iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Tight labor markets = better jobs (not just higher pay) www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds...

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Mike Madowitz @mikemadowitz.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I think Ethan is the only one I've seen flag this vibes paper. One of the most striking graphs of the decade--all of a sudden spending completely decoupled from sentiment and correlation has stayed at near zero for years

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Not the first finding like this. Fits with view of AI as a "centralizing technology" as per @jerusalem.bsky.social www.theargumentmag.com/p/are-you-th...

theargumentmag.com

Are you there Grok? It's me, Margaret

AI as a centralizing technology

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Unexpected finding: Chatting with LLMs in the midst of classic economic decision tasks (portfolio allocation, dictator game, etc) tended to depolarize people -- they moved *away* from their initial decisions. This despite AI sycophantically echoing users. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner.org · 08/05/2026

In sum, 1. Labor market remarkably strong in many ways but signals of change mixed. Job growth & low unemployment positive. Low hiring & decelerating wage growth worrying 2. Lots of uncertainty, Gulf War III energy price spike, policy swings & tech change. Employers still like deer in headlights

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

“.. Quite something. Information sector payrolls have fallen to their lowest since March 2021 ... 16 consecutive months of net job loss.” - Schwab #NFP

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

My wife Dana Lok just published this exquisite interactive project with Triple Canopy. It's about holes but also language and metaphors and knowledge. canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/a-h...

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

I'm sure this isn't the final word on the matter. But it would be funny if after all the dueling theories and measurement debates, the declining labor share ended up just being a byproduct of rising material costs www.nber.org/papers/w35114

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Reposted by Owen Davis

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 27/04/2026

The FT @financialtimes.com is hiring a new data journalist to join our US data and visuals team in New York. Great job, great team, great place to work. Apply here 👉 job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/financialtim...

job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io

US Data Journalist

New York; Washington DC

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I prefer my means hand-trimmed tyvm

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Jeff Horwitz @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Meta will begin keystroke logging US employees at work -- complete with mouse movements and periodic screenshots -- to train better AI agents. This comes after Boz posted about a future in which AI will "primarily do the work" at meta. It's a new era for tech labor. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

reuters.com

Exclusive: Meta to start capturing employee mouse movements, keystrokes for AI training data

Meta is installing new tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its ‌artificial-intelligence models, part of a broad ...

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

So grateful!! Your advice and guidance were invaluable.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

And HUGE thanks to my dissertation advisor @tghilarducci.bsky.social and outside advisor @aaronsojourner.org! What a journey. My only regret is not working a pun into the title. Something about "drivers" of the EITC? Could never get it quite right.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Accepted paper: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... Preprint: ofdavis.com/eitc.pdf Kleven paper: www.henrikkleven.com/view/researc... Looney paper: www.brookings.edu/articles/ret...

journals.uchicago.edu

How Does the Earned Income Tax Credit Work? Exploring the Role of Commuting and Personal Transportation | Journal of Labor Economics: Vol 0, No ja

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Addendum: There’s still disagreement over the EITC. Kleven’s 2024 “Reappraisal” paper made a big splash. Adam Looney of Brookings and Univ of Utah has a new wp challenging the consensus. My paper falls on the other side of that debate, but I’m keeping up with all of it.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

So there we go, JMP accepted and slated to be published about 4 years after I defended. The editor and reviewers at JOLE were great. All the comments were on point and they made it a better paper.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Not everything I find tells a clean EITC→cars→work story. You might expect employment to go up around tax refund season if the EITC helps people get (back) to work. But the estimated EITC impacts don’t quite have the expected seasonality. Maybe the mechanism isn’t so immediate?

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

One more bonus analysis: The 2009 EITC expansion. This one was smaller, aimed only at tax filers with 3+ children. The results here are less robust. There’s suggestive evidence that 2009 expansion boosted employment in car-heavy areas. But not the most significant results.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

The simulated-EITC methodology has other uses. One is state EITCs. About half of US states supplement the federal EITC. Leveraging within-state differences in EITC exposure helps better estimate the impacts. Results align with the natl expansion. And no welfare reform confounding!

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

The paper has robustness galore. The big worry is policy confounding: the 1990s EITC expansion coincided with Clinton-era welfare reforms, which also focused on work. I find the results hold even when you restrict to pre-1996, or to states that didn’t do reforms early.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

More results! The above used CPS. Other datasets measure different things. SIPP tells us about car ownership. Decennial Census long-forms asked about commuting. In both, the EITC appears to boost car ownership and automobile commuting (bonus finding: employment results hold).

