New NBER working paper with @supKaur @h_schof @GeetaKingdon showing: - how formal schooling contributes to the development of fundamental cognitive skills, like attention - attention appears to be highly malleable, at least in childhood nber.org/papers/w30133?utm_c… 🧵 (1/x)

We are excited to share that the IDEA Development Economics Calendar is now live on our website! You can browse opportunities, filter by event and region, subscribe to add to your own calendar, and submit your own activities. Link in first reply. 🔗

On AI in economics, from r/academiceconomics (mostly grad students and early career)

A signature feature of academic AI writing is (currently) that it is has bad judgment on what is important and what is not important, even refine.ink. This is one of the most damaging AI "tells", b/c it reflects bad judgment on the part of the author as well. 1/

🚨 Public good alert: I put together a list of 100+ free datasets for social science research, spanning a large number of topics. I hope it's useful for students, researchers, and anyone looking for interesting data to explore. Contributions are welcome! github.com/toddrjones/datase…

New in the JDE: Joan Martínez follows 1.6M Peruvian students from age 12 to 22 to study how teachers' gender bias in grading affects outcomes. Some math teachers' grades favor boys more. A year with such a teacher widens the gender gap in formal jobs and pay🧵

Econ profs: if you have talented students interested in academic careers in applied micro, point them towards @TheIFS. We provide support for people undertaking PhDs part-time alongside work. Our placements of people completing PhDs over the last 15 years are great. (1/4)

do you know where phd economists get their first jobs? big update to econphdplacements.com: browse individual-level data on 14,000+ phd placement outcomes from 80 economics departments worldwide since 1990 👉 econphdplacements.com

Thinking about a PhD in economics? Hear directly from faculty how admissions committees read and weigh applications. Bring your questions for the open Q&A, and share with students who are considering applying! Register at the link in first reply 🔗 🌐

My colleagues and I at @PrincetonEcon are hiring several pre-doctoral researchers to work on topics in labor economics. Positions start in Summer 2027. Apply and register for info session here: irs.princeton.edu/senior-res… @econ_ra

Four years back, I left @IDinsight to make a new beginning. But with no specific opportunity or plan. Many thought it was strange. I never explained why. The truth: I realised the technocratic dev sector I worked in was dodging the questions that mattered to me.

I’m hiring a Predoctoral Research Associate at @Brown_Economics! Come help me study how schools and teachers shape the long-run economic success of young people. Priority deadline: Oct. 31. DMs welcome. apply.interfolio.com/191110 Please share! #econ_ra #predoc

A very useful report on how AI is affecting student learning at MIT. I like this term cognitive surrender, "where students fall back on AI at the first hint of struggle." We need to encourage undergrads (and all humans) to recognize this pattern and resist it.

MIT published a brutally honest report on what AI is doing to students. A committee of professors and students spent five months studying how AI changed learning on campus, and the findings read like a warning to every university on the planet. Study groups are disappearing. Office hours are emptying out. Problem sets and take-home exams no longer prove anything, because AI can produce credible solutions to almost any written assignment in the undergraduate curriculum. Students who lean on chatbots lose mastery and confidence, and some slip into what the report calls cognitive surrender, reaching for AI at the first hint of struggle. The numbers are rough. 46 percent of surveyed MIT undergrads use LLMs daily. 90 percent worry about their own overreliance. Undergrads who feel AI makes them replaceable now outnumber those who feel it makes them capable. The committee's answer surprised me. They refused to fight AI with surveillance. The report calls AI detectors unreliable, says lockdown browsers feel like spying, and warns that policing students builds a classroom atmosphere of mutual distrust. Instead, MIT wants to rebuild education around the things AI can't replace. That means oral exams, semester portfolios, in-person project work, and a required social component in every subject. The report even floats the idea of rethinking grades entirely, since without a GPA to optimize, much of the incentive to cheat with AI evaporates. The committee warns professors against replacing undergrad research assistants with AI agents just because they're cheaper, because a university exists to grow people, not output. The most famous tech school on earth admitted the machines broke its way of teaching. Its answer is more humans, not more software.

What are the returns to education? Most studies say 9%. A new meta-analysis claims publication bias means the true number is 0-3%. I replicated their analysis & think a fairer number is more like 6%. Blog: cgdev.org/blog/school-pays-e… Paper: cgdev.org/publication/return…

Many in the timeline are admonishing the “doomers” for calling out AI risk. But it’s worth pausing and taking stock that those closest to the technology, those making these statements right now, have been more correct about the growth in capabilities than anyone else.

Advice for student reaching out to professors in PhD application season: Do not use genAI for drafting your email. Those of us working on genAI, use frontier models too, and it is easy to spot the sloppiness. My instinct is to simply delete these emails. [1/2]

Have a study, want to collect forecasts, but don't have time? New pilot: the SSPP will draft a forecasting survey for you with AI based on your pre-analysis plan. RA assistance is available to help polish the draft. Contact team@socialscienceprediction.org if interested.

Development economics finally has a global professional home. Today we launch @ideadevecon ... Open to every development economist, everywhere. Join the community: idea.devecon.org Please share 🌍

As much as I enjoyed this conversation, it left me torn. I absolutely believe we should get students excited about reading and help them find books that spark their interest. At the same time, I think we need to be careful not to make reading too easy. We also need to help students build the stamina to read longer and more complex texts. Yes, I want students reading books they enjoy. But I also think they need to learn how to read texts they may not enjoy but that are important and worthwhile. Sometimes I wonder if we spend so much time thinking about what students want to read that we don't spend enough time thinking about what they need to read. I'm not sure I have the answer. These are just my thoughts. Regardless, this was a terrific conversation with four outstanding panelists. @christinalbrown @colbysharp @smorrisey @bamradionetwork bamradionetwork.com/track/bu…

New working paper with @AmolRaswan and Chris Udry: "The Sisyphean Pursuit of Evidence for Poverty Traps." A central idea in development economics is that poverty can trap people. We went looking for the cleanest evidence. Here's what we found – and didn't.