Today I released a new paper called “Allocative Skill” with Andrew Caplin, @leth_soren, and @weidmann. We introduce a new way to measure the quality of economic decision-making called the Assignment Game. Play the game here!

1/xskillslab.dev/assignment-game An ungated version of the paper is here:

I also wrote about it in my newsletter Forked Lightning (see the link in my profile)
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Check out my new column today in @nytimes ! I am writing about the importance of making socially valuable data available to the public nytimes.com/2021/02/19/bus… 1/x Public / policy discussions about data have focused mostly on privacy risks. I don’t want to minimize those concerns. But it’s a mistake to focus only on the costs of “big data”, while ignoring the potential benefits 2/x

New column! nytimes.com/2020/09/17/bus…
Here I make the case that we should make community colleges the centerpiece of a plan to get Americans back to work 1/x The unemployment rate is falling overall, but permanent job losses have increased from 2 million in April to 3.4 million in August. These workers need help getting back on their feet. Losing a job is always bad, but especially so in recessions (see work by @TillvonWachter) 2/x

I wrote a column about what this grand experiment in online learning means for the future: nytimes.com/2020/04/09/bus… 1/x Coronavirus will accelerate the use of high-quality online lecture material. Online instruction will eventually substitute for most in-person lectures 2/x

New paper alert! “The School to Prison Pipeline: Long-Run Impacts of School Suspensions on Adult Crime” with @abacherhicks and @billingsecon nber.org/papers/w26257 1/X @abacherhicks @BillingsEcon School discipline policy involves tradeoffs. Stricter discipline through increased use of suspensions can act as a deterrent and also keep misbehavior out of the classroom. On the other hand, suspensions can stigmatize students and expose them to the criminal justice system 2/X

Last Friday, I was honored to receive the David Kershaw Award appam.org/awards/david-n… from APPAM. At the conference, I gave a talk entitled “What Does Education Do?” In case you missed it, I am going to TWEETSTORM the main points below 1/N As we all know, economic inequality has risen a lot over the last 40 years. Understanding why is challenging, because there are many potential explanations, but only one fact pattern 2/N

ALERT - 🚨 – tweetstorm below about my new paper “STEM Careers and Technological Change”, with @knoray23 - link here nber.org/papers/w25065; 1/N The STEM sector is critical for innovation and economic growth. And everyone knows about the high initial payoff to majoring in STEM 2/N