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Sebastian Buhai

@sbuhai.bsky.social
896 followers 26 following 1.3K posts

Academic economist. Bon vivant. "Enfant terrible". Website: sebastianbuhai.com Twitter: twitter.com/sbuhai Mastodon: mastodon.social/@sbuhai Threads: www.threads.net/@sebastianbuhai

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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 31m
'Even mainstream economists criticise their models!', they say. Very true. Also, healthy! Surgeons cut people open too. Knowing the anatomy separates surgery from a stabbing. To all wannabe "critics" out there: failing to understand a model isn’t an alternative school of thought.
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Timothy Gowers @wtgowers.bsky.social · 3h
Many people just starting out on Lean formalization have enjoyed playing the Natural Numbers Game. Now Autumn Mapes has produced Visual Lean, isomorphic to the original but playable in a lovely intuitive way with clicking and dragging rather than typing. leangame.autumnofautumn.com
leangame.autumnofautumn.com
Visual Lean
An experimental graphical user interface for writing Lean code. Lean verification runs locally on both desktop and mobile through WASM.
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 12h
Roberto Fonseca, genio al piano—con Andrés Coayo de lujo a la percusión. Su tercer instrumento? El Teatro Nescafé entero! De mis mejores noches de jazz en años. Tributo a Ibrahim Ferrer y Omara Portuondo: Buena Vista me devolvió recuerdos; mi hija estrenó los suyos. Se pasaron! x.com/sbuhai/statu...
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Nobel Prize @nobelprize.org · 12/10/2026
BREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford “for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.” #NobelPrize
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
This year’s Economics Nobel: my annual plea for - empirical IO: I’d pick Bresnahan, Pakes, and Porter, though Berry and Haile are giants too OR - microeconometrics more broadly: Blundell and Manski, inter alia. Dear Committee: identification is their job. Recognition is yours...
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
El único desborde que se agradece en pleno diluvio: Mapocho Orquesta, en Sala Master! Fuimos con mi hija de ocho años y salimos los dos fascinados. Tremenda banda, solos de antología y toda la sala en la misma sintonía. Hay herencias que conviene transmitir en vida. Y en vivo. x.com/sbuhai/statu...
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 09/10/2026
Good night, and good lick: what can we expect from George Clooney’s restaurant?
theguardian.com
Good night, and good lick: what can we expect from George Clooney’s restaurant?
The newly-official French citizen is planning to open an Italian restaurant in Provence. Will it float like his tequila brand or sink as swiftly as the Steven Spielberg submarine eatery that made one reviewer ‘embarrassed to be human’?
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Nobel Prize @nobelprize.org · 08/10/2026
BREAKING NEWS The 2026 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the Canadian author Anne Carson, “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”
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Nobel Prize @nobelprize.org · 06/10/2026
Cosmic neutrinos with extremely high energies are very rare, so an enormous volume of ice is needed to observe an adequate number of collisions. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory covers an entire cubic kilometre and was finished in 2011.
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Nobel Prize @nobelprize.org · 06/10/2026
BREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 #NobelPrize in Physics to Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.”
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Poate a patra-i cu noroc?... reacție celor care întreabă. Unu: Luca Niculescu e la ANI-LUMINĂ peste propunerile anterioare. Doi: decisivă e lista miniștrilor (cu vreun Burduja, ridicăm iar nulul la putere). Trei: aurul olimpic nu te scutește de corigențe la aritmetica electorală.
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Melissa Aldana & Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s new Tiny Desk is spellbinding (with superb support from Pablo Menares on bass & Kush Abadey on drums). No lyrics, nothing left unsaid! www.youtube.com/watc... P.S. Lucky to have heard Aldana live exactly a decade ago at Fasching, in Stockholm!
youtube.com
Melissa Aldana with Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Tiny Desk Concert
From jazz and Tejano to norteño and ska, 'El Tiny' returns with a takeover from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15 for Latin Music Month. Felix Contreras | September 29, 2026 What tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana and pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba offer at El Tiny is the soul of the Latin American song book. Most of
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American Mathematical Society @amermathsoc.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Congratulations to David Kazhdan and Joseph Bernstein, winners of the 2026 Wolf Prize in Mathematics, “for foundational work on representation theory, automorphic forms and algebraic geometry, and their role in creating geometric representation theory.” wolffund.org.il/the-wolf-pri...
