Excited to share a new working paper with Yotam Margait and @TamarMitts entitled “Media Ownership as Political Investment: The Case of Israel Hayom.” A draft of the paper can be found at cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/web.sas.upenn.… In 2007 Sheldon Adelson founded a new daily to counterbalance Israel’s news media’s “liberal bias”. Israel Hayom is a full-blown newspaper (not pamphlet). We ask – can a newspaper with known political slant, operating in competitive market, nonetheless affect voting behavior?

I am truly excited to help launch the Penn Development Research Initiative (PDRI - pdri.upenn.edu), an interdisciplinary community of scholars @Penn whose research seeks to identify solutions to the challenges facing developing countries. PDRI bridges 7 schools @Penn and brings together faculty and graduate students with interests in various aspects of international development including governance, education, health, environment, gender, urbanization and migration, labor markets, poverty, and economic growth.

Apropos the longest shutdown in US history, my paper "Border Walls and Smuggling Spillovers" with my awesome co-authors @austinlwright & @anna_getmansky was accepted today for publication at QJPS. In this paper, we explore whether the construction of the border wall (see some figures) between Israel and the West Bank reduced cross-border illicit smuggling of stolen vehicles (80% of stolen cars are smuggled to chop shops in the WB) .

Apropos debates on the effectiveness of the Wall, @austinlwright, @anna_getmansky and I have completed an new draft of our paper ``Border Walls and Smuggling Spillovers.'' See bit.ly/2rSpRyo We find that smuggling decreases in places protected by the wall and increases at similar rates in unprotected towns where the border wall has not yet been built. The Wall thus had little effect on overall crime, yet it had distributional consequences due to spatial displacement

Responding to my offer, I have been approached by 18 students on the TT job market asking me to comment on their cover letter (12 male and 6 female). Here's a quick reflective thread of what I have learned. 1/

https://twitter.com/guygrossman/status/1022526160423596035

First, it is exciting to read all about the excellent and diverse work that ABDs are producing. Our discipline is heading in a positive direction. 2/

Amir Levi, @hispeedtourist and I have a new policy paper, (HKS WP series) entitled "Does greater public transit access increase employment for the Israeli-Arab Population? A Preliminary Analysis" bit.ly/2AzpaRz the study's starting point is an unprecedented resolution by the the Israeli gov to make large multi-sectoral investment to reduce economic gaps between Jews and Arabs. Read about resolution 922 at bit.ly/2O7HinL

Excited that my paper with Devorah Manekin & @TamarMitts is out for early review at @PSRMJournal. See bit.ly/2HPdZT3. We offer a way to distinguish btw support for deepening control of disputed territory that is based on material vs. symbolic attachment We find that the share of Israelis that support deepening Israel's control of the West Bank due to symbolic, ideological and non-strategic reasons is much larger than was previously assumed, and is not limited to the far right.

That's me after Lant Pritchett declared that the "entire idea of evidence is bullshit" on panel @BlavatnikSchool 0n #PublicServiceSystem conference Forgot to mention that the title of the panel was "What constitutes good evidence in systems research?"

Romain, Jonathan,@melinaplatas and I have a new working paper that tries to answer the following q: do social networks matter for the adoption of new political communication technologies? Paper posted at bit.ly/2E9uWYd Using some original network data we collected in Uganda, we find that the answer is nuanced - on average, peers certainly matter, at least for the adoption of a new mobile-based platform that allows villagers to report service delivery problems.

Some real drama in Israel where Netanyahu former CoS reached a deal with the DJ to testify against Bibi in corruption allegations Bibi is caught on tape offering editor of largest paper to regulate media market in his favor in exchange for positive coverage