iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Charlotte Ambrozek

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Since last July, when the OBBBA was signed, more than 4 million people, including 1.5M children, have lost coverage. SNAP coverage is declining everywhere, and despite what the Trump administration tells you, this is happening mostly to eligible claimants. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/when-the-o...

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

If you're policy minded, here's the brief! bsky.app/profile/camb...

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

We show that farmworkers tend to leave SNAP during busy harvest season and then re-enter when their time is not as constrained, suggesting that time constraints are a barrier to farmworker SNAP participation. There’s more in the paper and we’re hoping to do larger-scale follow-up work!

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

I’m so happy this one is out in the world. Farmworkers have very high rates of food insecurity but aren’t well connected to the US’s biggest food assistance program (SNAP), even if they’re eligible. doi.org/10.1016/j.fo... Lead author is super advisee @casemcnich.bsky.social!

doi.org

Redirecting

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

I’m behind on posting, so... Excited to share two things that were published last year!

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 08/04/2026

NEW: Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act imposes stricter food stamp work requirements and shifts a larger share of the costs to states. Arizona’s swift implementation has made it more difficult to apply and caused nearly half of recipients to lose benefits.

propublica.org

“The Alarm Bell”: Arizona’s Drop in SNAP Participation Signals Potential Nationwide Impact of Trump Legislation

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act imposes stricter food stamp work requirements and shifts a larger share of the costs to states. Arizona’s swift implementation has made it more difficult to apply an...

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Chatted with Jenny Ifft this week about the food assistance landscape, overviewing our public and private programs and where they're going open.spotify.com/episode/26lX...

open.spotify.com

The Food Assistance Landscape | Charlotte Ambrozek

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Reposted by Charlotte Ambrozek

NBER @nber.org · 23/01/2026

SNAP work requirements reduce participation by increasing procedural denials—a direct marker of administrative burden. Exploiting age-based exemptions for able-bodied adults without dependents, from Jason B. Cook, Elizabeth Cox, and Chloe N. East www.nber.org/papers/w34698

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David L. Ortega @dlortega.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Wait, it gets worse. The team of economists and researchers responsible for the USDA survey that measures food insecurity and hunger were put on indefinite paid leave today. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

wsj.com

Exclusive | USDA Puts Food Researchers on Leave

The move comes days after the Trump administration abruptly canceled an annual Agriculture Department report that measures hunger in America.

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Lilly Springer @springerecon.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

🧵 of my favorite new papers that I saw at #ASHEcon2025 First up is “Stigmas and Social Safety Net Participation” from @kpukelis.bsky.social and Michael Holcomb which finds interesting stigma difference along political lines

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Peter Hull @instrumenthull.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Coming soon to Zoom rooms near you! We're excited to announce a reboot of the Chamberlain Seminar, five years after its 2020 debut We'll kick things off on 3/21 with a tribute to Gary. More info and future seminars here: chamberlainseminar.org Register here: stanford.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

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Corinne Low @corinnelow.com · 04/02/2025

I am hearing that PEPFAR programs are still being stalled, and medication appointments cancelled, despite a waiver in place to allow life-saving programs to continue. Thus, @belindaarch.bsky.social and I are sharing the letter we wrote, signed by 110 economists, urging its continuation. 1/4

Text of letter available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SMkdyaeJWOHN4y-DC5RPY1ZGk9B_SIIk5Tv_Yz5zQRw/edit?tab=t.0

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Journal of Policy Analysis and Management @jpam-dc.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

We are now on Bluesky! Follow us for the latest news and updates from JPAM. #EconSky #PolicySky

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Corinne Low @corinnelow.com · 28/01/2025

@belindaarch.bsky.social and I have written a letter from economists regarding PEPFAR. Please sign and share with your network. Only economist signatures right now (for more focused impact). Once signed, we will share with the administration, congress, + the media. #econsky forms.gle/C5roVX5sFF14...

forms.gle

PEPFAR letter

January 28th, 2025 With news that Trump’s foreign aid executive order has halted distribution of life-saving HIV medications through PEPFAR, we write as concerned economists to express how crucial it ...

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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Broader agreement that it to applies to discretionary spending payments (Head Start, WIC, etc).