David Kazhdan and Joseph Bernstein
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Looking forward to presenting research on “Valuing Jobs with Unobserved Offers” tomorrow in the Applied Microeconomics seminar at the PUC. Come for the sharp bounds... or because your outside options are worse. My identification problem starts at the door. economia.uc.cl/event...
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Econometrica @ecmaeditors.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
How should long-term employment contracts be regulated? We show that optimal regulation prices the use of non-competes, tying stronger non-competes to higher wages. This limits inefficient worker lock-in and raises pay at better matches. buff.ly/PD964cP
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Lui Patrick de Hillerin i-am apreciat argumentele chiar când nu am fost de acord cu el. L-am admirat: un jurnalist cum RO abia mai are. Prostia și răul au un adversar în minus, dar nu și ultimul cuvânt: ne-a învățat să nu tăcem. Merci, Patrick. Repose en paix. Nous, on continue.
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Our garden 𝑎𝑠𝑎𝑑𝑜 field experiment this past Saturday successfully converted prime cuts and top-shelf liquid assets into social capital. With company this brilliant and merry, diminishing returns never materialized. Some missed the group shot, but everyone lit up the evening!
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The Review of Economic Studies (REStud) @reveconstudies.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"Machine Learning for Dynamic Incentive Problems": Scheidegger & Renner introduce a framework combining penalties, Gaussian processes and Bayesian active learning to bypass set-valued dynamic programming. Handles at least 10 persistent types." www.restud.com/machine-lear...
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Some admit their careers were a lottery, then treat the jackpot as a mandate. Their egos have tenure, while their agendas are still in kindergarten. Lads, a passing crowd’s applause is *not* the esteem of minds worth impressing. Luck, it seems, arrives faster than self-awareness.
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Andrei Munteanu @andrei-econ.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Happy to share that our paper was accepted at AEJ: Applied! We show that Roma self-identification in Romania drops sharply with education, from 80% to 40%. Official data may undercount Roma post-secondary graduates by a factor of 3 to 6. andrei-munteanu-econ.github.io/assets/pdf/r...
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 20/09/2026
‘We broke the rules:’ why chef Ferran Adriá is the subject of new TV drama
theguardian.com
‘We broke the rules:’ why chef Ferran Adriá is the subject of new TV drama
Six-part drama Gènesi tells the story of Adriá’s Catalan restaurant El Bulli from the day he arrived as a kitchen hand
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
¡Felices Fiestas Patrias! 🇨🇱 Chile declared independence, not a wine embargo… hence, France and Portugal were tastefully represented at yesterday’s opening toast. Today, obviously, pisco shall follow—and flow!—to remind the international community whose party this is. ¿Cachái?
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Stockholm last week, delicious as ever: Triton www.triton.restaurant/, all taste & no airs; Freyja freyjasoder.se/en/, Swedish comfort @ altitude! (BTW, a hard-right turn would have been a lapse of taste: why fear foreign influence when the sommelier keeps recommending it?)
Triton Restaurant, Stockholm, SwedenFreyja Restaurant, Stockholm, Sweden
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Excellent essay/ food for thought by @wtgowers.bsky.social. I broadly agree, with a David Blackwell-ian emphasis: the objective should not be to monopolise answers, but to put ignorance out of business. Hence, 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑐ℎ is but a means, 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 being the end. gowers.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/w...
gowers.wordpress.com
Why I didn’t sign the Fields medallists’ letter
When I was around 11 I heard for the first time about Fermat’s Last Theorem. I was immediately captivated by the problem statement, as well as by the accompanying story, and made a fairly ser…
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 17/09/2026
Socialist hotels – in pictures
theguardian.com
Socialist hotels – in pictures
Socialist Hotels is the first photography book to focus solely on the architecture of hospitality in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet landscape. These state-constructed buildings were used by visiting government workers and ordinary citizens. Today they are a fascinating legacy of a social and cultural idiosyncrasy.
