The only thing popularists fear more than an unpopular idea from the left is a popular one that might actually threaten billionaires.
07.03.2026 03:52
π 166
π 30
π¬ 1
π 0
The only thing popularists fear more than an unpopular idea from the left is a popular one that might actually threaten billionaires.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks with reporters. (AP / Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
AOC: βThatβs one reason he must be removed from office - if the Epstein files have such a hold on Trump & this admin that they are willing to plunge us & risk world war in order to save themselves politically - that is the definition of someone who cant make objective decisions for the American pplβ
Russia, Venezuela, Iran, China, the Sahel region, the United States ...
Want to know why state agents carry out brutal repression β or participate in illegal coups?
Our new book "Making a Career in Dictatorship" provides answers β it just got published by @academic.oup.com:
tinyurl.com/ystwm3tf
π₯Revised paperπ₯
More regressions. More tests of mechanisms. Same story. Tldr:
Brexit caused much regulatory uncertainty at a moment when UK state capacity was v weak, and hard-to-regulate companies (aka oil firms) did not think twice and generated a mess in the high seas.
Now with full receipts β¬οΈ
I am extremely honored, and equally perplexed, that my book has received the Stein Rokkan Prize.
Thank you so much to everyone who helped out with this project along the way. So much of the book is the result of feedback by kind people who took the time to listen and read. Thank you.
Wild how economists and political scientists worry so much about unbiased tests **in their papers** and yet basically ignore how their journals filter on significance. Given our noisy tests, the latter creates huge bias away from zero.
We Need to Tax Billionaires -- Gabriel Zucman
In bookstores in the UK on May 21
Very much looking forward to this
Very glad that our first DEMNORM paper found such a great home at @thejop.bsky.social. If youβre interested in the role of social desirability in online surveys, check out the thread and paper below β¬οΈ
Congratulations to our faculty member Andrew Bertoli, whose paper on analyzing the impact of events through surveys has just come out in @psrm.bsky.social! π ππ
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
Nice to see it all dressed up!
Our paper on politicians' wages, corruption and criminal violence is out in the February issue of AEJ:Policy. Check it out at:
www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
For absolutely no reason, let me remind people of this banger of a paper by @caroartc.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1016/j.jp...
Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.
One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.
THREAD π§΅
Why did antisemitism rise in Germany during the Covid pandemic? And why was this increase concentrated among political centrists, rather than on the fringes?
doi.org/10.1017/S153...
@kanol.bsky.social @wzb.bsky.social @uni-hamburg.de @politikuhh.bsky.social @socfub.bsky.social
Reminder that, as of the latest reports, Liam Ramos is still in prison in Texas - now for 5 days.
His parents are legal asylum seekers with no criminal record.
I'm hiring two three-year postdocs and an RA for my project on how police presence affects perceived safety.
I'm looking for candidates who can contribute to the theoretical development and who have strong expertise in causal inference.
Deadline: March 1.
www.stillinger.aau.dk/videnskabeli...
I love this project. It's very smart and has very important implications. Do make sure to read it if you haven't already:
π New WP version out: revised text, tightened argument, and new analysis.
The Politics of Evidence Selection (w/ @jesperasring.bsky.social)
Grateful for the helpful comments and presentation opportunities. Further feedback welcome!
π osf.io/preprints/so...
Screenshot of a data visualization titled βThe Cost of American Exceptionalism,β subtitled βWhat would change if the U.S. matched the OECD average?β The page explains that each card shows how outcomes would change if the U.S. matched the average of 31 peer democracies. Below, a section labeled βEconomy & Inequalityβ displays eight cards comparing U.S. figures to OECD averages. Highlights include: +$19K per household per year in redistributed income and +$96K in redistributed wealth if the top 1% matched OECD shares; a 71% lower CEO-to-worker pay ratio (from 354Γ to 101Γ); 50 million more workers with union coverage; 26 million more people with health insurance; $2.1 trillion saved annually in healthcare spending; $691 less per person per year in prescription drug costs; and intergenerational economic mobility being twice as high. Each card shows the U.S. value alongside the OECD average.
If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this:
America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.
What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. π§΅
We just had a week that changed everything, including my view of impeachment. Before: Wait until 2027. Now: Embrace it in 2026 and hold hearing-like forums to spotlight the many articles of impeachment filed against Trump and his cabinet. My latest @thebulwark.com www.thebulwark.com/p/embracing-...
I think this is really bad. And wrong. The point is, more or less, that if Trump doesn't do exactly as Hitler (and for some reason not Mussolini, the "founder" of fascism) then he cannot be a fascist.
The main points where Trump differs is 1) that he does not like war and prefer small operations.
No matter how you slice it, US police officers are safer on the job and paid waaaaay more than other countries' police despite doing aβ¦less than stellar job
The question isn't more police vs. less police. It's why are US police paid so much while doing such little and such poor police work?
A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the release of Lady Gagaβs βJust Danceβ and the advent of the late-2000s electro-pop era, which both appeared around the same year, 2008.
Our new study provides rare causal evidence about NYCβs speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social π§ͺ
New paper alert!
"Public Speakers With Nonnative Accents Garner Less Engagement" -- now out in Psych Science!
This is my first graduate student's first first-author paper (and it was her first-year project).
Short THREAD on the results:
Political communication research overwhelmingly relies on text. But parliamentary speech is multimodal! In our new @psrm.bsky.social article, Mathias Rask and I show that legislators also signal partisan conflict nonverballyβ through changes in vocal pitch during floor speeches. 𧡠1/11 #polisky
"Captain Gains" on Capitol Hill Shang-Jin Wei & Yifan Zhou WORKING PAPER 34524 DOI 10.3386/w34524 ISSUE DATE November 2025 Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension. Leaders' superior performance arises through two mechanisms. The political influence channel is reflected in higher returns when their party controls the chamber, sales of stocks preceding regulatory actions, and purchase of stocks whose firms receiving more government contracts and favorable party support on bills. The corporate access channel is reflected in stock trades that predict subsequent corporate news and greater returns on donor-owned or home-state firms.
什 1 1 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 Year Figure 2: Estimated dynamic quasi-difference-in-differences coefficient, di, of equation(3), with vertical dashed lines representing 90 percent confidence intervals. The point estimate of the year in which the lawmaker became a congressional leader (Year 0) is normalized to zero. BHAR over the 250 days following each trade is the dependent variable and calculated using the Fama-French five-factor plus momentum as the benchmark model.
After becoming a congressional leader, a politicianβs stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts
www.nber.org/papers/w34524
via @florianederer.bsky.social
NEW ARTICLE: @palesl.bsky.social, Vesa Koskimaa and I have an letter out in JOP, "Politicians talk less about the future as they age" doi.org/10.1086/739406 (1/10)
