Joshua Goodman

🚨New working paper alert!🚨 Private tutoring chains like Kumon and Sylvan have grown rapidly. Who uses them? Do they improve kids' skills? BU econ PhD student Samuel Nitkin and I provide answers in: "Kumon Up: Private Tutoring Centers and Student Achievement" www.nber.org/papers/w35671 1/?

❤️ #econimate. It’s such a great resource for teaching and staying up to date on research. 🙏Thank you so much for covering our paper! @siepr.bsky.social @glaucomflecken.bsky.social #HealthEconomics #HealthPolicy

A 2025 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi is the son of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Jordan. He just left the US to move to China after raising concerns about rising anti-immigrant sentiment, like the kind shown here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...

Tell me your nerdiest joke that people either don’t get, or think less of you for thinking it’s funny. Here’s mine: Descartes is sitting at a bar drinking a beer. The bartender asks if he’d like another one. Descartes says, “I think not” and instantly vanishes.

They grow up so fast [public finance edition].

As Jill's piece suggests, we need to be circumspect about claims about big AI education benefits. 39 meta-analyses, 39 positive findings: An audit finds serious flaws in research on AI in education  hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

Incredible what Brazil did tonight, a lesson to many supposedly mature democracies. When confronted with the possibility of having back in power those who had already shown their authoritarian colors, the Brazilian people, surprisingly and beautifully, said no.

A non-econ prof who attended a recent seminar I gave wrote: "The seminar was great! It was my first Econ seminar, and I was expecting a bloodbath with ruthless audience questioning, but it was all quite reasonable." Off to put "All Quite Reasonable" at the top of my CV.

I'm thrilled to be launching Econvitals today. It's been the main way in which I have been tracking and understanding the economy over the last several months. And I decided I might as well share it with all of you--for free. Has a combo of website, email lists & social media.

My job market paper is now online first at EEPA! I examine the impact of a suspension ban on the classification of SWDs, finding that the ban increased classification of more stigmatizing disabilities. doi.org/10.3102/0162...

"...prices began rising immediately after the broader tariff measures were announced in early March and continued to increase gradually over subsequent months" @econofact.bsky.social econofact.org/are-tariffs-...

Awesome to have @joshua-goodman.com visiting us @bowdoincollege.bsky.social!

We were thrilled to host @weilanch.bsky.social from the University of Michigan this week, the final speaker in our Fall 2026 seminar series! Thank you to Dominique Baker, Seth Gershenson, and Christina Weiland for presenting their work. Keep an eye out for our Spring semester round of speakers!

Like all econ reporters, I've spent the past couple years trying to understand what A.I. will mean for the economy and workers. It's been hard to reach any firm conclusions, because so much is uncertain: how technology will evolve, how quickly it will be adopted, how policymakers will respond.

The autumn view from Amtrak to Maine is gorgeous. I haven't done any public anagramming for a while, so here's your daily dose: FOLIAGE = I GO LEAF

🚨🚨 We've launched the Stanford Childcare Model, estimating supply and demand in the early care and education market, with a dashboard comparing effects of several different childcare policies. We hope it's useful to those working on childcare affordability, access, and quality! 🚨🚨

The latest NBER Reporter is now live: www.nber.org/reporter?pag... Featuring Mark Duggan’s Martin Feldstein Lecture, and research summaries by: • Christoph Boehm, Andrei A. Levchenko, and Nitya Pandalai-Nayar • Kasey Buckles, Joseph Price, and Zachary Ward • Kalena Cortes • Stefan Nagel

Our department at Vanderbilt is seeking an assistant/associate professor of higher education policy. The position is intended for a quantitative researcher with a PhD in a social science, public policy, or education. Please circulate and let me know if you have questions! apply.interfolio.com/193891

“The current study presents findings from, to our knowledge, the first large-scale randomized experiment evaluating the effects of AI tutoring on student learning at a large U.S. public university.” The only problem is the findings are wrong. brendanbartanen.substack.com/p/ai-tutorin...

This is my first Bluesky post and I would like to respond to Brendan's critique on my recent paper: "The Effects of Course-Integrated AI Tutoring on Student Performance and Engagement: A Randomized University Trial." (1/2)

the phones, they are bad

#EconSky: Going on the econ job market this year or know someone who is? Come to the free virtual job market workshop by Economists for Ukraine, featuring UC Berkeley's placement director Ben Handel and recent PhD graduate Yevhenii Usenko. Oct. 30, 11am EST econ4ua.org/events/job-m...

Let’s make sure Massachusetts remains a place where the next generation, and the generations after them, can afford to buy a home and build a life here. Please vote YES ON QUESTION 7. 🗳️🇺🇸🏡

The deadline to submit papers for the 2027 Society of Labor Economists (SOLE) Annual Meeting is just 11 days away (October 31)! Submit here: submissions.mirasmart.com/SOLE2027/log...

