A new #economics textbook by SFI Prof Samuel Bowles and Simon Halliday (@BristolUni) upends convention and offers a new, more engaging way of teaching the subject — one that actually acknowledges #inequality, #climatechange, #sustainability, and #poverty: santafe.edu/news-center/news…

This thread is ridiculous. College profs are innovating like crazy to keep students motivated and learning. All around me they are experimenting, sharing, learning. Not easy, when AI capabilities improve every semester. Tyler seems mad that unis don’t have a magic wand to make the problem go away. It’s a hard problem, we are proving up to the challenge.

When the US tariffs landed, South Africa found it did not have enough trade economists to advise its own government. That is what a thin pipeline costs, and it is a fixable problem. $15,000 funds one student for one year: full-time honours study, a @StellenboschUni mentor and an international one, two weeks of PhD-level courses each November, and a real shot at a doctorate at a top department abroad. Every dollar goes to the student. Stellenbosch carries the cost of running the programme. No fees, no overheads. We already have the applicants. What we need is the bursaries. For more info --> econpipeline.org

This one hits like a gut punch: Austin Sarat, my favorite college professor, pens a fierce OpEd on @AmherstCollege students’ inability to read challenging texts. He rightly pins blame on “a K-12 system that has quietly stopped asking them to finish books at all.” “This past term, I enlisted a few colleagues to teach a short course called “Why Read?” We spent three weeks working through essays on the value of reading by scholars like Martha Nussbaum and Edward Said. What struck me wasn’t students’ lack of interest — it was how unevenly prepared they were even to attempt something long and difficult. It was clear to me that the students had very different approaches to and comfort with reading difficult material. I tried to help them see that when it comes to reading, similar to physical exercise, the most benefit comes with the most exertion. Reading longer things requires patience and attentiveness, it cultivates the capacity to follow an argument or a plot, and it requires sustained effort to decode meanings. Surely, this single course won’t end students’ entrenched habits and reverse their retreat from reading. But before we ask our students to read difficult material, those of us who teach in college owe it to all of them to explain that reading books in their entirety matters. If we won’t, or can’t, then higher education will have a bleak future.”

Spectacular failure to replicate one of Ariely's most cited paper, by Kyle Hyndman and Alberto Bisin. Top panels are results in Ariely and Wertenbroch (2002). Mid and bottom are replications. Very large and significant effects turn into nothing.

We're hiring a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Economics Education and Inequality, jointly hosted by CORE Econ and the Stone Centre network. 12-month position starting September 2026. Deadline: 22 May 2026. Details and how to apply: tinyco.re/3618199

Three keynote course presentations: -- @Afinetheorem (U of Toronto): Progress, or How Big Things Get Done -- @simondhalliday (Johns Hopkins): New first-year seminar on progress -- @matthewgburgess (U of Wyoming): American Economic Success Other talks and discussion sessions on law, regulation, and abundance; maintaining progress; industrial policy; progress in medicine, and more.

So annoying sth like this gets published that is pure selection bias. If you want to understand what I mean, look at this graph from our paper: Countries contract and are on a declining path when they get an IMF program, not because of it. Evidence on programs is much more mixed.