iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Sam Dodini

NBER @nber.org · 11/03/2026

A sudden decline in low-skilled immigrant workers in 2020 increased the exit of manufacturing firms in Korea and decreased wages of Korean workers, from Jongkwan Lee, Giovanni Peri, and Hee-Seung Yang www.nber.org/papers/w34927

0206

Reposted by Sam Dodini

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 11/03/2026

America's status as the top destination for global talent is being shattered. The Administration only just published (!) what happened last summer to international student visa issuances. It's grim. From the indispensable @karinfischer.bsky.social @chronicle.com —> chronicle.com/newsletter/l...

1328163

Reposted by Sam Dodini

Dane Owens @owendanes.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Pretty crazy how important the blockade of a trade route is right now

216256646910

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

"I say unto you, pray for your enemies."

020

Reposted by Sam Dodini

Emily Parker @emilyparker.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

📣 Hot off the press 📣 We document tremendous growth in U.S. federal place-based funding, show it has disproportionately gone to areas with more nonprofits & stronger housing markets, and find a pattern of cumulative advantage in funding among high-poverty neighborhoods. doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

doi.org

Federal place-based policy and the geography of inequality in the United States, 1990–2019

Abstract. This paper assesses the growth and spatial distribution of federal place-based policies in the United States. Using a novel dataset of federal pl

12814

Reposted by Sam Dodini

Jenny Schuetz @jennyschuetz.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

How should elected officials divine voters’ preferences about building more homes: through broad-based polls or the 12 people who show up at a community meeting on Tuesday night and yell for hours? Hard to say…

110122

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

A strongly worded letter isn't gonna cut it.

010

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

There is a lot more detail in the paper, including tests to rule out people's favorite alternative explanations. t.co/xObtAFPZOh

t.co

https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/17830/the-power-to-discriminate

000

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Greater labor market competition has an equalizing effect across workers & helps to reduce discrimination. But so does good information about where each worker stands in his/her true productivity--when employers don't rely on coarse proxies like demographic group.

110

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

What stands out is that in the concentrated markets, the firms most likely to hire non-Western immigrants have managers who have more prior work experience with immigrants-those who know their productivity best! Another signal of *information* & beliefs being the culprit.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Second-generation immigrants don't experience the same discriminatory gaps. Neither do immigrants who have been in the country for ~20 years or immigrants from western Europe & the US.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

We use the richness of the data to rule out a bunch of other mechanisms like different job search, social networks, being hired at firms with immigrant managers, take-up of social programs, or sorting into different occupations. None of these explain the gaps.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

What's remarkable is that these gaps are there even when both workers are displaced from the same firm but then re-hired into the same firm! In other words, the immigrant is paid far less than his co-worker at the same company even when they were paid the same before the layoff!

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

By the 4th year after the layoff, gaps even in the most concentrated labor markets close, implying the discrimination is based on beliefs about the average productivity differences between immigrants & natives.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

So what kind of discrimination is this? Taste-based (prejudice/animus) or based on beliefs about their productivity (like statistical discrimination)? If tastes, there's not much reason for gaps between the workers to close. But beliefs can update over time & gaps will close.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Competition STRONGLY reduces discrimination among employers, but does not quite completely eliminate it (call it win for Becker). Next we measure if this is labor market power or product market power that matters. Looks like it's loading entirely on labor market power.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

We find fairly small discriminatory gaps between non-Western immigrants & other workers in competitive markets, but large gaps in concentrated (less-competitive) markets. At HHI=0.25 (~4 equally sized employers for that occupation) the immigrants earn 26% less!

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

We measure market competition by the concentration (HHI) of employment in the year their firm closure or mass layoff. 1=one single employer for everyone in that occupation in their city. We then track the gaps between the worker pairs as they search in a diff-in-diff setting.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Suddenly, their firm closes, & they are forced to look for a new job. Prior to the firm closing, the market valued their skills EXACTLY the same. Immigrant-native gaps after their search can tell us about discrimination--especially the difference between the two pairs.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Imagine you have four workers-2 immigrants & 2 natives working at the same firm doing the same job for the same pay. One pair (1 immigrant & 1 native) work in a city where there are lots of employers that will hire for their occupation. For the other, there are fewer employers.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Our context is Norway--long considered one of the most egalitarian societies in the world--and discrimination against immigrants from outside of 'the West.' If we can find discrimination there, it's likely to be in other places. So how do we investigate this?

110

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

iza.org/publications... A long history of economic theory says that sufficient competition should kill discrimination, but that's been mostly focused on product market competition. We look at the role of labor market competition in allowing for discrimination.

iza.org

The Power to Discriminate

This paper examines the relationship between labor market power and employer discrimination, providing new causal evidence on when and where discrimin...

