Can AI agents read a social science paper and write the code from scratch to reproduce its results?
No access to original code. Just text + data.
New paper with Ben Kohler, @david_rzs, @__jae_1, and @miserlis_
👇
Evidence supports this policy. When state supreme courts introduced mandatory retirement (age-based term limits) in recent decades, performance of the court (quantity and quality of rulings) went up.
Paper link: elliottash.com/wp-content/upl…
and coming soon to @AEAjournals Policy
In its meeting on December 6/7, the ETH Board @ETH_Rat formally granted tenure to Elliott Ash @ellliottt@ETH_en. We are proud to have Elliott and his entire team @eth_cle. Please join us in congratulating Elliott on this well-deserved achievement! 🎆🎆
ethz.ch/en/news-and-ev…
An intriguing paper by Elliott Ash, Sharun Mukand and @danilaserra_eco uses data on political ads to show that “idea-based” politics (e.g., identity politics) becomes more important following negative economic shocks, such as surgeon imports from China: nber.org/papers/w29474
Counterpoint: complex laws may actually be better laws.
More elaborate state laws boost economic growth. Why? They mean more careful consideration & rules for key edge cases, rather than writing shorter, but broader, laws that lump everything together. research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/hand…
Now hiring: Predoc positions in AI+Economics at @ETH_en Zurich -- work on exciting projects at this new intersection of fields.
Submit an application here by Nov 22nd:
econjobmarket.org/positions/9714
Also reviewing applications for PhD students and postdocs.
@econ_ra
AI+Econ = 🤩
The 2nd AI+Econ workshop was a smashing success. Thanks to all the presenters, discussants, and others who made it happen!
See you next year for round 3
Call for Papers:
The 4th Annual Zurich Workshop in AI+Economics
to be held Dec 5-6, 2025, hosted by ETH Zurich and University of Zurich.
illuminating keynote to be given by @testingham (OpenAI)
organized with @sergallet@YanagizawaD@joachim_voth
Info:
“In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins.” -- Drew Westen, The Political Brain.
Interesting idea! What do the data say about that?
New working paper: "Emotion and Reason in Political Language", with @gloriagennaro.
PDF: bit.ly/gennaro-ash-em…
For organizational economists who might have a new interest in Zurich, we are hiring at @ETH_en in org econ.
🚨 Applications due in 4 days (Oct 15th)
ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zur…
I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ_uzh at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.
🧵 1/7
Nice writeup in the Economist about the history of law and economics, including a discussion of our paper "Ideas have Consequences".
Paper link: elliottash.com/wp-content/upl…
With @sergallet, Dominik Hangartner, Yotam Margalit, and @matteopins, our new working paper presents more compelling evidence on how @FoxNews sowed skepticism and slowed responses to the COVID-19 pandemic:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
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