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Results! EITC impacts vary systematically across metros based on how much workers need cars. Where most commuters drive, EITC boosts employment more. In public-transit-heavy locales, the impact is smaller. This very much supports the personal-transport mechanism.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

My main innovation is a simulated EITC measure. The EITC measure most studies use is the maximum possible EITC by year and family size. Instead, I simulate the EITC HHs would get based on past local incomes differences and national trends. Thus heterogeneous EITC exposure.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

But comparing high- and low-car areas has a problem: places with lots of public transit are weird. NYC/DC/SF are not like ATL/STL/DFW. The biggest difference is income. High-wage (subway-using) metros get less out of a national EITC expansion because higher income→less EITC.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

There's this 1995 Philadelphia Enquirer article that perfectly encapsulates the empirical strategy. Public transit and cars are substitutes, and tax refunds enable used-car purchases. A sincere thanks to the workers behind the 1995 SEPTA strike for prompting this illustrative news item.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

My basic empirical strategy is to compare how the big 1990s expansion of the EITC played out in places with vs without abundant transportation. If the personal-transport mechanism matters, the EITC should have smaller employment-boosting impacts in places where cars matter less.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Rather than acting on distant and uncertain incentives, workers may respond to the tax refunds right when they get them. Buying or fixing a car helps a worker stay employed. Surveys and empirical research show that a large share of EITC dollars go to car dealers and mechanics.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Most studies find that the Earned Income Tax Credit lifts employment (exceptions exist). But what’s the mechanism? Eligible workers are often unaware of the EITC or ill-informed about its rules. Even with complete info, many recipients face unpredictable earnings.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

tldr: I studied how the Earned Income Tax Credit affects labor supply. The specific mechanism: helping people own cars. Tax refunds give households a jolt of liquidity that many use on personal transport. I show that EITC expansions boosted both car ownership and employment.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

A happy update: My job market paper is now accepted at the Journal of Labor Economics. Since I never did a proper thread on it, here goes. (Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper are solely my own and do not reflect those of my employer, NYC IBO.)

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

startup naming conventions going full Dickens

Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle--supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can't offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can't put him in the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock) because you can't provide for Noodle!

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Reposted by Owen Davis

Guy Berger @econberger.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

6/ The unemployment rate for 20-24 year olds is falling sharply - March it was the lowest it's been since early 2024. Less of an improvement in the unemployment rate for people in their late teens.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

It must say something about the nature of the American heath industry that the weight-loss/ED/hair-meds segment is so ripe for a completely vibe-coded business. Also notable that the real labor of the service (doctors to prescribe the drugs) is outsourced.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Some wild details in this NYT story on what is kind of sort of the first one-person billion-dollar company -- a middleman for GLP-1s. Purportedly $20k in token costs to get to 9-digit revenue. AI everything, except when you call customer service and get routed to the CEO.

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Erika McEntarfer @erikamcentarfer.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

JOLTS release once again confirming that the no-hire, no-fire labor market continues. Also lines up with UI claims, which also show no signs of layoffs picking up.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Also norms might change more slowly than labor market outcomes. Women taking more "greedy" and high-status jobs over time and delaying marriage might be consistent with relatively stable LFPR ratio.

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

A fuller picture? www.pewresearch.org/social-trend...

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

A dispiriting finding in the fascinating new working paper on household ChatGPT use (just written up in the Wall Street Journal): increased chatbot usage is associated with decreased news consumption. arxiv.org/pdf/2603.03144

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Joshua Goodman @joshua-goodman.com · 30/03/2026

🚨New working paper alert! 🚨 The US spends huge $ on special education services for students with disabilities. Is that spending effective? Today we released a working paper suggesting it is. "Special Education Substantially Improves Learning: Evidence from Three States" Let me explain...

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

funny kicker to that story

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

This seems like a big change in a decade, wonder if it's validated elsewhere. Theoretically, information technologies like AI should increase managers' span of control. www.wsj.com/business/how...

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

I don't know how tight the historical causality is here, but I do love the idea that Excel was the catalyst of late-20th century financialization davidoks.blog/p/how-the-sp...

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

It's briefly noted in today's NYT story on the new Census figures, but the upward revision to NYC domestic migration figures -- and the subsequent drop-off in international migration -- are really quite large. Net intl migration to NYC fell by about 70% in 2025. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/n...

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

A new contribution to the mass of working papers examining AI impacts to software coders, this one from two Fed economists. Headline finding: coder employment is *very roughly* 500k below the counterfactual. [Insert a million caveats here] www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds...

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

I’m used to hearing about historical junctures as overdetermined. Are they ever underdetermined? Determined just the right amount?

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Owen Davis @odavis.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

they certainly chose the right undergrad

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