iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joachim Voth

@jvoth.bsky.social

2.8K followers 22 following 38 posts

economic historian; sometimes dabbling in AI+SocSci; mostly on X; www.jvoth.com

Posts Replies Media

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

during the Great Terror, some 150-200k may have owed their fate to the power of radio.

020

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

The paper is here: tinyurl.com/mpde8h76 Lots of fun working with these guys. We exploit long-wave radio transmissions, a funky think compared to short-wave and medium wave as its transmitted via the ground - which we use for identification. Effects are big: Of the 750k people executed

130

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

New wp alert! Sultan Mehmood, Yaroslav Prokhorskoy and I have a new paper. Mass communication is normally used for indoctrination and persuasion. Using evidence from Stalin's USSR, we conclude that it can also be used as a tool for repression.

172

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

When your paper gets a top 5 conditional accept... despite R3...

040

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

pilots. Over time, as the war dragged on, the awards diffused to lower-ranked (though still elite) pilots. This created a need for new 'carrots'. Incentives mattered because the business was inherently risky; more than 80% of pilots in our sample died.

230

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

We argue this follows the logic of fashion cycles (Pesendorfer 1995). Status goods are signals. Their value depends on the exclusivity of the group that possesses them. Our data show a clear "cheapening" effect: the earliest recipients of the Knight’s Cross were the most skilled

110

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

engineered a "rat race" that extracted significant additional effort from its best pilots. When pilots got close to the informal quota, their effort spiked; once they had the award, it slumped. New medals spelled more renewed efforts.

110

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

How do you motivate workers? Leo Bursztyn, Ewan Racliffe and I have a new paper. We look at highly skilled 'workers' whose effort was near-impossible to monitor -- German fighter pilots in WW2.

2151

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

reminds me of the immortal essay by Stanley Fish "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos"...

141

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

The Harvard longitudinal study, tracking undergrads and Boston city residents since the 1940s, concluded that only close personal relationships matter for life satisfaction; this is not what we find.

121

Joachim Voth @jvoth.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of life? What would you remember as bringing satisfaction, meaning, and purpose to your life? These are the modest questions that David Lagakos, Stelios Michalopoulos and I try to answer by "interviewing" over 1,400 Americans.

1246