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
With my timeline in a frenzy over AI-written papers, a reminder: generative AI didn’t actually invent authorship without understanding (to put it politely). It merely entered a mature market with well-established incumbents—all too often seasoned in theory, tenured in practice. x.com/sbuhai/statu...
x.com
Sebastian Buhai (@sbuhai) on X
I've sadly met too many 'scientists'—in my own discipline or beyond—who might have even co-authored a couple of decent publications among many published failures..., but aren't able to have a meaningf...
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
25 years ago, I graduated from UCU @ Utrecht Univ. and joined @coenteulings.bsky.social as MPhil/PhD @ Tinbergen Inst. Back for Coen's farewell last week, I was honored to close the dinner speeches. An undocumented return to doctoral training: eventually, your supervisor lets you have the last word!
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 13/09/2026
A taste of home: discovering Sweden’s local food heroes
theguardian.com
A taste of home: discovering Sweden’s local food heroes
Chefs in the east of the country are shunning imported produce for local ingredients, reinforcing how food is intertwined with a region and its people
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Brian Nosek @briannosek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
The cover-up is always worse than the crime? Harvard's latest filing says that Gino manipulated a file to cover-up fabrication, hid the laptop used to do it during the discovery process, and did more [redacted] destruction of evidence after being compelled by the court to share the laptop.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 11/09/2026
100 years after John Coltrane’s birth, secret tapes are emerging. What can they tell us about jazz’s great rulebreaker?
theguardian.com
100 years after John Coltrane’s birth, secret tapes are emerging. What can they tell us about jazz’s great rulebreaker?
The sax star turned his back on fame to embrace free jazz. Caught on a tape machine hidden in an overcoat, newly revealed recordings show how he did it
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
90' flight delay to Schiphol, transit strike, prebooked Uber (Black!) serving other customers... But it doesn't matter, somehow made it to this Tinbergen Institute-mini reunion in Amsterdam. Guess I like these folks more than I hate NL transport! That’s one hell of a lower bound.
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 08/09/2026
Mathematicians at OpenAI announced that a group of 10,000 autonomous AI agents under their direction proved that the Navier-Stokes equations can “blow up,” thus solving one of the six remaining Millennium Prize Problems. The result is not without controversy. www.quantamagazine.org/ai-has-solve...
quantamagazine.org
AI Has Solved One of Math’s $1 Million Millennium Prize Problems | Quanta Magazine
Mathematicians at OpenAI showed that the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe how fluids flow, can sometimes “blow up.” But the massive result is not without controversy.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 08/09/2026
‘I suggested maybe a lighter touch’: William Shatner on Star Trek at 60
theguardian.com
‘I suggested maybe a lighter touch’: William Shatner on Star Trek at 60
The actor and others involved with the phenomenon speak about the legacy and progressivism of a much-loved science fiction TV series as it reaches an important milestone
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Econometrica @ecmaeditors.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
When Jeff Bezos's Amazon stock doubles, should his tax bill? No, say Mark Aguiar, @benmoll.bsky.social and @florianscheuer.bsky.social: optimal taxes target realized net trades plus cash flows—not wealth or unrealized gains—while avoiding lock-in, whatever moves asset prices. buff.ly/vHUzTWr
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AEA Journals @aeajournals.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Forthcoming in the AER: "Quota Adjustment Process" by Taro Kumano and Morimitsu Kurino.
aeaweb.org
Quota Adjustment Process
(Forthcoming Article) - In designing priority-based matching problems such as school choice, the quota of each school is, to some extent, a design variable. We define an ex-post student-optimal stable matching (ESOSM) as a matching that is stable at some implementable quota distribution and not Pareto dominated by any other stable matching among all implementable quota distributions. We propose a novel mechanism called a quota adjustment process (QAP) that improves existing stable mechanisms by endogenously finding an ESOSM and the corresponding optimal quota distribution for any preference relation. This method has been successfully implemented at the University of Tsukuba in Japan since 2021.
