4w ago I was a Claude Code skeptic. I'm not a coder. None of the use cases were relevant. I managed teams & projects, drowning in email & overdue reminders. So I tried creating tools that would help me and... holy crap.

Now I'm sharing the tools I built:
claudeblattman.com My /morning-brief skill triages mail, focusing me on high-priority tasks (with draft replies). A /checkin skill during the day tells me if there's anything urgent to respond to, triages my reminders, and reminds me to stay focused on the writing/research goals I set that month.

1/ New paper: Democracies only grow faster than autocracies because of personalist leaders. Bad things mainly happen in overcentralized, unchecked regimes. New from me, Scott Gehlbach & @arthurzeyangyu, The Personalist Penalty:
osf.io/preprints/soca… 2/ Famously, democracies grow faster than autocracies. Yes, some autocracies do spectacularly well... until they don't. Others perform horribly all the time. But this kind of analysis always bothered me: in a democracy-growth regression, why pool Lee Kwan Yew with Mobutu?

OK, I think ChatGPT 4o just changed grant proposal writing forever.

Our problem, because of a tech and email mistake, we received notice that a huge proposal was due with less than a week notice, on a week when most of my Colombia team is on Easter holiday. 🧵 First a little about the project. We've been running surveys of tens of thousands of 13yos in Medellin Colombia to build prediction tools for who will join a gang (5% of boys), who will commit crimes and get arrested (15% of boys before age 25).

Try to imagine a US President telling Ford that they shouldn't sell cars to foreigners, and that they should cut their R&D. It wouldn't happen. But that's what we're doing to one of America's most important exports: Education. 🧵 There are >1 million foreign students in the US. About a quarter of them are from.... you guessed it, China.

This education is, literally, an export. Trade statistics count it as such. As they should! Foreigners earn or borrow money abroad and spend it on an American service.

What do jobs look like for people who work in the international development and humanitarian sector? Obviously bleak in the short run, and dire for families with two earners in the sector. If you're a student or young person who hoped to enter this industry, some thoughts. Little has changed about actual development. There will, sadly, still be wars and crises, and more than 2/3 of the world is still developing, whether USAID $ flows or not. When it comes to "development", aid was a source of jobs but it was never main engine of change.

I was skeptical of the $200/mo price tag for ChatGPT DeepResearch, but man is it paying off. The ability to get a cogent, well-referenced, literature review or annotated bibliography in 7 minutes is incredible.

Short thread on how I've used it. Advice/feedback welcome. Some examples:

I know the "behavioral conflict" literature well—how psychological biases, beliefs, and emotions lead us to bargaining failures. I wanted to apply these to civil courts for a prospective project in Mexico, and develop survey instrument to understand what biases disputants hold. I had spent months assembling copious notes on such studies when writing my book. DeepResearch found several important studies I had not seen, and helped me find ones had concrete information on survey questions and other measurement tools. So it complemented me even on a subject where I arguably know more than most scholars in the world.

On Venezuela, some semi-informed reflections from afar (and from other cases):

Obviously the previous regime (and to some extent this one) has endured large scale protests before with unexpected fortitude

At the same time… …the handling of the election and the way Maduro announced victory this time seemed way more inept than in the past. Whereas before they were amazingly skillful this seems inept. Especially when they had so much time to prepare. It was a car crash in slow motion.

I checked in on a friend the other day to see how he was doing. He’s not Israeli, but like many Jewish Americans he has close friends & family who are near the attacks or being called up to fight. He’s worried & mourning & also a little demoralized. He said something powerful. What’s so disconcerting, he said, is that here are a set of truly heinous acts by Hamas. Why isn’t there universal condemnation, without qualification?

When others are terrorized, the world seems quicker to sympathize. How can Jews like him not feel somewhat abandoned?

Just hired a 21yo for their first job. What basic professional advice do they need? Here's what I tell all my new staff, but perhaps you can add. I'll start small.

1/ Use an online calendar. Have a foolproof system of reminders, so you never forget a deadline or obligation. 2/ Use the calendar to schedule intensive work time, not just meetings. Some kinds of work (like research or coding or writing) benefits from long, uninterrupted blocks of time. Most people schedule meetings only, and don't schedule these long blocks. Do both.

An unexpected joy of being at the ⁦@BeckerFriedman⁩ political economy conference in Paris is having ⁦@k_sonin⁩ give us a real-time paper presentation on events as they evolve in the previous 24h. Will try to capture some of the main points.

Forgive me in advance for all the ways I will misunderstand and misquote Kostyra

Looking for alternatives to policing? So was the mayor of Medellin. In 2018, we worked with his govt to choose 80 neighborhoods. In half, the city intensified civilian staff and problem-solving 10-fold, for 2 years. The results were... unexpected.

