Delighted to have Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde back on the pod this week. We cover demographic decline, the robustness of dollar dominance, AI, and whether his vast expertise defies comparative advantage! www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRvI...
A level-headed analysis on the labor regulations in Europe that are hampering innovation, with examples (in Europe!) of how to improve in this space.
worksinprogress.co/issue/why-eu...
Zeit für ein historisches Comeback: Lässt sich die Krise der deutschen Industrie wieder umkehren?
Das erörtern @therealmaxpower.bsky.social und @philippasigl.bsky.social im neuen #Geldbrief anhand relevanter Beispiele aus der Geschichte.
Jetzt lesen ⬇️
I wrote about Claude Code and why non-coders should be paying attention (and playing with the system) - it shows what today’s LLMs can do
Along the way I had Claude launch a business for me & build a game that simulates the rise and fall of civilizations. open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu...
Also, if you want to replace RA classification work via an LLM API, going with an Open-Source LLM (nowadays quite capable) and a low model temperature might improve replicability. In this case you should also try different model parameters for robustness, especially now that the APIs are so cheap.
I think it’s worth emphasizing how good Claude Code is in VSCode nowadays. Both for quick prototyping (e.g., building zero-shot streamlit GUIs for classification tasks) but also for important code/ debugging. For the latter, it’s important to iterate slowly in order to be able to verify the code.
A very thoughtful piece on the current state of the credibility revolution in Macro. carloschavezp29.substack.com/p/why-macro-...
Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZT...
I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...
Do you know which places in Europe are digitalising fast?
#Berlin and Greece. No, seriously. www.economist.com/europe/2025/...
What's the matter with Germany? Because it's not what you think it is.
on.ft.com/4raAAk3
Immer mehr Waren rollen über Europas Straßen. In Deutschland gibt es täglich rund 800.000 Lkw-Fahrten. Viele Aufträge landen bei osteuropäischen Subunternehmen. Niedrige Löhne und harte Bedingungen prägen den Alltag der Fahrer.DLF-Sendung. Audio: www.deutschlandfunk.de/lkw-fahrer-i...
A data source dries up
Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp....
genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.
A widely held view is that the Gini coefficient is not decomposable by subgroups. This paper proposes an axiomatic framework that ensures well-behaved within and between-group terms under which the Gini is decomposable with a novel and unique formula. buff.ly/XdnzG6F
I wrote an updated guide on which AIs to use right now, & some tips on how to use them (and how to avoid falling into some common traps)
A lot has changed since I last wrote a guide like this in the spring, and AI has gotten much more useful as a result. open.substack.com/pub/oneusefu...
The incredible numbers - an actual trillion of investment, via an unquoted start up - and circularities (Nvidia investing in OpenAI and Intel, OpenAi in AMD, billion dollar purchases paid with stock, the cash, where's the cash etc? - are just mind boggling
on.ft.com/4mNOdCh
Bonn is (close to) free regarding tuition if that helps
For once it‘s worth looking at the comment section here
Sehr lesenswerter Artikel zur katastrophalen Lage von Studierenden aus Südasien an privaten deutschen Hochschulen taz.de/Junge-Inder-...
This graph shows labor productivity in Germany since 1970. The manufactoring sector is on top, the whole economy, services & construction is below. The index is set to 1991 = 100.
Crazy that this is in such a stark contrast to manufactoring labor productivity in Germany (not quite the same statistic though: different timeline & output per worker, from here: www.wirtschaftsdienst.eu/inhalt/jahr/... )
You can order these online through various online shops, here's an overview PDF with some shops on the third page: assets.adac.de/image/upload...
Screenshot from Positron showing code that connects to a database, and then highlights the connection in a Connections Pane and shows the data in a Data Explorer tab Here's the code: library(dplyr) # Connect with {connections}, which automatically adds this to the panel con <- connections::connection_open(duckdb::duckdb(), ":memory:") # Or do it manually with {DBI} # con <- DBI::dbConnect(duckdb::duckdb(), ":memory:") # connections::connection_view(con) # Add some stuff to the database copy_to(con, penguins, name = "penguins", overwrite = TRUE) copy_to(con, gapminder::gapminder, name = "gapminder", overwrite = TRUE) # Get stuff out of the database adelie_query <- tbl(con, I("penguins")) |> filter(species == "Adelie") # Check it out! It's SQL! show_query(adelie_query) # Actually run the query penguins_from_db <- adelie_query |> collect() penguins_from_db connections::connection_close(con) # Or this: # DBI::dbDisconnect(con)
Ooh, @posit.co's Positron is no longer in beta as of this week(!), and it recently added support for DuckDB databases in the Connections Pane positron.posit.co/connections-... - any db connection you add with {connections} shows up there—this is magical! #rstats
Why is Scandinavia the Most Gender Equal Place in the World?
My two part series weaves economic history, sociology, and my own qualitative research
1) www.ggd.world/p/why-is-sca...
2) www.ggd.world/p/why-is-sca...
I wonder what the results of this paper would look like today, after many years of speed optimizations in many programming languages www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/com...
Very nice article on rising market power and the fall of the labour share www.chicagobooth.edu/review/are-e...
Olivier Blanchard argues that we should understand better the macroeconomics of the medium run, and I could not agree more. Since I have been working on this for a while, let me show you why this is a promising field for young researchers!
Not anymore :)
Amazing piece on how recent TV shows haven't been that great, actually: www.readtrung.com/p/the-case-a...
