Jörg Ankel-Peters
@jrgptrs.bsky.social
development & environmental economist. energy access, climate policy, replication & meta-science. RWI & I4R. #FirstGen bit.ly/40e2aQj
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Jörg Ankel-Peters
@jrgptrs.bsky.social
· Oct 11
Thought about scientific consensus recently? We have a new DP @i4replication.bsky.social that probes into the famous replication debate between Acemoglu, Johnson & Robinson (AJR) and Albouy - and how experts assess this debate. We find that they disagree. 1/8 www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10...
...a paper with that combat term in its title you should have been more diligent in capturing what you claim to measure.
I agree. That is at least a very sloppy definition of ideology. I do think though there is a non-normative way of defining ideology. To me, ideology is a prior that hardly responds to new evidence. Which is perhaps somewhat in line with what you said. In any case, I agree that if you put out...
...selling your research findings to Silicon Valley ideologues. All that being said, I certainly agree with you that those who do research on ideological bias are likely also ideologically biased.
...consistent with a conspiracy theory about pro-migration research. Because what the paper finds is that both sides of the ideological divide are biased. This, I guess, is very plausible - and it is something completely different, morally and epistemically, than...
Thanks! Interesting. I was't aware of this replication case actually, for some strange reason. I agree this was very bad style. It is of course completely inappropriate to accuse honorable people of selling their research findings. But in terms of the Science paper, I think their findings are not...
Interesting. I wasn't aware of this replication debate. But it doesn't discredit everything that Borjas does, I guess. And yet it is also clear to me that those of us who study ideological bias should be expected to be ideologically biased...
Yes, I agree with this. The theoretical claims that should be tested must be a lot clearer than they were in that study.
Reposted by Jörg Peters
A new paper by George Borjas—who served this past year in the Trump White House designing some of its anti-immigration policies—claims to display evidence of ideological bias among researchers who study immigration.
doi.org/10.1126/scia...
🧵 Thread—>
doi.org/10.1126/scia...
🧵 Thread—>
Thanks @mclem.org for your feedback on our study. I cannot reply to your posts, nor message you directly. Is that intentional, or do I not fully understand how Bluesky works yet? I would like to engage in some scholarly exchange if you are interested.
But Michael, they don't suggest it is a "conspiracy theory". Neither do they claim it is a particularity of migration research. In fact, in my reading, they rather use it as an example to make a more general claim. And they even transparently discuss that it is hard to interpret the effect size.
...because they want "speaking" titles. Which I think is often too simplistic and unnecessarily provocative.
...normative biases. They use migration as an example, and do not say it is uniquely biased, as Clemens insinuates. I agree about the effect size statement, but the authors make this very transparent, I think. Perhaps it is wrong to publish such a controversial paper in a Science/Nature journal...
...named the normative prior of the respective author first, on both sides of the ideological Rubicon... I would be in favor. But here it is a one-sided questioning of credibility. IMO. The other thing is that Borjas/Breznau, in my reading, do not claim that migration is particularly affected by...
No I haven't. It is a deeper one. I generally admire Michael Clemens' work, so I want to be cautious. In any case, the thread is strangely ad hominem. Of course it matters if Borjas had an "anti-migration" agenda. But it also matters if someone has a pro-migration agenda, right? So, if we ALWAYS...
Important new paper on normative bias in research. In a many-analyst design estimates produced by pro- vs anti-immigration teams systematically differ, driven by specification choices. It’s exploratory analysis expanding on a PNAS paper, but findings seem plausible. www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....
Also for the reasons mentioned in that quoted thread you think, like, people being "randomy abused for posting regular research results"? Is that playing out in the econ community, too? (I'm in my curious-mode, not my contrarian mode :-))
As long as we ponder limits from both sides of the normative rubicon, all is good.
Older working-age individuals are more likely to experience chronic illness, to retire early, or to be discouraged if. In this context, the relatively high share of Helfertätigkeiten (low-skilled jobs) among migrants is particularly relevant. This raises a few legitimate follow-up questions.
Export agriculture and rural poverty: Evidence from Indonesian palm oil
This paper measures the impacts of Indonesia’s palm oil export expansion on district poverty and household expenditure from 2002 to 2015. Identificati…
www.sciencedirect.com
Two minor updates, friends:
- As of 1 January 2026, I'm an Associate Professor.
- As of today, the first paper I started writing on palm oil, about a decade ago, is in print in the Journal of International Economics.
Read, share, cite. Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- As of 1 January 2026, I'm an Associate Professor.
- As of today, the first paper I started writing on palm oil, about a decade ago, is in print in the Journal of International Economics.
Read, share, cite. Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
..haha... well, I4R is agnostic about signs of effects and effect sizes. So far you only pre-specified your claim - as long as you don't change your hypothesis ex-post or p-hack your weight... there will be no I4R-fury.
I agree with that of course. He would probably even make his case stronger by engaging with the credibility revolution (and its shortcomings).
Interesting indeed. Of course there is and has always been good descriptive work in economics. Some economists are smart after all, and smart people know how to do description. But *the paradigm* is obsessed with causality, and hence 90% of papers are merely "causal", and it is how we train people.
As far as the econ part of the social sciences is concerned, we need more papers that ignore the [largely underpowered] "credibility revolution" and rather think deeply about good description. I am therefore looking forward to reading it.
Reposted by Jörg Peters
Description, Causal Explanation, and Policy Intervention in Sociology - KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie
I seek to restate and to develop a position I have previously taken up on the relation between description and causal explanation in sociology, in part by reference to an ongoing controversy on this m...
link.springer.com
New paper by John Goldthorpe, in the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, restating and developing his position on causality. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Reposted by Jörg Peters
23 years ago today, one of the greatest died
In memory of Joe Strummer 🖤
... gone but not forgotten...
📸 Anthony Saint James
#punk #punks #punkrock #punklegend #joestrummer #theclash #punkrockhistory #history #otd
In memory of Joe Strummer 🖤
... gone but not forgotten...
📸 Anthony Saint James
#punk #punks #punkrock #punklegend #joestrummer #theclash #punkrockhistory #history #otd