This is Rose Avenue near San Francisco. A quiet residential neighborhood, it looks like life on either side of the street should be pretty similar. But it turns out that opportunities and access to public goods are dramatically different. What's going on?

80% of European cities changed hands at least once between 1000 and 1850. Changing hands too often could be devastating for a city’s population in the short term. But in the long run, cities that changed hands would increase in size by 20%.

If you are ideologically committed, you are free to believe that ALL public spending is either good or bad. If you are actually interested in reality, the truth is probably somewhere in between. It takes high-quality data and credible research designs to get closer to it.

We compare districts in which school bonds passed by a hair to those in which they barely failed, which is as good as it gets for causal effects short of running a randomized experiment. We track changes in demographics, which cannot explain more than 1/3 of the effects.

@BarbaraBiasi, Julien Lafortune, and I find that, indeed, investing money in some types of school facilities has big effects on student achievement, especially in neglected school districts, whereas others have basically no impact.

Think about it: Of course there are cases of abuse, where money is being wasted on a superintendent's vanity project. But so are there cases in which facility improvements transform a neglected learning environment. Only the ideologically committed cannot imagine both cases.

Is investing in public school facilities worth it? Some think it's always a good idea. Others say it's always a waste. Which one is it? Neither. In some sense, it's not even the right question. Instead we should ask: when does money work and for whom? https://t.co/pNubJpVT4E

This nonsense keeps getting repeated. Countries use tariffs when they don't have more efficient tools of taxation, because all they can control and enforce is the border. Reliance on tariffs is the sign of being a developing country, not something that you aspire to.

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After five years at @IIES_Sthlm in Sweden, I am moving to the @ucsc Economics Department this summer. I am immensely grateful for the support from my friends at the IIES over the last five years, and I'm looking forward to getting to know my new colleagues better soon.

Hi everyone, I am looking to hire a pre-doc to work on topics in political economy and economic history. Please RT and share with anyone who might be interested! More details below - apply here: https://t.co/D2Nzmg10cu @econ_ra

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"His dedication and sheer availability to students is an inspiration [...] to be more generous with [your] own time. It is fair to say that David Card has led his own quiet revolution in advising in terms of treating students with unfailing patience, respect, and good humor."

Please spread the word!

What Works and for Whom? Effectiveness and Efficiency of School Capital Investments across the U.S. | @BarbaraBiasi, Julien Lafortune, @davidfromterra #EconTwitter https://t.co/vUtvlTeGKo

The impact of school capital investments on test scores and house prices depends on what projects are funded and on the characteristics of districts that receive the investments, from @BarbaraBiasi, Julien M. Lafortune, and @davidfromterra https://t.co/FQUbPTjC3K

We find that *what* we spend money on matters a lot. Spending on HVAC and removal of dangerous materials (“safety/health”) increases test scores a lot, but not house prices. Spending on athletic facilities, instead, raises house prices but not test scores.