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Nick Huntington-Klein

@nickchk.com
8.7K followers 287 following 1.4K posts

Econ prof at Seattle University. Book The Effect theeffectbook.net out now! Substack nickchk.substack.com Twitter @nickchk

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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 24/09/2026
The toddler has a Little People version of Rosa Parks and he also has a bus toy with seats in it and I'm just sitting here watching him and sweating profusely
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 18/09/2026
Sometimes you get a referee report back and you're just like "huh I guess you're right, this paper does kinda blow"
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 17/09/2026
It's that time again, and there's a slight change!!! GPT-6: Fails Gemini 3.1-pro: Fails Opus 6: **Success**! I asked it twice and it was right both times, both in terms of calculating who wins and the chain of logic that works out why Opus 6 is the first model that has ever succeeded on this task.
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 15/09/2026
i have to assume students are wise to the "secretly put instructions for the AI in your assignment page" cheating detection at this point right
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 15/09/2026
decided to start a thread that i will come back and add to whenever i hear a song and i'm like 'oh damn that's really good' www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dryd...
youtube.com
Macie Stewart - "I Forget How to Remember My Dreams" (ft. Lia Kohl)
YouTube video by International Anthem
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 02/09/2026
Anyone particularly well-versed in AI safety stuff available to answer a DM question
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 01/09/2026
Anyone else got a big uptick recently in review requests way outside your expertise?
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 28/08/2026
i have an op-ed in the actual newspaper next week on a topic that positions me against an opinion i'd call "nextdoor/facebook-typical". how many angry emails should i prepare for
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 25/08/2026
i am still on facebook for the purposes of sharing baby photos with family and man there is not an algorithm on this planet less able to figure out what i want to see. like not even malicious, just incompetent.
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 23/08/2026
Ah shit
Mail from your bossYou aer fired
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 20/08/2026
my daughter's 7th birthday happened recently and every child, without any prior coordination, knew all the words to two different Zara Larsson songs. you may use this as a barometer of your in-touchness
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 10/08/2026
i am a drinker of actual alcohol but my experiences with non-alcoholic drinks allows me to summarize: old NA beer brands: awful new NA beer brands: really shockingly good any NA that's not beer: it's not bad or anything but also it's just extremely expensive juice.
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 08/08/2026
From LinkedIn, my book has finally been spotter in a non-university bookstore! At Waterstone's in London
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 30/07/2026
One of my empirical-work econ takes is that I think academia should be *more* open to publishing work based on best-we-can-do weak data, as long as there's really no other way to address the question and that work is very clear about what it can and can't actually say.
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 29/07/2026
There are lots of cities where driving is difficult because of heavy traffic or nutty drivers. Portland is the only city that's extremely confusing to drive in and would be equally confusing if you were the only car on the road.
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 19/07/2026
This episode is interesting as it's about a research group explicitly trying dozens to hundreds of quasi experiments, progressing only with the ones that "work", backing them up with a bunch of robustness tests, and then extrapolating a lot from the results. podcastaddict.com/freakonomics...
podcastaddict.com
Freakonomics Radio - 668. Do Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny Have Blood on Their Hands?
Listen to Freakonomics Radio - 668. Do Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny Have Blood on Their Hands? by Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher on Podcast Addict. As one researcher told us: “We’ve engineered a world wh...
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 16/07/2026
the "gotta hand it to em" the first time around was rapid approval and aided development of a vaccine that saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and this time it's "uhhh i guess they got rid of the penny"
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 13/07/2026
As a guy whose name comes up when you search "many-analyst" now I've gotten quite a few referee requests now for papers where the "many analysts" are AI bots, or undergrads, or random people, rather than professional researchers.
