iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

I’ve been holding off in pursuit of other topics, but I figured it’s about time I write my “why institutions” article: open.substack.com/pub/jackbmey...

open.substack.com

In Defence of Institutions

Why Institutions Matter and Why You Should Care

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Matt Darling @besttrousers.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

That this got interpreted a "no one wants to work anymore" and "quiet quitting" (during the fastest increase in employment ever!) is patient zero of the vibecession IMO.

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Unsurprisingly, Trump's immigration crackdown is still not delivering labor market improvements for the US-born Over the last year, the native-born unemployment rate has increased from 4.2% to 4.3%, while native-born employment rates have decreased

a graph of the unemployment rate for native and foreign born americans

a graph of the employment rate for native and foreign born americans

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Labor force participation for ages 20-24 has been falling consistently for the las 25 years and never saw the same post-Covid rebound as prime-age employment. With AI disruption seemingly concentrated in new hires, the growing gap is concerning.

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

In light of the discussion around LLM-augmented application materials contributing to a more relationship-based hiring model, I want to reiterate that I am on the market for data/research/editorial roles, particularly in: innovation, antitrust, trade, and development policy.

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

I don’t mean to be the guy that yells “procedure!” at every major international escalation, but where’s the congressional authorization? It won’t change much, but it’s past time for some legislative accountability. Support for these reckless interventions should mean a list of names on a resolution.

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

A major tension in AI use as an early career researcher is the learning vs productivity tradeoff. I could probably 10X my output if I lowered my standards for reviewing AI-augmented code, but that might be at the expense of developing a robust working knowledge of my own research

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Economists are often maligned for straying beyond their subject-area knowledge, but I find mechanism design appealing precisely because it offers an overarching framework for managing interests and incentives under conditions of hidden, private, local or otherwise asymmetric information

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Health care continues to be a key driver of Vermont’s rising cost of living. Aging demographics and rural community reliance on emergency care services are raising systemwide costs, with downstream budget impacts on education spending and other state employment

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

We are witnessing the outcome of decades of unchecked expansion of the security state, a project that collapsed the distinction between law enforcement and national security, weakened oversight and accountability, and consolidated authority within the executive branch

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

US data center construction inched up to a new record high in data released today, exceeding a $42B annualized rate (and this only includes the data center facilities, not the expensive computers within) Growth has slowed down, but investment is still up 18.5% over the last year

A graph of US data center construction, which rises from $15B to $42B from 2022 to 2025

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Some good and bad in the budget, but Vermont's most pressing concern as far as state expenditures should be growing revenue against an aging tax base below replacement. We're a few years out from a fiscal wall unless we can attract more young professionals to the state.

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Amid all the noise it’s important to remember that no matter how you index historical prices $700 billion for Greenland is decidedly the worst deal in the history of US territorial acquisition

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

The problem: LLMs undermine the efficacy of cover letters and screening questions as a costly signal of applicant skill and effort in the hiring process, such that they lose their informational content and no longer reliably communicate applicant quality.

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

A regional beer market consolidation case study; The Shed was a local brewpub acquired by Otter Creek in 2011, owned by Long Trail as of 2010, acquired by Mass Bay in 2022, merged with Finestkind to form Barrel One Collective in 2024, now the largest craft brewer in New England

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Sridhar Ramesh @radishharmers.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

I have no idea what's going on. And I will be vindicated by history.

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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

this is all very confusing for those of us who thought that fascist regimes were ideologically coherent, tactically consistent, and didn’t launch military attacks on other countries without a worked-out plan of exactly what to do next

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Despite my longstanding skepticism of constructivist IR theory, oil being framed as the explicit objective in Venezuela is completely detached from material state interests and serves more as a symbolic obsession embedded deep in the American political consciousness

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 04/01/2026

yep. i can identify any number of structural issues but at the end of the day the basic problem is the republican party. this has been apparent for at least 20 years. it is also an incredibly unpopular observation to make among “serious” people.

