during the Great Terror, some 150-200k may have owed their fate to the power of radio.
02.03.2026 10:26
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during the Great Terror, some 150-200k may have owed their fate to the power of radio.
The paper is here: tinyurl.com/mpde8h76 Lots of fun working with these guys. We exploit long-wave radio transmissions, a funky think compared to short-wave and medium wave as its transmitted via the ground - which we use for identification. Effects are big: Of the 750k people executed
New wp alert! Sultan Mehmood, Yaroslav Prokhorskoy and I have a new paper. Mass communication is normally used for indoctrination and persuasion. Using evidence from Stalin's USSR, we conclude that it can also be used as a tool for repression.
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When your paper gets a top 5 conditional accept... despite R3...
death was everywhere for these guys... 80% plus died. BUT during the medal window and during the intro of new medals, death rates did not go up.
didn't have much of an effect. In other environments, we find that trying harder raised death rates... but the medal hunt comes with no obvious death penalty.
small morsel that shows that status concerns were a key driver: not everyone played the game. Pilots who already possessed alternative sources of high status—aristocrats, senior officers, or those with pre-war distinctions—were significantly less responsive to medal incentives...
pilots. Over time, as the war dragged on, the awards diffused to lower-ranked (though still elite) pilots. This created a need for new 'carrots'. Incentives mattered because the business was inherently risky; more than 80% of pilots in our sample died.
We argue this follows the logic of fashion cycles (Pesendorfer 1995). Status goods are signals. Their value depends on the exclusivity of the group that possesses them. Our data show a clear "cheapening" effect: the earliest recipients of the Knight’s Cross were the most skilled
engineered a "rat race" that extracted significant additional effort from its best pilots. When pilots got close to the informal quota, their effort spiked; once they had the award, it slumped. New medals spelled more renewed efforts.
the High Command introduced successively more exclusive variants: first adding "Oak Leaves," then "Swords," then "Diamonds," and finally "Golden Oak Leaves." The data demonstrate that the Luftwaffe successfully
The Luftwaffe ran a sophisticated system of awards. To qualify for higher ones, u had to have the first medal. As the war progressed and the initial medal became too common" among elites,
Of course, they served an evil regime. Can we learn from what motivated them regardless? In "Never Enough: Dynamic Status Incentives in Organizations" we examine data from more than 5,000 fighter pilots. t.co/pA5ll2BOMG
How do you motivate workers? Leo Bursztyn, Ewan Racliffe and I have a new paper. We look at highly skilled 'workers' whose effort was near-impossible to monitor -- German fighter pilots in WW2.
With David Boll and Sascha Becker -- coming soon to a theatre near you -- a new and exciting no-motion-picture "should you distrust cross-sectional spatial data?" [spoiler alert - you can relax, it's not so bad]
But can go the other way as with higher albedo from vapor trails.
Sure but that is rounding error stuff
Well. If electric its covered. If diesel its not. We can sign the likeky effect.
I use this exact example in my very first ECON 101 lecture. I now have AV content.
Fresco fresco no es…
reminds me of the immortal essay by Stanley Fish "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos"...
they say "we win"
Having found in my masters thesis that high testosterone individuals prefer being seen as winners even if it means losing money, I had no idea we're talking *that* much money.
If you're a hedge fund manager and want to set up an aggressive tesosterone-based trading strategy, hmu!
declares that their 800+km train ride did something good for the environment? Is is ignorance, or a latent desire to suffer for the sins of having what you want? Color me confused....
diesel trains are exempt from ETS 1 like all other transport like cars + trucks). Economists! I understand that some people don't get it. Cap+trade is not complicated, but maybe a bit more abstract... but why do I now regularly get to conferences where some slightly wrinkled colleague proudly
Conference. Distinguished colleagues; smart, top-of-the-game. Someone drops a "good for the climate" when I say I took the train... I look puzzled. What? There is emissions trading in Europe. Total CO2 is *capped*; net footprint of flights in Europe is ZERO. Same, btw, not true of trains (bec
This paper by the late, great Nick Crafts, on competition and productivity in the UK, well worth a read: cepr.org/voxeu/column...
🚨 New Working Paper 🚨
w/ @pdavidboll.bsky.social and @jvoth.bsky.social
Do you run regressions on spatial data? Then keep reading!
We present a guide and Stata package for methods by Müller and Watson (2024 ECTA) to deal with Spatial Unit Roots in Regressions.
Link in 🧵 (1/n)
Do u seriously think that a social awkward, Auschwitz visiting, hostage-supporting, borderline Asperger's billionaire is doing a Nazi salute?
