Alexander Berger
@albrgr
Enjoys a good applied micro paper. CEO of @open_phil. Views my own, tweets self-destruct every once in a while.
It has come to my attention that some people assume I read the papers I retweet. Let me be clear: that is slander. I have an actual job. If I don’t screenshot from the full text of the paper, I probably didn’t read it. Also, I provide no warranties. That concludes this broadcast.
Our job ad closes August 3rd! We're still looking for technical folks (ML, CS, EE, semiconductors) who're keen to apply their knowledge to ground policy in technical details. Also, strong generalists who help me run the show! Please apply, even if you're in doubt.
My team at RAND is hiring! Technical analysis for AI policy is desperately needed. Particularly keen on ML engineers and semiconductor experts eager to shape AI policy. Also seeking excellent generalists excited to join our fast-paced, impact-oriented team. Links below.
A fascinating graph: Less than a quarter of the population paid taxes in the UK and US before WW2
New PNAS paper on US academics' publication rates during tenure-track and post-tenure. Publication rates rise steeply until tenure and then plateau for lab-based fields, while declining for other fields.
Yet another paper finding huge negative mortality results from air pollution. Wild methods on this one from Brazil
Awesome paper finding huge benefits from relaxing zoning constraints in NYC, even once you account for the big costs of redevelopment vrollet.github.io/files/city_str…
Very cool paper about how important social networks are in driving movement conference.nber.org/conf_papers/f2…
This paper finds that net jobs created by the Opportunity Zones tax break are largely just shifted from adjacent census tracts conference.nber.org/conf_papers/f2…
Interesting result about the importance of sewers for the geography of cities arising from the fact that... um... "stuff" rolls downhill conference.nber.org/conf_papers/f2…
Measuring international power stemming from trade and investigating the geopolitical consequences and strategic causes of such power, from @ErnestLiuEcon and @david_yang nber.org/papers/w34006
New paper & surprising result. LLMs transmit traits to other models via hidden signals in data. Datasets consisting only of 3-digit numbers can transmit a love for owls, or evil tendencies. 🧵
Usually when I see someone saying something awful is capitalism they are describing something that 1) is genuinely awful 2) is a consequence of material scarcity and 3) has gotten much much less bad under capitalism
We're hiring a Manager of People Ops to own our HRIS and payroll, manage benefits vendors, and support staff in the US, Canada, and UK. Looking for: - 5+ years people ops experience - Analytical, conscientious, hands-on Remote-friendly, $138.2k-$152.4k. grnh.se/ks1dj13t8us
Deadline to apply for these roles is Sunday, July 27 (less than a week away!) — time has never been better to try to unlock supply constraints on energy, housing, healthcare, state capacity, etc.!
Highly recommend applying to our two new Abundance and Growth roles at @open_phil ! We are looking for up to 4 new team members including specialists in areas like energy, housing, clinical trials, etc. as well as broader generalists to help us direct $120M+ in the coming years
Our paper "Is Mobile Money Changing Rural Africa? Evidence from a Field Experiment" is now in print in the Review of Economics and Statistics! Main finding? Mobile money increased out-migration from rural areas and reduced agricultural investment. 🔗 doi.org/10.1162/rest_a…
Our paper "Is Mobile Money Changing Rural Africa? Evidence from a Field Experiment" is now in print in the Review of Economics and Statistics! Main finding? Mobile money increased out-migration from rural areas and reduced agricultural investment. 🔗 doi.org/10.1162/rest_a…
An important element of the new @ESRC strategy we are working on is to make the promotion of economic growth an explicit goal of our work. I've written a short piece about why we're doing this, and what that might involve.
TIL that Jim Heckman, who is super critical of some of Raj Chetty's work, actually co-authored with Raj Chetty's father as recently as 2022 as part of a 51-year collaboration.
The economic value of the H-1B program could be increased by 88% without changing the number of visas if we stopped giving them away at random.
METR previously estimated that the time horizon of AI agents on software tasks is doubling every 7 months. We have now analyzed 9 other benchmarks for scientific reasoning, math, robotics, computer use, and self-driving; we observe generally similar rates of improvement.
When will AI systems be able to carry out long projects independently? In new research, we find a kind of “Moore’s Law for AI agents”: the length of tasks that AIs can do is doubling about every 7 months.