Props to all the academics trying to have a real world impact, but I'm not that worried about it personally. I do this work because it's cool /interesting. That's enough for me.
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Jesse, just engaging with this: is this partially bc you were a teacher and a service member before and so you can see that those roles have more impact than the avg (or even the avg Brown) economist would? Or does that not play a role?
IMO the miracle of academic research is that when you give creative, hard working people the freedom to pursue the things that interest them, then it tends to yields insights that transform the world.
I think that some of us want that transformation to happen quicker. I think of @smiller.bsky.social and coauthors on Medicaid expansion, and the lives that are taken bc folks in charge aren’t heeding those lessons.
Now, why anyone get's paid to do what I do is another question and way above my pay grade...
(If only there was a field of academia that made it's intellectual claim-to-fame by studying how society chooses to allocate it's scarce resources. They could probably shed some light...)
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(If only there was a field of academia that made it's intellectual claim-to-fame by studying how society chooses to allocate it's scarce resources. They could probably shed some light...)