"2U closed Wednesday with a market value of about $11.5 million, down from more than $5 billion in 2018. It went public a decade ago and hasn’t posted an annual profit since then." . wsj.com/business/2u-ed… via The Wall Street Journal

The official results of the election in Venezuela have a clear sign that someone worked backwards from a desired percentage of votes (with 1 decimal point) to the number of votes needed for such percentages: percentages ending with identical numbers past the first decimal point👇

Khoa Vu David Card used to sit in the front row and, in the middle of the seminar, lay his forehead on the table in front of him, eyes closed, for 5 minutes, greatly disturbing any unknowing speaker. Then he would spring up and kindly ask the most thoughtful & penetrating of the day.

What I most value about tenure personally is that I can make a judgment on an intellectual basis of what is the most valuable thing for me to work on in my research rather than on the basis of external pressures.

La planificación que hicieron los venezolanos antes de la elección (sabiendo que se las iban a querer robar) para mostrar el fraude es impresionante. Contrasta con el régimen, que ni siquiera se preocupó por contratar a un par de pibes que les dibuje algo creíble.

We think of them as intellectual enclaves and the surest route to a better life. But U.S. colleges also operate like firms. In the first episode of a special series originally published in 2022, we ask what our chaotic system gets right — and wrong. freak.ws/3WLocsk

Awesome economics of education conference @ Valle Nevado Chile. Organized by Andres Barrios Andrés Barrios Fernández. Featured a policy panel launching the Human Development Lab Human Development Lab UANDES. Great papers, awesome skiing. Come next year! Christopher A. Neilson Benjamin Hansen Josefa Aguirre

3/ Key Finding 1: Total markups faced by consumers (retail prices relative to production costs) were stable during the recent inflation surge. Contrary to claims of "greedflation," we do not see any discrete change in total markups, suggesting that the increase in retail prices

I always thought the 1-word paper title was peak academic power move, but a 25 word abstract is up there!

I actually think this is a deep question. When you ask people if they would like to go back to the 1970s, they don't imagine the whole 1970s, they imagine a specific subset, like housing. And in some cases that's fair--we don't HAVE to listen to Barry Manilow or install awful

#NEUDC2024 Session: Social Networks; presented by Palaash Bhargava, Columbia University presents about how assigning deskmates based on popularity can impact student networks.

Do socially isolated students benefit more from pairing with each other than with popular peers? In a 2-tiered RCT with 13000 students across India, Palaash (Palaash Bhargava) finds that seating less-popular students together boosts their social networks and non-cognitive skills.

How do we form networks in school? Trying to pair socially isolated kids with popular kids in school can actually backfire. Palaash is doing really creative work on the role of networks in a range of contexts (development, labor). Check out his work! sites.google.com/view/palaashbh…

Posting a little late but new blogpost from World Bank Development Impact on my job market paper. Peer matching interventions often require a nuanced understanding of how direct vs general equilibrium effects can operate differently. blogs.worldbank.org/en/impactevalu… #econtwitter

It’s an extremely tough year for candidates on the economics job market. For those of you who want to carry on doing academic research in a rich policy environment, apply to our position below. I can guarantee a lot of productive projects that have policy impact. #econtwitter

📢 Call for Applications: Tinker Visiting Professorship 2026-27 at Columbia. We invite scholars, journalists, artists & public officials from Latam & Iberian Peninsula to apply (by March 14, 2025)! 👉 ilas.columbia.edu/content/edward… Stipend, housing, airfare & research support provided

🚨📢 Just one week left to submit to the 3rd Workshop on Economics of Education, Valle Nevado, 🇨🇱. Fantastic papers and skiing ⛷️⛷️!! When: Aug 19-22 Where: Valle Nevado⛷🏂 Keynotes by John Friedman (Brown) and Steve Pischke (LSE) Human Development Lab UANDES Economics Conferences #econtwitter

📊 ¿Cómo afecta el tracking escolar a la percepción de los estudiantes? 📌 Los alumnos en clases de alto rendimiento tienen una peor autoevaluación que aquellos justo por debajo del umbral (big-fish-little-pond effect). NBER Miguel Urquiola nber.org/papers/w32892

1/Epoch AI doubles down on preiction AI will drive 20%+ annual GDP growth. Economists remain skeptical. This is the defining debate of today: AI builders see infinite prosperity ahead. Economists see the same limits that constrained every technological revolution.🧵 1/13

Argentina once again publishing in the top five!