Felix Schönenberger

📢Meet the 2025-26 @usiidep.bsky.social Job Market Candidates!

We are proud to introduce our #JMC: Tai Lo Yeung and Flora Marchioro. In the coming posts, we will share more about their profiles and research.

Explore our candidates and their #JMPs here: idep.usi.ch/job-market

#EconJobMarket

👏 Congratulations to Patricia Funk on being elected to the @eeanews.bsky.social Council (2026–2031)!
We are proud as @usiidep.bsky.social to celebrate our faculty’s excellence and leadership in economics.
Discover more about her profile here: usi.to/ubk.
#USIecon #Econbluesky

When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media (Forthcoming Article) - Individuals might experience negative utility from not consuming a popular product. With such externalities to non-users, standard consumer surplus measures, which take aggrega...

Forthcoming in the AER: "When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media" by Leonardo Bursztyn, Benjamin Handel, Rafael Jiménez-Durán, and Christopher Roth. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Fraud and cover-up Fraud and cover-up

All is not well at Elsevier richardtol.substack.com/p/fraud-and-...

Excited to join @pegdev.bsky.social! Looking forward to my time in Stuttgart with this amazing team! 🎉

Congrats to IdEP PhD candidate Alda Marchese on being awarded the USI Doc-Mobility grant. She'll be visiting ‪@uclaanderson.bsky.social, hosted by Ricardo Perez-Truglia 🇺🇸🌴

Alda’s research examines how #socialnorms impact the #gendergap in voter turnout and if easing social pressure can reduce it

The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand:

$678M raised through those spam tactics

$282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies.

$11M to actual campaigns (1.6%)

The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

August 1, 2025 AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Committee on Economic Statistics and Committee on Government Relations Statement from the American Economic Association on the Dismissal of the BLS Commissioner Leaders of the American Economic Association express their grave concern over the dismissal of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) earlier today. The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely, and impartial statistics are the foundation upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions. Undermining the independence or credibility of these agencies threatens the integrity of the information that markets, institutions, and the public rely on every day. Measuring the vast and dynamic U.S. economy in real time is inherently challenging. It is standard practice for statistical estimates to be revised as more complete and higher-quality data become available. These revisions reflect the commitment of statistical agencies to accuracy, transparency, and methodological rigor-not failure or bias. The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity. Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions. We call upon elected officials to respect and preserve the independence of the nation's statistical infrastructure. Lawrence Katz President, American Economic Association Katharine Abraham President-Elect, American Economic Association Karen Dynan Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics Kenneth Troske Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Government Relations

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing

As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements

This is a big deal

Trump, Claiming Weak Jobs Numbers Were ‘Rigged,’ Fires Labor Official

„In a social media post on Friday, Mr. Trump said the revision was made ‚right after the election.‘ In fact, the announcement was made roughly two and a half months before Election Day. […] ‚MASSIVE SCANDAL.‘“

Nonsense covered up with more nonsense

(Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/b...

Check out if you’re interested in international trade or know someone who might be interested in pursuing a PhD! Can absolutely vouch for @petereppinger.com

„a rigid doctrine guarded by a modern priesthood who claim to possess the sole truth. Dissenters are shunned“

This is so very much untrue.

The main figure from the voter turnout paper -- no effect of any nudge intervention on voter turnout.

A *null* result I'm very proud of!

Led by Rustam Romaniuc, 35 coauthors from all over France tested nudge interventions to boost voter turnout.

None worked, and we are possibly not surprised -- but a well-powered null result *is* a result!

Paper:

kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...

AEP Lecturer in Politics and Research Methods

We’re hiring 3 permanent (tenured) lecturers in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. These are ‘education pathway’ posts (in Economics, Research Methods, & Comparative Politics) 1/4

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117268-...

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117209-...

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/117245-...

Keep your Enemies Closer: Strategic Platform Adjustments during U.S. and French Elections (Forthcoming Article) - We study changes in political discourse during campaigns, using a novel dataset of candidate websites for U.S. House elections, 2002-2016, and manifestos for French parliamenta...

