead calculate only the cost to businesses. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...

Finished teaching a new course on energy markets and the clean energy transition last month. Was a blast and have lots of thoughts for next year.

One takeaway is the value of going beyond academic journals/textbooks and incorporating media articles, podcasts, and video. Here's a few we covered... 🧵

Working in open science or meta-research? Present at the BITSS Annual Meeting in Berkeley! One of the leading conferences in this space.

I'd agree if all PM was from traffic! But a lot of US estimates (e.g., EPA's inventories) suggest that even in cities, transport's share of PM is less than 25%

So even if transport's share of PM were to decrease by, say, 50%, then that would only be ~12.5% or total, or about 1 µg/m³ in NYC

We love to see NYC implementing congestion pricing, but this kind of policy isn't going to eliminate urban PM2.5

Cook et al., on the other hand, use data from other cities in a synthetic control approach. They don't detect a change, but their confidence intervals allow for +/- 5%, which squares much better with changes in traffic...

[3/3]

www.cody-cook.com/papers/nyc_c...

Air quality data for NYC – Environment & Health Data Portal Explore data, visualizations, and more on ways that environments shape health in New York City's neighborhoods.

Yes, cars matter for pollution. But much of PM these days is industry/electricity/wildfires. Eliminating all cars would only do so much for PM...

... a 4.9 µg/m³ drop doesn't seem feasible when NYC's average is 6 to 8 µg/m³, and traffic only fell ~10-30%

[2/3]

a816-dohbesp.nyc.gov/IndicatorPub...

I'm super skeptical of the result/magnitude here:

• gradual change doesn't match traffic responses, which were sharp
• confidence intervals are tiny (PM has high variance!)
• This is not a standard DiD
• Cook et al. use synthetic control + more monitors and find no change

[1/3]

When spousal jealousy keeps women out of work

In today's JMP blog, @krajah123.bsky.social conducts experiments in India to show how spousal jealousy affects female labor force participation: women are more likely to take up work in women-only office & greater impacts for those with more jealous husbands blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...?

Years ago I would tell my first year econometrics class that there were doing ways of doing statistical inference, Bayesian and frequentist, also known as right and wrong. A student asked if that would be on the exam.

Trade JMPs (2025-2026) For the 16th year running, I’ve gathered a list of trade-related job-market papers. If I’ve missed someone, please contribute to the list in the comments. Here’s a cloud of the words that appear in…

Trade JMPs (2025-2026)
tradediversion.net/2025/11/27/t...

Re-upping this position before the December 1st application deadline. I'm looking to hire a post-doc - could be a climate scientist or environmental economist. Ideal start early 2026 but could be later. Please circulate!