110

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

🚨🚨 Does labor market discrimination drive economic gaps? Can market competition eliminate discrimination like economic theory suggests? What *kind* of discrimination are we talking about. In a new paper, Alex Willen & I explore the question. #Econsky

1162

Reposted by Sam Dodini

Jeva Lange 🫎 @jeva.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Final_Version_of_Tarrifs_actualFINALcopy_version7_USETHISONE.docx

289233154875

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

There is a lot more in the working paper! Human capital retention matters in strategic sectors like healthcare, so policies should reflect the balance between these priorities and public systems should be responsive to local economic conditions. www.iza.org/publications...

iza.org

The Fatal Consequences of Brain Drain

This paper examines the welfare consequences of reallocating high-skilled labor across borders. A labor demand shock in Norway—driven by a surge in oi...

000

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

So what happened in Norway? We are not able to detect any measurable effect of the incoming commuters on mortality events, physician retention, or other metrics in Norway. There appears to have been no offsetting gain in Norway.

110

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

The effects hit hardest in areas with lower physician density before the commuting started. So the out-commuting of doctors increased inequality across classes and across places within Sweden.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

These illnesses are more likely to require emergency care. Guess which physicians were most likely to commute? High-skilled, young, generalists--those most likely to staff emergency departments.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

The effects are driven by lower-income people who are most dependent on the public healthcare system. The same is true for education, but the gradient is less steep. The effects are mostly drive by respiratory, infection, & circulatory illnesses.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

In a dose-response diff-in-diff, areas with lower baseline physician wages lost more doctors to commuting and had significant increases in their mortality rates, particularly people age 65+. 1 log point lower baseline earnings increased 65+ mortality by 3 per 1,000.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Places with lower physician earnings in 2003 saw the biggest increases in this 'out-commuting' of physicians. These municipalities lost a substantial amount of human capital--brain drain--but not due to permanent migration.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Doctors were unique though. While nearly everyone else who started commuting to Norway lived near the border, doctors started doing more frequent and longer short stints in Norway--weekends, full weeks, or even months on end--coming from all over Sweden.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

In 2004, wages in Norway started surging due to oil prices & major growth in labor demand. This made it highly attractive for Swedes to work in Norway. Suddenly, you could make nearly double your Swedish wage, and people responded! www.iza.org/publications...

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

🚨🚨 What happens when you take a bunch of human capital out of a local economy? Is brain drain a real thing? And what are the consequences? In a new paper, we shed light on this in the context of highly developed economies: Sweden and Norway. #Econsky

1146

Reposted by Sam Dodini

Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

As of Friday, there have been 46 cases in which federal judges have blocked Trump policies. The rulings in those cases have come from 39 different judges appointed by 5 different presidents (of both parties) to 11 different district courts across 7 different circuits. Maybe it's not the judges?

178128764312

Reposted by Sam Dodini

John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

"Don't Be a Sucker" by the US War Department (1947) The film follows a young American, drawn in by a speaker promising an end to jobs for minorities and removing foreigners. He encounters a Hungarian professor who explains this is how Nazis grab power for themselves. archive.org/details/Dont...

11933461

Reposted by Sam Dodini

AkivaMCohen @akivamcohen.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Alsupp issuing a PI from the bench. Finding that OPM engaged in sham terminations, claiming they were performance based in an attempt to avoid the procedural requirements of the Reduction in Force Act. Oh holy shit, quote in next post

192228567

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Case in point that just because a private sector firm was involved does not mean it has uncovered some sort of efficiency trick.

000

Reposted by Sam Dodini

John A. List @johnlist.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Time is running out to apply to the Chicago School in Experimental Economics (CSEE) 2025! The first school will take place at the University of Bonn, September 7-11, and the second school will take place at the University of Chicago, September 13-17.

184

Reposted by Sam Dodini

Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

NEW: President Trump moved Tuesday to punish a law firm for providing pro bono legal services to Jack Smith as he prepared to face a potential investigation from the Trump administration. He is stripping security clearnces and govt funding from the firm. www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

19133441511

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

The degree to which this administration is driven by revenge cannot be understated.

081

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

"Too Black for the Moment" sounds like an amazing album title.

000

Reposted by Sam Dodini

mweinstock.bsky.social @mweinstock.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz reaches back to Tiananmen Square to call on American defiance.

5115020516292

Reposted by Sam Dodini

Diane Swonk @dianeswonk.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

The world is flooded by uncertainty; it now exceeds the peak hit during the pandemic in 2020. Stunning. 🥶

56231

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

These are interesting puzzles to be worked out & hold lessons for the US. I personally don't think "everyone can be Nordic" in their systems. The US, for example, is just not a 'high trust' society. How much Nordic features can or should work elsewhere is an important question.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

One other surprise-- Nordic wealth is actually highly concentrated! Are firm owners gaining profits by depressing the wages of the highest skilled? Also might be! In my work, Norwegian manufacturing unions tend to marginally increase the profits of larger & more productive firms.

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

The flipside is that more egalitarian wage distributions MIGHT put pressure on firms to innovate around high labor costs. My work on Norwegian unions in manufacturing implies some productivity increases. Hard to say on a macro scale!

100

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

These lower returns lessen the incentive to innovate because of lower rewards. So do the Nordics "free-ride" on the innovations of more liberal economies like the US? Maybe! We just don't have great evidence either way.

100