Neat and important paper
www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Careers | Wyss Academy

ALERT: Two new PreDoc positions starting in late summer/early fall. Come join my team and work on exciting topics in Political Economy and Development Economics, using both experimental and quasi experimental methods (text-as-data, spatial data, AI).

www.wyssacademy.org/careers

🚨NEW PAPER: Why are Members of Congress so extreme?

We conducted a 4-wave panel of thousands of voters in 27 districts during last year’s primary AND general elections to trace polarization’s roots

The results challenge conventional wisdom… and suggest lessons for parties🧵👇

Call for Papers:

The 4th Annual Zurich Workshop in AI+Economics

to be held Dec 5-6, 2025, hosted by ETH Zurich and University of Zurich.

Info: eash.cc/AI-econ
Submit (by Aug 15th): eash.cc/AI-econ-sub-2025

Today, Andreas Kotsadam (@UniOslo) presented his joint work with S. Dahlum, T.Hanson, Å. Johnsen, and A. Wuttke on whether support for authoritarian rule is contagious. Using field & survey experiments in the Norwegian Armed Forces, they showed that it spreads via peer influence.

UPDATE: I've written a deeper dive on these numbers and what's driving this unprecedented judicial pushback.

open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

A long long time ago, in a far away galaxy... the US used to tax the rich

My new findings on Iran’s 2010 Energy Subsidy to Cash Program show that it uniquely resembles a true Universal Basic Income (UBI) at the national level—even under the strict criteria of Hoynes and Rothstein (2019).

🎓 Apply for the Master in Economics at USI – Deadline: 30 June 2025!

👇 See program highlights & links below.
#USIEcon #EconBluesky

Today @uglogowsky.bsky.social (@jku.at) presented “The Parenthood Penalty in Mental Health”, joint w. @ahammeralex.bsky.social (JKU Linz) @mhalla.bsky.social (@wuvienna.bsky.social) & T. Hener (@au.dk).
They find parenthood imposes greater mental health burdens on mothers, leading to long-run gaps

Today, Manuel Bagues (@warwickecon.bsky.social) presented “Friends in Childhood and the Gender Equality Paradox”, coauthored with N. Zinovyeva (Warwick).
They show that children in richer, more equal societies have fewer opposite-sex friends. Evidence suggests household income as the key driver.

A chart titled “American Exceptionalism: Cross-National Policy Comparison” compares the United States with other advanced democracies across eight key economic indicators. Each indicator is represented as a dot plot showing the distribution among peer countries, with the U.S. highlighted in red and labeled. 1. Top 1% Share of Income – The U.S. has the highest at 20.2%, far above the median of 9.1%. 2. CEO to Worker Pay Ratio – The U.S. is the outlier with a ratio of 354, compared to a median of 89. 3. Share of Low Paying Jobs – The U.S. stands at 24.5%, higher than the median of 16.0%. 4. Working Age Poverty Rate – The U.S. is again among the highest at 15.4%, compared to a median of 10.2%. 5. Child Poverty Rate – The U.S. shows 21.2%, one of the highest, while the median is 12.3%. 6. Intergenerational Economic Mobility – The U.S. scores lowest with 0.5 (higher values indicate more mobility), while the median is 0.3. 7. Annual Hours Worked per Worker – The U.S. is near the top at 1,786 hours, above the median of 1,635. 8. Collective Bargaining Coverage – The U.S. has the lowest at 12.0%, far below the median of 51.2%. The chart visually emphasizes the U.S.’s position as an outlier in economic inequality, poverty, and labor protections among peer democracies.

House GOP just unveiled $4 Trillion in tax cuts - overwhelmingly for the wealthy - in a country that already leads the developed world in inequality. Look at where the US stands right now:

Top 1%: 20% of income
CEO pay: 354x workers
Child poverty: 21%

And they want to make it worse. On purpose.🧵⬇️

9/🧵 Polls consistently show 60-75% of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, yet Republicans are doing the opposite. This is a political liability that Dems should exploit.

Leaders of the free world

Best Liberal Unbiased Executive 🇨🇦