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James Feigenbaum
@jamesfeigenbaum
Associate Professor of Economics at Boston University | Economic History, Labor, Inequality
Newton, MA
Joined September 2012
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    The tldr version in two pictures. MCs come from elite and unrepresentative families. Across 130+ years, the gap between MC fathers and tightly-matched controls has ~grown, absolutely not shrunk. Whatever opened up about American politics, it wasn’t who gets to Congress.
    Excited to share an updated paper from a longstanding agenda with @ahall_research, @danmthomp, @jesselyoder: "Fortunate Sons: Elite Political Selection in American History"
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    How to measure markets in the ancient world? Pollen data! #NBERDAE
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    Some late breaking personal news
    Feeling bizarrely grateful for the fact that my one-month-old son was born a preemie, nearly four weeks early. Solidarity to those expecting and to new parents everywhere.
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    The ugliness of the LaTeX code that must be behind this terrifies me
    colorized math equations makes it easier to understand. Great idea!! #ux #math betterexplained.com/articles/color…
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    Eventually every economist realizes they want (or need?) to be an economic historian
    Today I published the first installment of a multi-part series at Forked Lightning on technological disruption in the labor market. To understand the future of work with AI, look to the past. The figure below stitches together U.S. employment data from 1880 to the present.
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    Anyone else read "Robustness check results available on request" and become convinced that the results are neither robust nor available.
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    What is the effect of unions on elections and policy? Read and find out! (And I'm going to regret this, but consider all of those unsolicited referee reports now solicited.) Full paper: jamesfeigenbaum.github.io/research/rtw-e…
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    What if the Fed met at actually random intervals? Give our monetary econ pals some nice exogenous variation
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    Elsevier is thanking me for writing an uncompensated referee report with access to an archive of my uncompensated referee reports and the opportunity to volunteer for more uncompensated referee reports
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    A few cool economic history datasets people have generated recently 1/X
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    An economic history twist: was US infrastructure always so expensive? When and why did things change?
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    Forthcomings only feel real when they get tweeted out. Great work @filomezza
    Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics: "Capital Destruction and Economic Growth: The Effects of Sherman's March, 1850–1920" by James Feigenbaum, James Lee, and Filippo Mezzanotti. aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…
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    Can't decide if I'm eagerly awaiting or dreading the deluge of shut down funding shock as a natural experiment on public policy x coming in the next few years