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Dani Sandler @dismalscientist86.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

📈📉 New Census Working Paper: "Food Security Status Across the Rural-Urban Continuum Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic" by Patrick J. Brady, Melissa N. Laska, Rachel Widome, and Sruthi Valluri www.census.gov/library/work...

Background: Food security, defined as consistent access to sufficient food to support an active life, is a crucial social determinant of health. A key dimension affecting food security is position along the rural-urban continuum, as there are important socio-economic and environmental differences between communities related to urbanicity or rurality that impact food access. The COVID-19 pandemic created social and economic shocks that altered financial and food security, which may have had differential effects by rurality and urbanicity. However, there has been limited research on how food security differs across the shades of the rural-urban community spectrum, as most often researchers have characterized communities as either urban or rural. Methods: In this study, which linked restricted use Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement data to census-tract level United States Department of Agriculture Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes, we estimated the prevalence of household food security across temporal (2015-2019 versus 2020-2021) and socio-spatial (urban, large rural city/town, small rural town, or isolated rural town/area) dimensions in order to characterize variations before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by urbanicity/rurality. We report prevalences as point estimates with 95% confidence intervals. Results: The prevalence of food security was 87.7% (87.5-88.0%) in 2015-2019 and 88.8% (88.489.3%) in 2020-2021 for urban areas, 85.5% (84.7-86.2%) in 2015-2019 and 87.1% (85.7-88.3%) in 2020-2021 for large rural towns/cities, 82.8% (81.5-84.1%) in 2015-2019 and 87.3% (85.789.2%) in 2020-2021 for small rural towns, and 87.6% (86.3-88.8%) in 2015-2019 and 90.9% (88.792.7%) in 2020-2021 for isolated rural towns/areas. Conclusion: These findings show that rural communities experiences of food security vary and aggregating households in these environments may mask areas of concern and concentrated need.

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Reposted by Charlotte Ambrozek

Health Economics @hec-wiley.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Hello World! The Editorial Board of Health Economics is pleased to announce that we are now live on the happier, friendlier, and all-together Blue-er place. Please follow us (and repost) for updates on articles and journal issues as they come out.

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Reposted by Charlotte Ambrozek

Tatyana Deryugina @tderyugina.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

PSA to job market candidates: if you didn't get a particular flyout, it may have had nothing to do with the quality of your interview. Departments have a myriad of internal constraints and goals that are unobservable to you, and the process is a lot more complex than you think.

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Lastly (for now): IV hotel by Phillipa Gowdy-Jaehnig

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Next, can't argue with fixed effects, by Michael Pliscott:

The "woman yelling at a cat" meme format. Above the woman, it says "`You will never be able to isolate the relationship between those variables, there are too many other variables!'" Above the cat, it says "Me using fixed effects in a simple linear regression"

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

First up, losing sleep over your code, by Havy Nguyen:

A four panel comic. In the top left panel, a brain has a speech bubble that says "are you going to sleep?". In the top right panel, a woman lying in bed has a speech bubble that says "Yes I am. Now shut up." In the bottom left panel, the brain has a speech bubble that says "did you code your standard errors to be heteroskedasticity-robust?" In the bottom right panel, we see the woman, lying in the dark, with eyes wide open in horror.

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Excited to start the year off sharing some memes made by my students in Intro Econometrics for extra credit on their final. The prompt is to make a meme about an econometrics concept, and then explain to me, as if I am your less econometrically savvy relative, why the meme works.

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Justin Carinci @justincarinci.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Judith Liu presenting research with our Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, and Norbert Wilson, on disparities in food insecurities between foreign-born and U.S.-born-headed households. #ASSA2025

Alfonso Flores-Lagunes watches Judith Liu present their joint research

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Reposted by Charlotte Ambrozek

Jūra Liaukonytė @jurawho.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

🚨Closing out 2024 with a new paper with @hristakeva.bsky.social and @leofeler.com: How GLP-1 medications like Ozempic are reshaping food demand and changing the rules of the game for the food industry.

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Casey is on BlueSky! @casemcnich.bsky.social Keep an eye out for her work in public and labor in the next couple of years.

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Reposted by Charlotte Ambrozek

Damon Jones @nomadj1s.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

The technical term for this move is “some BS” … the only tax program that scored higher in reviews from users was the pre-populated tax return pilot in California … also targeted by massive for-profit tax preparer lobbying …

NEW: Reps. Adrian Smith and Chuck Edwards wrote Trump a letter today urging him to terminate the IRS’s new free tax filing service, otherwise known as Direct File, on “day one” through an executive order.