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 10/07/2026
For the second time since this baby has been born I am the only well person in a house of three other people. My life advice to all of you is to get a worse immune system
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 01/07/2026
when you have a really good idea for a paper and a solid identification plan and access to data, it should be illegal for the data to be too noisy or small for your estimate to be any good
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 28/06/2026
It is not until you have a child that you learn just how in your way it is possible for someone to stand
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Bella Fascendini @bellafascendini.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
New paper! w/ @cocoscilab.bsky.social🧵Can large language models reason flexibly, or have they learned what reasoning looks like? We introduce a new paradigm to test this question—the riddle riddle—and find that humans and LLMs show opposite patterns of performance. 📜
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 26/06/2026
i enjoyed the Bad Guys movie but man the books are *awful*
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 23/06/2026
I have been doing econometrics and data science consulting in academia and the private sector for a decade, and for the first time in a while I am open to new clients. If you are looking for someone to help you with data stuff, drop me a line! nickchk.com/consulting.h...
nickchk.com
Nick Huntington-Klein Consulting | Data, Statistics & Economics
Consulting in data analysis, econometrics, and statistical software. Academic and private-sector experience. Flexible hours and fast turnarounds.
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 22/06/2026
the baby was up from 2AM-5:30AM this morning and i found this great channel that has just been jamming out these videos with some great recommendations i'd never heard of. my to-listen queue is gettin real long www.youtube.com/@birdmusiclo...
youtube.com
birdslibrary
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 20/06/2026
i think there are a lot of people who would find it very hard to believe that the field of economics could produce this paper. and yet! Acemoglu is like the mainstreamest and most successful economist working today. some priors could use an update. www.nber.org/papers/w35336
nber.org
Automation and Repression
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
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Reposted by Nick Huntington-Klein
Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Causal inference theory and methods are absolutely essential these days. Just ask @jpinasanchez.eurosky.social or @iainbrennan.bsky.social. Personally, my favourite causal inference book is 'The Effect' by @nickchk.com! theeffectbook.net
theeffectbook.net
The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality | The Effect
The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality | The Effect is a textbook that covers the basics and concepts of research design, especially as applied to causal inference from observati...
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 18/06/2026
I now have a video up about this - if you want to see how magic intersects with 300 year old probability paradoxes, now's your chance www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeCg...
youtube.com
This Magic Card Sums Up a 300-Year-Old Paradox
YouTube video by Econometrics, Causality, and Coding with Dr. HK
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 09/06/2026
it's wild when i think about how much better food is now than when i was a kid. so much more variety and quality. like, in my tiny hometown there's ethiopian and korean places, that's totally new. i can get a bagged salad cheaply at the grocery store and it's not wilted garbage.
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Dr Ellie Murray, ScD @epiellie.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
New paper with @nickchk.com Do LLMs act as repositories of causal knowledge? Short answer: No! Longer answer: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...
degruyterbrill.com
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 03/06/2026
I have my students using AI assistance for their ggplot coding in data viz this year and one thing I've noticed is that all AI chatbots are absolutely addicted to putting the x-axis labels on an angle.
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Collabra: Psychology @collabrapsychology.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
In a new Methodology and Research Practice Commentary, @mkarhulahti.bsky.social, @nickchk.com, @nballou.bsky.social, and Ivan Ropovik find Zendle et al. (2023) cannot support its claims due to a flawed design doi.org/10.1525/coll...
doi.org
“No Evidence That Chinese Playtime Mandates Reduced Heavy Gaming”: Zendle et al. (2023) Cannot Support Its Claims Due to a Flawed Design
Zendle et al. (2023) is a study of the impact of a Chinese policy restricting heavy videogame play among minors, finding that the policy had no effect. We show that, due to flaws in design, the study ...
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 26/05/2026
I have a new working paper up today, "Partial Identification of Causal Effects that Vary by Setting" This looks at cases where you want to estimate the same causal effect across many settings (geographic, demographic, over time, etc.). arxiv.org/abs/2605.25483
arxiv.org
Partial Identification of Causal Effects that Vary by Setting
The estimation of causal effects using quasiexperiments often relies on the use of unusual or serendipitous sources of exogenous variation. When the goal is estimating the same causal effects across m...
