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

Twitter is full of "support Ukraine at all costs" rhetoric + loathing for appeasers like Chomsky and Kissinger.

I come down on "support Ukraine at all costs" side and "no ambiguity about it". But let's also recognize this is a grave decision with risks.

🧵 I think it's crucial to think this through because, otherwise, I fear that 6 months from now, when NATO needs to continue to pay much of the bill for the war, everyone who is so angry now will be angry about something else, distracted, and Ukrainians will pay the price for that.

Why was crypto important in Ukraine before the war, and why during it? Fascinating podcast from @reckless.

Short answer: The sheer brokenness of the Ukrainian banking system, government & economy.

This has implications for Ukraine post-war

Brief thread

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how… Here @ChobanianMike makes the point that an unfamiliar and volatile stablecoin is attractive to the military now because, to make a foreign purchase through a bank, it still takes a couple of weeks for all the bureaucracy.

theverge.com/23138465/decod…

I feel seen
link.springer.com/article/10.105… Oh and here is an interview with the author, @rachelsherm

https://twitter.com/rachelsherm/status/1352276189805764608?s=20&t=lFWNagT6QQG0wXVM-_bXng

Will China invade Taiwan? Did Biden's remarks today make war more or less likely?

I've been reading up on this a lot lately. Here's a summary of the best things I read, and what could lead to a war. Mostly I'm reassured. But not entirely.

A 🧵, obviously. One takeaway is that news stories talk too much about what Xi Jinping or the US President think or want, and too little about domestic politics in Taiwan.

That will be one of the big themes. Seems to me that Chinese and US actions are calculated to shape Taiwanese politics.

Found on Facebook, without comment Interestingly, Europe did colonize itself. I oversimplify, but France is what the Franks conquered and frankified. Most people in what is France today didn't speak French or even practice the same brand of Christianity.

Here's one book I love on this:
amzn.to/3PxaN2x

I love the message of Why Nations Fail but as (Jim and Daron are first to say) the policy prescription feels like "try not to have highly concentrated wealth and power 300 years ago."

That's what's so helpful & important about Stefan Dercon's new book

amazon.com/Gambling-Devel… One of the best lines in the book: In thinking about improving country ownership of development plans, we have to ask who owns the country.

This is one of the few big books on development that starts with the observation that most human societies are controlled by a tiny elite.