It’s co-signed by 27 House Republicans

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Reposted by Charlotte Ambrozek

Gemma Dipoppa @gemmadipoppa.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

🚨 New @apsrjournal.bsky.social Paper! 🚨 In “When Migrants Mobilize against Labor Exploitation: Evidence from the Italian Farmlands,” I study how empowering undocumented migrants can reduce labor exploitation and even weaken organized crime. Thread : 🧵

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Data on farmworkers and program participation is hard to get, so we're trying not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. Really hoping that some folks who administer SNAP will find this useful. Working paper coming soon! Pictures by Casey McNichols, my excellent PhD student 3/3

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Farmworkers could be seasonally attached to the safety net because: (a) their eligibility really changes, or (b) because they don't have the time or bandwidth to re-cert during harvest We find suggestive evidence for (b) ➡️ outreach and admin changes could help farmworkers use SNAP! 2/3

Panel a of a figure showing the number of non-farmworker households in Fresno County churning (re-entering SNAP after being off the program for between 1 and 3 months) and participating in SNAP in every month from April 2016 to February 2020. Churn varies sort of randomly between 600 and 1,000 households per month. Participation is declining pretty smoothly from 95,000 households at the start to 80,000 households in June 2019, then picking back up to 85,000ish households and staying pretty constant for the rest of the sample. The spike in participation is caused by the end of SSI cash-out in California. Churn increases in the first 6 months of the sample as the number of households regularly observed stabilizes.

Panel b of a figure showing the number of farmworker households in Fresno County churning (re-entering SNAP after being off the program for between 1 and 3 months) and participating in SNAP in every month from April 2016 to February 2020. Churn varies very seasonally, with lows in February of 125 households per month and highs in November of 250ish households per month. Participation is declining over time (from 11,000 households at start of sample to 8,500 at end), but also has seasonal variation, with highs around January ~7% higher than lows around August.

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

🚨 new policy brief 🧵 poverty.ucdavis.edu/post/snap-pa... Farmworkers have high food insecurity AND low SNAP participation (even if eligible). We show big correlations between harvest timing and farmworkers leaving then re-entering SNAP. This pattern hurts both households and state budgets. 1/3

Screenshot of the title, author list, and abstract of a policy brief from the UC Davis Center for Poverty and Inequality Research December 2024 issue.

Title: "SNAP Participation Among Agricultural Workers Impacted by Seasonal Employment"

Authors: Casey J. McNichols and Charlotte E. Ambrozek, University of Minnesota; and Timothy K. M. Beatty, UC Davis

The text of the abstract reads:
"The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) serves as a safety net for more than 41 million low-income families,
but only about 80 percent of eligible individuals participate. Among SNAP-eligible agricultural workers, take-up is likely
even lower. In a recent study, we explored the seasonality of agricultural employment and the extent to which its associated
administrative burdens impact households’ SNAP eligibility and participation. To measure households’ attachment to SNAP,
we used ‘churn’—exit and subsequent re-entry into SNAP—among Fresno County, CA households. We found a significant
negative correlation between SNAP churn and agricultural employment seasonality. Understanding the relationship between
SNAP churn and the seasonality of agricultural employment would likely improve access to the safety net for a vulnerable
population, as well as reduce SNAP implementation costs for both households and the state."

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Mandatory interviews with a fixed interview time are a critical administrative checkpoint for SNAP applicants. Giving them flexibility in scheduling interviews helps them get past this checkpoint. We ran experiments to increase interview flexibility with Code for America in LA and Boulder, CO.

The results were strikingly consistent: In both places, about half of the people who were offered the flexible interview option chose to use it. In Los Angeles applicants given the flexible interview option (not just those who used it) had 30 day approval rates that were 6.2 points higher than those who were in the status quo scheduled interview-only process. In Boulder, applicants texted about a flexible interview option had an approval rate that was 6-7 points higher than those who only received a mailer with a scheduled interview time.

