What explains the rise in geographic partisan segregation in the U.S.?
While most studies focus on residential mobility, generational change and Democrats leaving their party explain a much larger share of that trend.
See our @voxeu.org column 👇👇 and our paper: www.vincentpons.org/partisan-seg...
Figure 1 presents two plots. Panel (a) displays the percentage of donors in each wealth rank that contributed to each of the six campaigns (i.e., Democratic and Republican nominees in 2012, 2016, and 2020).Footnote 17 Panel (b) displays the per capita dollars from each wealth bin, by campaign (including those who donate nothing). As Figure 1 shows, the association between wealth and contributions is approximately exponential. The wealthiest are much more likely to contribute, and the wealth gradient is even steeper in dollars because the top 0.1% contribute very large sums. This is one of the most robust findings in the campaign finance literature, but the figure demonstrates it with considerably more precision. By measuring wealth independently of contribution size, we avoid misattributing smaller contributions to non-wealthy donors and underestimating wealthy dollars. Most relevant to our analysis, Figure 1 compares the wealth gradients for Trump versus other candidates. In 2016, compared to other candidates, Trump’s wealth gradient is far flatter, because Trump elicited far fewer wealthy contributors and per capita dollars. For example, among the top 0.1%, Trump’s donors and per capita dollars represent about one third of Romney’s. While Trump did worse than all other candidates among nearly all wealth groups, that deficit was larger among the wealthy. In short, in 2016, wealthy donations to Trump are low compared to other presidential candidates. In 2020, Trump’s performance among the wealthy improved considerably over 2016 (Figure 1). Consider donation rates (Panel a). Among the wealthiest 0.1%, for example, Trump roughly doubled his rate, though he still significantly lagged Biden and Romney. He did even better in per capita dollars (Panel b) than in rates. Open access link to paper: http://cup.org/4cfm0Az
The wealthy dominate political contributions. Our study shows the top 0.1% donate 10–15× more frequently than the bottom 90%. The gradient isn’t subtle, it’s exponential. cup.org/4cfm0Az
See also postsec education
“Our findings indicate that capacity constraints, rather than poor school matching, primarily drive educational inequality.”
www.nber.org/papers/w34936
Opinion: "The US, UK, France, Germany, Canada, and other like-minded allies must form a coalition to cooperatively and immediately employ Moscow’s sovereign assets on Ukraine’s behalf", writes Michael F.Bennet at @euractiv.com
www.euractiv.com/opinion/puti...
1/The failure to investigate Renee Good’s death at all is ongoing scandal. The independent autopsy suggests that Renee Good was still alive after the first shot; it was the third shot that killed her, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news....
Newly released footage shows an ICE agent killing Rubin Ray Martinez, 23, in his car in Texas.
"He was shot at point-blank range through his side window by an ICE agent who was in no danger."
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Art of the Deal: Inherit advantages, burn to ash.
You can see why Russia sees an opportunity to settle scores. "Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly" www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Chart showing real median salaries by graduate status. Postgrads have declined 17%, grads 12% and non-grads by 3%
Since 2007, real median postgrad salaries have declined by 17% and 12% for undergrads (*before* accounting for student loans!). The narrative of the 2010s was dominated by the status-loss of industrial workers, the 2020s might be the decade of disappointed grads
Why is Dubai discourse so rich? Class identities all mangled and so everyone thinks they are punching up and letting rip. Full column 🫵 www.economist.com/britain/2026...
The authority that Trump has asserted in taking America to war against Iran is, like many of his other power grabs, an expression of the very tyranny the Framers were seeking to prevent. “Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object,” a young congressman named Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1848. This was “understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.” This quote, incidentally, is immortalized on the House’s website, if any members of Congress are looking for it.
The design of the Constitution divided warmaking authority between Congress and the executive to prevent a president to take the country to war by themselves for any petty or self-serving reason. You know, like a king would. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Donald Trump must find a way to cut short his ill-considered conflict with Iran. His rash approach is sowing chaos econ.st/3OYibZ1
In 1980, NBC interviewed a young Trump about the ongoing Iran hostage crisis. He did not hold back. “That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror, and I don’t think they’d do it with other countries,” he said. When the interviewer asked if that meant “you’re advocating that we should have gone in there with troops,” Trump replied, “I absolutely feel that, yes,” adding that had America done so, “I think right now we’d be an oil-rich nation.” (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said that he had dreamed of being able to “smite the terror regime” in Iran for 40 years; it turns out Trump had him beat.) In 1987, the Times reported that Trump declared in a New Hampshire speech that “the United States should attack Iran and seize some of its oil fields in retaliation for what he called Iran’s bullying of America.” In 1988, Trump told The Guardian that “I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools.”
I don't think many people realize that Trump has been talking about Iran like this since 1980: www.theatlantic.com/internationa...
Big picture, these results suggest that even among Republicans the politics of crime are changing
Colorado folks, it's not just in your head, Colorado has experienced one of the largest increases in ICE arrests in Trump 2.0 around the country.
And almost all of this increase is from indiscriminate arrests of people on the street, at their workplaces, at their homes, etc
This is a distressing story about Trump’s attempts to impede Thomas Massie’s efforts to release the Epstein files. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
Excited to release this policy brief exploring the college enrollment impacts of Massachusetts' recent dramatic expansions of free community college.
TLDR: The clear messaging and simple design of MassReconnect & MassEducate sparked substantial increases in community college enrollment.
Luigi Guido speaking on The Economic Costs of Ambiguous Laws
Also, almost everything he says is a lie. The US gave Ukraine far less than he claims, and has not given anything for a year. Biden did restart weapons manufacturing all over the country. There are still shortages of air defense ammunition, everywhere, because it takes a long time to make.
Perceptive Lexington column @economist.com from James Bennet highlighting Trump’s personal stakes in his rash new war
economist.com/united-state...
Women, Life, Freedom.
"If lawmakers are concerned with public safety in Colorado, immigration enforcement is not the way to achieve improved public safety.
We show that here in Colorado with the data, but that’s also true across the whole country."
-- me today in the Boulder @dailycamera.com
The Nazis stopped Jewish doctors from practising, so thousands of them left the country (my great grandfather was one of them). So many left that this was a good natural experiment for estimating the causal effect of losing doctors on infant mortality (& thousands died)
www.economist.com/britain/2026... Wrote about paranoia seeping through every part of British politics, from the "left-behind" to the "well-ahead"
After the arrests of powerful men across the world, you might be asking why the US has so much trouble holding its leaders accountable for lawbreaking. Since Nixon, all three branches of government have worked hard to ensure they can break the law with impunity www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Price counterfactuals can be nonparametrically identified without exogenous product characteristics, given exogenous shocks to prices, from Kirill Borusyak, Jiafeng Chen, @instrumenthull.bsky.social, and Lihua Lei www.nber.org/papers/w34842
On the one hand, the Trump administration is telling Europeans to take care of their own defense. On the other hand, they are supporting leaders and parties who are pro-Russian, opposed to European unity and don't want Europe to defend Ukraine or anything else.
Which is the policy?
It’s Pub Day!
My first book, The Science of Second Chances, hits shelves today. I can’t wait to hear what y’all think.
I hope it fills you with hope and optimism about what is possible in the public safety space. ✨
Are you a PhD Student curious about working in topics of health and aging? Do you feel like you may need extra support? I have a program for you!
A one-day mentoring workshop hosted by yours truly and Jetson Leder-Luis (BU) through @nber.org
www.nber.org/calls-papers...
interesting paper on effect of paternity leave reform on gender beliefs and norms. #WinningHeartsAndMinds
www.nber.org/papers/w34862