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 26/05/2026
See, yesterday I just thought it was plausible that 3-5 of you decided to post out of the blue about how cool Sonny Rollins is, but I guess this is how long it takes until finally someone puts "RIP" in the post
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 21/05/2026
This paper is now out in the Journal of Causal Inference with some updates but the same general message: LLMs were not particularly good at matching expert judgment on whether a given variable pair represented a causal relationship. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...
degruyterbrill.com
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 18/05/2026
I like that "that's a steal" implies it is cheap, and "this is robbery" implies it is expensive
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 12/05/2026
I have a new working paper out today, looking at the impact of educational use of ChatGPT/AI on student test scores. Importantly, this is overall student-led use (incl for cheating!), not specialized AI tutoring tools. To my surprise, I found... no effect at all! arxiv.org/abs/2605.08812
arxiv.org
Little Impact of ChatGPT Availability on High School Student Test Score Performance
In educational settings, AI can be used as a learning aid, but can also be used to avoid schoolwork, thereby passing classes while learning little. Many existing studies on the impact of AI on educati...
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 09/05/2026
Got a new working paper and just noticed I left something out and now I gotta wait for the arxiv process again nooo
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 07/05/2026
i admit that i have been wrong about canvas all this time. it *could* have been worse
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 27/04/2026
always a complete crapshoot what a kid's gonna think when you show them a piece of media anyway we're now on roughly our thirtieth listen of Karma Police in the past three days
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 23/04/2026
Remember how right after ChatGPT was released you'd see a huge dip in usage during the summer months when school let out? That didn't happen in 2025! At least not looking at mobile/web traffic or Google Trends. This graph is of Google Trends during school year vs. summer across US states.
In 2023 and 2024, there was a big bump in ChatGPT usage during the school year, but in 2025 there was no such bump.
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 21/04/2026
i found a coding error in an almost-finished paper and thought "oh no oh god this is going to totally destroy the paper isn't it" and then i fixed it and it changed nothing except for one weird inconvenient result i had trouble explaining which totally went away lol
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 21/04/2026
From @mkarhulahti.bsky.social, me, @nballou.bsky.social, and Ivan Ropovik, newly accepted at Collabra: Psychology. This concerns a Nature: Human Behavior publication on the impacts of a Chinese anti-gaming policy. The paper has serious flaws making its results unsupportable. osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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The Review of Economic Studies (REStud) @reveconstudies.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
New paper by Blandhol, Bonney, Mogstad, and Torgovitsky: www.restud.com/when-is-tsls... #REStud #EconSky
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 15/04/2026
i was away from magic for about 10 years and it's very funny upon my return to find the parts of my collection that turned out to be the most valuable collector items i ever owned are: an apocalypse spindown die, and the foil foil i got for my "foil cards that rhyme with foil" joke collection
a foil copy of foil goes for about $200
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 15/04/2026
my six-year-old daughter was asking if i knew everything about math. i told her there was some stuff that *nobody* knew about math. she asked me to explain. anyway she's now decided that the riemann hypothesis is true, so that one's solved.
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 11/04/2026
What is behind the web design trend where every site makes a big prominent "SIGN UP" button and hides the "sign in" button as really tiny or nested in a menu you need to find and click
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 10/04/2026
To my MTG followers: it has become clear to me that simply making EDH *recommendations* is for the weak. Today I launched EDHREQ, the site that gives you EDH *requirements* www.reddit.com/r/EDH/s/lyqG...
reddit.com
From the EDH community on Reddit: EDHREQ: Recommendations lack confidence
Explore this post and more from the EDH community
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 05/04/2026
I just forgot about Cardiacs for about five years and then my daughter said the name of this song verbatim for an unrelated reason, and now I am flooded with memories and am having a very good day youtu.be/N6_0gXDTkXU?...
youtu.be
She Is Hiding Behind The Shed
YouTube video by Cardiacs - Topic
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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 02/04/2026
In case you've seen results going around today about a paper on reproducibility in the social sciences in Nature and it seems like reactions differ, you could be forgiven for being confused because there are actually *FOUR* such studies all published the same day, with somewhat differing results.
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