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Paul Krugman @pkrugman.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Sometimes the combination of arrogance and ignorance is breathtaking. Yes, US health care has high admin costs; that's because it relies so much on private insurers. Govt-run health insurance has much lower overhead

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

@ #SEA2024 tomorrow and Monday. Tomorrow I’m presenting new work on the effect of SNAP retailer disqualifications on participation in “Food Insecurity and Food Assistance” from 4-5:45p in Georgetown East Looking forward to meeting/reconnecting with folks Come say hi!

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

UMN APEC is hiring in ag business! Come work with us, one of the best ag econ depts in the US, excellent colleagues and students. Twin Cities amenities - great for food + 🎸🎹🎻 + 🚲 + 🛶 Apply by December 15 aaea.execinc.com/edibo/JobBoa...

aaea.execinc.com

Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA)

The Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) is a not-for-profit association serving the professional interests of members working in agricultural and broadly related fields of applied econ...

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Helena Bottemiller Evich @hbottemiller.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Hello, hello! I'm officially back on here. Who should I be following? Where are the food/agriculture policy nerds? Help me out!

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

You can find more about Jiuchen at his website: sites.google.com/view/jiuchen...

sites.google.com

Jiuchen Deng

Email: deng0141@umn.edu Curriculum Vitae

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Sharing another UMN APEC #EconJMP! Jiuchen Deng is a labor economist studying how children’s personality traits & cognitive skills develop (mediated by kid’s environment) and effects on labor market outcomes. Jiuchen’s JMP finds that the Big 5 and cognitive skills matter for adult earnings.

Screenshot of the title page of Jiuchen Deng's econ job market paper. The paper is titled "The Development of Personality Traits and Cognitive Skills in Adolescence: Evidence from a Skill Formation Model and a Control Function Approach." This version of the paper was posted on October 24, 2024. The abstract reads: "Despite its great importance in child development, education, intra-household allocation, and labor market outcomes, the development of personality traits remains under- studied. I use a skill formation model and a control function approach to investigate the formation of the Big Five personality traits and cognitive skills in adolescence. I find evidence of cross-effects between personality traits and cognitive skills, which are consistent with the findings in neuroscience research. I find strong self-productivity of personality traits and cognitive skills. Based on the control function approach, I uncover a positive impact of family income that fully offsets the negative effect of maternal hours worked on the development of adolescents’ personality traits and cognitive skills. Both personality traits and cognitive skills are important for adult earnings. Results from the skill formation model and the control function approach are internally consistent, and consistent with other studies." The paper is available at: https://sites.google.com/view/jiuchendeng/research

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

This made me think of a place from my childhood that had the best red velvet cake: www.lloydscarrotcake.com obviously the carrot cake is freaking amazing too

lloydscarrotcake.com

Lloyd's Carrot Cake

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Reposted by Charlotte Ambrozek

Gina C. Pieters, PhD @ginapieters.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

To all the new #EconSky people whi may be dealing with the Econ Job Market: *There is an #EconJMP feed *I have a PhD Job Market Starter Pack go.bsky.app/4icnwxi. If you are a candidate or an institution posting *many* openings, reach out and I will add you.

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Belinda Archibong @belindaarch.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Hey all, I created a starter pack with a list of Black economists and academics for an easily accessible list of folks doing research that we can all follow and cite #Blacksky #AddtoBlacksky #Econsky: go.bsky.app/RyKSzcb

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

I HIGHLY recommend T Kingfisher (you can follow her on here @tkingfisher.com). Nettle & Bone and Thornhedge are recent Hugo winners

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Charlotte Ambrozek @cambrozek.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

Check out @yanxulong.bsky.social's #EconJMP! Yanxu shows that rural poverty alleviation in China increases forest cover, with benefits from carbon storage 5x the cost of the policy. The main mechanism? People move away from rural areas as poverty falls. Find out more at yanxulong.github.io

Figure 3 from Yanxu Long's job market paper "Rural Poverty Alleviation and Forest Conservation."

The figure presents event-study results on the impact of rural poverty alleviation on forest share, providing suggestive evidence for the parallel trends assumption: across estimators, coefficients for the semesters prior to the poverty alleviation implementation in 2011 are consistently close to zero, indicating no discernible pre-trends. Additionally, the figure highlights treatment effect dynamics, with four difference-in-diffences estimators robust to staggered adoption showing an increase in treatment effects over time in the post-treatment period (2011-2020). This increase may be due to (i) rising poverty alleviation spending and (ii) natural tree growth.

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