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Data Colada @datacolada.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Colada[139] Artificial Deadlines Part 2 Evidence of fraud in the 25 year old gradesheet behind the key finding in an influential paper on deadlines and procrastination. datacolada.org/139
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arXiv math.NT Number Theory @mathnt-bot.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Julia Stadlmann: Bounded gaps between primes arxiv.org/abs/2608.31126 arxiv.org/pdf/2608.31126 arxiv.org/html/2608.31126
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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I am shocked, shocked to learn that this 2002 paper by Dan Ariely is based on dubious data and doesn’t replicate. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/08/31/s...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
I am shocked, shocked to learn that this 2002 paper by Dan Ariely is based on dubious data and doesn’t replicate. | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
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Data Colada @datacolada.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
An influential paper by Ariely & Wertenbroch (2002) reported two studies with tampered data. Post 1 of 2. datacolada.org/138
datacolada.org
[138] Artificial Deadlines (Part 1): Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination
A new paper in Psychological Science (.htm) reports a failure to replicate Study 2 of Ariely and Wertenbroch’s influential article entitled, “Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Contr…
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
His shortest path to immortality 😉: "I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself, ‘Dijkstra would not have liked this,’ well, that would be enough immortality for me."
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Dijkstra indeed had the perfect one-liner for everything—including ANY prog. language 😂 "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 29/08/2026
Dolly Parton obituary
theguardian.com
Dolly Parton obituary
Glamorous and astute singer-songwriter whose bountiful talent had an appeal reaching far beyond her country roots
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
My 8yo guitarist has just earned a coveted five-…carrot review from her tiniest front-row critic—impeccably dressed in black, no notes, all ears! 🎸🐇🖤
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 28/08/2026
‘It’s the story of what happens when the music stops’: bringing tormented jazz legend Bill Evans to life
theguardian.com
‘It’s the story of what happens when the music stops’: bringing tormented jazz legend Bill Evans to life
Having directed documentaries about David Bowie, Radiohead and Joy Division, Grant Gee takes on a biopic of the turbulent and tragic American pianist
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Econometrica @ecmaeditors.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Repeated games meet coalition stability. @snageebali.bsky.social and @CeLiuEcon characterize the power and limits of self-enforcing promises in deterring coalitions. They apply the framework to study the implications of wage transparency in labor markets. buff.ly/yYigzBG
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Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · 24/08/2026
Six editors and nearly 60 advisory editors of Games and Economic Behavior resigned after Elsevier, the journal’s publisher, decided not to renew the editor-in-chief’s contract.
retractionwatch.com
Editors of economics journal resign after Elsevier doesn’t renew EIC’s contract
Six editors and nearly 60 advisory editors of Games and Economic Behavior resigned after the journal’s publisher decided not to renew the editor-in-chief’s contract.  In late July, Elsevier to…
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Econometrica @ecmaeditors.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
95% of Amazon shoppers consider only the prominent "Buybox" offer—and Amazon's own offers are featured as often as similar offers priced 5% cheaper. Yet, as consumers prefer these offers, this article finds that the skew roughly maximizes consumer surplus. buff.ly/19zhXv1
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Sebastian Buhai @sbuhai.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Cerro Manquehuito, conquistado hoy. La próxima vez vamos por el Cerro Manquehue en cuanto convenzamos a nuestra hija de que toda bajada tiene un costo fijo: la subida. Su impecable contraoferta consiste en partir desde la cumbre y dejarle el resto a la gravedad. 🛝
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The Review of Economic Studies (REStud) @reveconstudies.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
New paper by Bardhi, Guo, and Strulovici www.restud.com/early-career... #REStud #EconSky
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 18/08/2026
Transylvania beyond the spooky castles: a family adventure in Romania’s mountains
theguardian.com
Transylvania beyond the spooky castles: a family adventure in Romania’s mountains
Forget the vampire tales – the Eastern Carpathians deliver dramatic peaks, roaming bears and deep solitude
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