Paper: osf.io/preprints/soca… In Colombia, Mayors have limited control of police. A national institution, they report to the Minister of Defense. Cities can't grow their forces. So, cities build Secretariats of Security—civilian bureaucracies that solve disputes & try to keep order in neighborhoods.

300 people committed most of the shoplifting in a city of 9 million. A useful reminder that most crime & violence is committed by a tiny number of people, and that nearly every effective social or policing problem has to be hyper targeted or it will fail.
nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyr… American cities need to fix poverty, policing, and a long list of other issues. That will take decades. Finding and intervening with 300 people is much different, much easier, and could be done this year if a mayor had the motive and the right team.

Here's the story of a city's response to spiking gun deaths. Of READI Chicago—an ambitious effort to build & study a program of jobs & CBT for the men most likely to shoot or be shot. Of HUGE success by some measures (64% fewer shooting & homicide arrests!) & no impact by others. I'd love to tell you "we have the answer!" but, like most urban problems, gun violence is messy & hard to solve. So settle in for a more nuanced story than usual, yet one that ends with a clear message: helping men who shoot (& get shot) is possible, essential, and works.

With PhD applications due soon, thousands of young people are currently beginning their statements of purpose with the same cliché story, or the same anodyne statement

Stop right now!

Here are 10 thoughts for doing this right. Helps you, and helps admissions committees.👇 Let’s clarify your #1 job as an applicant: Send the best, clearest signal of your abilities as a future researcher & minimize noise around that signal

For every program slot there are ~50 applicants. A dept planning for a class of 20 students may receive 1000 applications.

PhD students: @HarrisPolicy has a 1-3 year post-doc in International Development or Political Economy of Development

Apply here, ideally before Dec 15:
apply.interfolio.com/117754
[EOE/Vet/Disability]

Economists and political scientists please RT

Let me tell you a little more 👇 This is a 3-year post doc that is renewed annually.

The main obligation is that you teach 2 classes. Usually post docs do this in one 9-week quarter. Sometimes 2 sections of the same class. So it's over fast. We want you to be able to launch your research ahead.

Excellent article by my colleague @k_sonin.

reader.foreignaffairs.com/2022/11/15/rus…

My own 2 cents, giving some lay intuition on why a strong ruble is a bad indicator, adding to Konstantin’s point. 👇 Think of the ruble as a thing the world needs to buy if they want to buy something from Russia. You buy rubles then trade it for Russian goods. And if Russians want to import something, they have to sell rubles and buy another currency. Then buy the good they actually want.

So many aspiring young social scientists applying for their first research assistant positions right now, I thought I'd regale you with my first RA job (and my third best field work story). 👇 In 2001, a Harvard professor hired me to run a survey of Indian villages in rural Tamil Nadu. He and I travel to the nearest large town, Madurai, to meet the nonprofit organization we will work with. After a week orienting me, he bids me good luck and farewell.

Those of you unhappy with the spew in your Twitter feed, before running off this platform, here’s what I’ve been doing the last few months (and I have the illusion that it has made my feed a more pleasant place to be)

And no the answer is not “mute and block irritating people.” 1. Mute words not people.

Last week I muted “Musk” & “Twitter” for 7d so I could stop reading the same takes again and again. After Elizabeth’s death I muted “Queen” for 7d because reading one article turned out to be enough.

In short, mute the frothy words of the moment.

@Noahpinion @dandolfa I am no China specialist, but I am super worried about the prospects of a hostile Chinese takeover of Taiwan, and a US-China war as a result. I'm pretty worried about that independent of the adventurism to distract from discontent. @Noahpinion @dandolfa I laid out some thought on why a conflict could happen a few months ago, and further reading and reflection makes me a little more pessimistic about peace than you might think from this thread.

https://twitter.com/cblatts/status/1528819106257903616?s=20&t=m57NjnJvtuFTQJbo8Mo9ew

Like any profession, economics has a hidden curriculum—for how to succeed (plus how to help others succeed).

@marcfbellemare's new book pulls back the curtain.

A thread on some of my favorite advice and insights from the book.

mitpress.mit.edu/books/doing-ec… 1/ Every opportunity to write is an opportunities to practice writing well.

Writing is a skill, you get better by paying attention to good writing, plus conscientious practice.

That includes emails!

If 10y ago you told me that $200 + 8 wks of therapy could halve the rate that a city’s most dangerous men engage in crime & violence, I’d have thought you were nuts.

We just went back after 10y and the results amaze me. A @washingtonpost op-ed & a thread on long run research

https://twitter.com/PostOpinions/status/1533647640390418435

Here is the original thread that got attention and led to the op-ed. It’s the op-ed in brief, with a little more excitement and personal background than you can put in WashPo. Check it out.

Let me also add a few more thoughts.

https://twitter.com/cblatts/status/1526532090430377989