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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

Looking at total or just prime-age employment misses the more acute changes in labor market dynamics associated with the introduction of AI and uneven post-Covid recovery. The anticipated effects seem to be largely concentrated among entry-level workers and recent grads.

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

In last months data the labor force participation gap has dropped another point from -12.3 in February to -13.3 in March, driven mostly by the continued decline in employment among 20-24 year olds.

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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

Feel free to reach out if this overlaps with your work or if you know of any relevant opportunities. I’m open to fellowships, contributing roles, or project-based research support--academic, think tank, industry, or otherwise.

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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

The “trust but verify” approach to LLM output limits my productivity gains by forcing me to learn new methods in order to keep up. The final product is qualitatively better, but I can imagine the quantitative advantage of just letting it rip

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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

The legislative and judicial incentives to defer authority and acquiesce to executive consolidation always rested on the fragile assumption that bipartisan norms would prevail across administrations

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

Durable institutional reform must look beyond the past year of executive abuse and reckon with the ongoing abdication (if not outright refusal) of congressional responsibility to meaningfully constrain national security agencies and curtail the capacity to inflict state violence

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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

These trends are reinforced by demographics and affordability. Vermont has a shrinking share of young professionals, alongside a widening gap between income and housing costs, making it increasingly difficult to attract and retain early-career workers.

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

The problem isn’t captured in headline employment figures. Vermont’s labor market appears tight, with persistently high job vacancies, as labor force participation trends downward pointing to a shrinking pool of available workers rather than strong underlying growth.

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

Most of the spending is concentrated in healthcare, even in education the growing cost burden can be traced back to insurance, and while ending one-off pandemic programs provides a limited stop-gap, Vermont needs to address the structural imbalance that comes with an older population

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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

But I just solved the economy

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

My proposed solution: we eliminate application materials entirely and introduce an auction theoretic hiring framework in which prospective applicants simply bid Claude tokens for the opportunity to interview for the position.

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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

It’s almost the ideal follow-up recommendation to someone that enjoyed Why Nations Fail, there’s a lot you can get out of it and further it’s a good test of whether you have the patience for studying economic history

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

But, the book does serve as a detailed review of the important literature and major debates in long-run economic growth and comparative development

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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

Economic historians wait nervously, knowing Robert Allen will bring coal if you’ve misbehaved

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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

There aren’t many jobs being created directly in AI or AI-adjacent fields, and those that are tend to require very high technical skill. Most of the employment growth seems to be happening downstream in service professions

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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

My understanding is that we are seeing a lot of AI job application and listing noise contributing slower entry-level hiring and greater search-and-match frictions, most of the negative sentiment (particularly for young people) seems coming from this chokepoint

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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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