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

My short review of Two Paths to Prosperity: I don’t find the affirmative case or causal identification of the ‘Great Bifurcation’ very compelling or sufficiently separated from other contemporaneous developments or even the exogenous and geographic factors discussed

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Looking back on the last half century of U.S. regime change interventions and concluding that we should try it again, but closer to home

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

New Institutionalists on Christmas be like: “I can’t wait for Douglass North to come down the chimney with his bundle of institutions to deliver self-enforcing credible commitments and reduced transaction costs”

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 20/12/2025

personally getting very irritated by the unbelievable arrogance of the data boys

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

it is 2022. I am watching people yell about the economic data & the vibecession discourse it is 2023. I am watching people yell about the economic data & the vibecession discourse it is 2024. I am watching people yell about the economic data & the vibecession discourse it is 2025. I am watching...

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Arin Dube @arindube.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Growth of real wage (purchasing power) has continued to be strong,* and broad-based, even as nominal wage growth has slowed. *not affected very much by quirks in last month's CPI print.

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Julius Koschnick @juliuskoschnick.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

New working paper 🚨🚨🚨 What was the origin of modern economic growth? Joel Mokyr had a Nobel winning answer - growth took off when science and technology began to reinforce each other But can we test this quantitatively? This paper does so – read more ⬇️ 🧵

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Like a lot of innovation driven growth, it’s looking like we're headed towards an employment polarization problem, with AI job creation concentrated at the high and low ends of the human capital and income distribution

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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

All research is exploratory if you’re confused enough

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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

it is extremely funny that the American populace unironically treated the era of seeing of "help wanted" signs as a bad sign

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Plausible explanation for the deteriorating economic sentiment puzzle; for entry-level workers the problem hasn’t necessarily been fewer jobs, but difficulty matching to existing vacancies. Now, as the labor market cools, those frictions are starting to appear more in the headline employment numbers

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Max Berger @maxberger.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

I feel like one of the most underrated explanations for what's happening right now in global politics is that almost everyone has lost their minds.

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

Stadiums offer an interesting look into the structure of beer markets from brewers and distributors, to vendors and consumers. It’s no surprise a major figure in antitrust like Lina Khan would have an issue like the price of beer in a captured market on her agenda. open.substack.com/pub/jackbmey...

open.substack.com

Working Draft: Beer Market Structure

Capture, Concentration, and Anti-Trust

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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

ChatGPT has fallen millions of students must learn

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

I've been thinking about artificial intelligence and the job market a lot recently, so I wrote a piece on what I see as the most immediate economic threat posed by generative AI (and it's not automation): AI Might Not Be Taking Your Job Anytime Soon open.substack.com/pub/jackbmey...

open.substack.com

AI Might Not Be Taking Your Job Anytime Soon

But It’s Making It a Whole Lot Harder to Find a New One

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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

tariff poasting still going well I see

“China has been hit much harder than the USA, not even close. They, and many other nations, have treated us unsustainably badly. We have been the dumb and helpless “whipping post,” but not any longer. We are bringing back jobs and businesses like never before. Already, more than FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS OF INVESTMENT, and rising fast! THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic. We will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

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James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

The geniuses at DOGE are bringing us insights like "I'm not really sure why the tax agency for a country of 330 million people has a larger staff than a midsize bank"

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Grateful for the opportunity to present my research on the economics of patent disclosure reform to an interdisciplinary audience, many thanks to St Peter’s College for hosting

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 29/01/2025

remember stuff like this when they tell you that diversity means a lowering of standards

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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

babe wake up the president is going to start a diplomatic war with Colombia

I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia’s Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people. Petro’s denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States, so I have directed my Administration to immediately take the following urgent and decisive retaliatory measures:

-Emergency 25% tariffs on all goods coming into the United States. In one week, the 25% tariffs will be raised to 50%.

-A Travel Ban and immediate Visa Revocations on the Colombian Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters.

-Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government.

-Enhanced Customs and Border Protection Inspections of all Colombian Nationals and Cargo on national security grounds.

-IEEPA Treasury, Banking and Financial Sanctions to be fully imposed.

These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Explaining to my coauthor that maybe what we really need to set our paper proposal apart is a novel (and somewhat dubious) instrument

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 24/01/2025

“we must substantively engage with obviously specious and disingenuous claims as long as there is a veneer academic inquiry” is why we’re in a place where scientific racism can circulate in the mainstream

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

How it feels to do all my analysis in base R

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

It’s a bit of a bummer to have to go back and edit a research proposal to remove or revise any mentions of federal climate and environmental programs that as of the last week no longer exist

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Jack Meyer @jackbmeyer.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Some early Christmas readings

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