Aishwarya Khanduja, Stuart Buck, Hiya Jain and Analogue Group have launched the Research Revival Fund - focused on reviving research that has been neglected due to funding loss or other similar situations.
I’m particularly keen on their work on translating forgotten-but-still-relevant Soviet work. I’ve had more than one conversation with people in the nuclear industry where someone told me that their technology was reliant on an obscure paper written by a Soviet physicist in 1970.
George Borjas has a new paper where he lays out the empirics behind the $100,000 H-1B fee. The Economic Innovation Group says he’s made data errors.
Daniel Di Martino disagrees with the Cato study that finds strongly positive fiscal impacts from immigration. (Cato has responded.)
Pieter Garicano argues that it should be easier to fire workers in Europe.
The UK graduate premium has declined. This is not true in other rich countries.
This appears to be driven by two things: the UK’s real GDP/capita has only now recovered from the financial crisis and relative wages for non-graduates have risen (probably due to a rising minimum wage). Mechanically, if overall wages are not rising, but wages for non-graduates are rising, the graduate premium will decline.
Some journals require paper “highlights” in addition to the abstract. Dean Karlan is having fun with the form:
In a Blank Space of rural finance, new platforms quietly entered. Fearless farmers invest when digital credit is carefully tailored. But Out of the Woods we are not — lending seems best when swift." So Shake It Off, Begin Again: more innovation would be a gift.
Car accidents increase on days with major music releases, because people are more likely to be using Spotify while driving.
Bald eagles are suffering lead poisoning from accidentally ingesting bullet fragments. This feels… symbolic.
Let’s end with a poem by Su Tung-Po:
"Families when a child is born Hope it will turn out intelligent. I, through intelligence Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope that the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he’ll be happy all his days And grow into a cabinet minister."
“I’ve had more than one conversation with people in the nuclear industry where someone told me that their technology was reliant on an obscure paper written by a Soviet physicist in 1970.”
You just have more fun conversations than the rest of us
The paper highlights poem reminds me of the Ig Nobel Prize 24/7 lectures.