Viewing climate change as central to education policy is about creating more productive learning environments & a healthier planet. Supporting students’ development & academic growth increasingly requires that schools become more resilient & sustainable.🎓🌎 matthewakraft.substack.com/p/education-...

Twenty states now require teacher candidates to pass a certification exam in the Science of Reading. Do these exams screen on who will be better at teaching reading, or just shrink the teacher pipeline? My job market paper answers this with data from Texas a 🧵 edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1615

David presented a preview of these findings last year at BU Wheelock and sparked excellent conversations. Highly recommend! @wheelockpolicybu.bsky.social @buwheelock.bsky.social

🎓 RFBerlin Annual Public Lecture today at 16:00! Prof. Janet Currie (Yale) will deliver her lecture on Investing in Child Mental Health. 📍 Humboldt University Berlin, Spandauer Straße 1, lecture hal 201 🎟️ FREE, registration required: buff.ly/uY3WWVs 💻 Livestream: buff.ly/xxuTtxH See you there! 🎉

There’s a place for (public) school choice in the policy toolbox. But as @jenjennings.bsky.social shows in her new book The Scarcity Loop, these programs don’t solve—but only reshuffle—persistent problems of access and equality. Great to see her covered @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/10/19/o...

www.nytimes.com/2026/10/19/o...

"The Long Division: How the Politics of Education Became Partisan" examines how elementary and secondary education in the United States became increasingly organized around political partisanship and why this shift matters for American democracy and public schooling.

David presented a preview of these findings last year at BU Wheelock and sparked excellent conversations. Highly recommend! @wheelockpolicybu.bsky.social @buwheelock.bsky.social

There have been 27 international Bank-Fund meetings since 1947, generally one every three years. The U.S. Treasury Secretary attended 26 of the 27. And no one seemed that surprised or disappointed that the Treasury didn't attend this one.

If you are still on Musk's X, you are enabling his treachery.

watching matt darling wade into a thread to try and explain "actually the social impact of one-time windfalls is well-studied in economics, the net effect is mid" against every annoying fool on this website is like that scene in ip man where he decides to fight ten men

State House News Service: Mass. K-12 enrollment hit 867,825 in 2025-26, the lowest since 1994. But the trend looks very different from one community to the next. Explore enrollment shifts by district with the WEPC dashboard below and read the full article at www.statehousenews.com/news/educati...

Our large-scale study of phone bans just came out in Science. We randomized phone-free classrooms for 16,000+ students across 10 institutions in Odisha, India. Students deposited phones in a box at the start of each class, for a full semester.

“The contrast is awfully clear. Austin has added a lot of housing, and Boston just hasn’t… Big picture, Austin has made it easy to build housing, and it used to be difficult.” www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/15/b...

Though it seems to have fallen from the headlines, the available data indicate that ICE enforcement activity is more aggressive than ever. And we are only beginning to understand its implications for children, families, schools, and communities. www.the74million.org/article/the-...

hechingerreport.org/proof-points...

It's a prices up, real-wages down CPI report. In fact, here's the real hourly wage for pvt-sector workers since Trump took office. It's back to where it started. Working families are getting squeezed on both sides (wg, price) of the affordability crunch. econjared.substack.com/p/is-it-gett...

U.S. consumer prices rose 0.6 percent in September and were up 3.7 percent from a year earlier. “Core” prices, excluding the volatile food and energy categories, were up 0.3 percent m/m and 2.6 percent y/y. Data: www.bls.gov/news.release... Full coverage: www.nytimes.com/live/2026/10... #NumbersDay

New research alert: Proactively guaranteeing tuition and housing tripled enrollment for low-income students eligible for automatic admission to UT Austin from high-poverty schools #rct doi.org/10.3102/0162... @mattgiani.bsky.social @drflorespolicy.bsky.social @joribarash.bsky.social

“It’s much easier for Biogen employees to buy a house in North Carolina than Massachusetts, he said. Plus, development and construction approvals are much easier to obtain there.” - @biogen CEO Our housing crisis is a threat to our economic competitiveness. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/12/b...

A Federal Rule about the Decennial Census would eliminate race/ethnicity questions, alter the timing for ?s on people's usual residence, restrict use of some disclosure avoidance rules, and prohibit questions on sexual orientation (not asked now). Comment here: www.regulations.gov/commenton/US...

"Among sections of the same course, AI tutor access reduced final grades by 0.37 standard deviations and learning management system participation by 0.90 standard deviations. Participation declines ... were greater among first-generation students." edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1598

We would like to thank Dr. Seth Gershenson from American University for being the second speaker in our Fall 2026 seminar series! Our next seminar is happening Tuesday, October 20th, with @weilanch.bsky.social from the University of Michigan. Learn more and RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/fall-2026-...