Academics have traditionally played a vital role in both the generation and dissemination of knowledge, ideas and narratives. Social media, relative to traditional media, provides for new and more direct ways of science communication. Yet, since not all academics may engage with social media, the sample that does so may have an outsize influence on shaping public perceptions of academia more broadly through at least two channels: the set topics they engage with and through the particular style and tone of communication. This paper describes patterns in academics' expression online found in a newly constructed global dataset covering over 100,000 scholars linking their social media content to academic record. We document large and systematic variation in politically salient academic expression concerning climate action, cultural, and economic concepts. We show that these appear to often diverge from general public opinion in both topic focus and style. 

Support for right-wing populist parties is characterised by considerable regional heterogeneity and especially concentrated in regions that have experienced economic decline. It remains unclear, however, whether the spatial externalities of local decline, including homelessness and crime, boost support for populist parties, even among those not directly affected by such decline. In this paper, we contribute to filling this gap in two ways. First, we gather novel data on a particularly visible form of local decline, high-street vacancies, that comprise 83,000 premises in England and Wales. Second, we investigate the influence of local decline on support for the right-wing populist UK Independence Party (UKIP) between 2009 and 2019. We find a significant positive association between high-street vacancy rates and UKIP support. These results enhance our understanding of how changes in the lived environment shape political preferences and behaviour, particularly in relation to right-wing populism. 

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters worldwide. Media coverage of these events may be vital to generate empathy and mobilize global populations to address the common threat posed by climate change. Using a dataset of 466 news sources from 123 countries, covering 135 million news articles since 2016, we apply an event study framework to measure cross-border media activity following natural disasters. Our results shows that while media attention rises after disasters, it is heavily skewed towards certain events, notably earthquakes, accidents, and wildfires. In contrast, climatologically salient events such as floods, droughts, or extreme temperatures receive less coverage. This cross-border disaster reporting is strongly related to the number of deaths associated with the event, especially when the affected populations share strong social ties or genetic similarities with those in the reporting country. Achieving more balanced media coverage across different types of natural disasters may be essential to counteract skewed perceptions. Further, fostering closer social connections between countries may enhance empathy and mobilize the resources necessary to confront the global threat of climate change.

We analyze over 44,000 NBER and CEPR working papers from 1980 to 2023 using a custom language model to construct knowledge graphs that map economic concepts and their relationships. We distinguish between general claims and those documented via causal inference methods (e.g., DiD, IV, RDD, RCTs). We document a substantial rise in the share of causal claims-from roughly 4% in 1990 to nearly 28% in 2020-reflecting the growing influence of the "credibility revolution." We find that causal narrative complexity (e.g., the depth of causal chains) strongly predicts both publication in top-5 journals and higher citation counts, whereas non-causal complexity tends to be uncorrelated or negatively associated with these outcomes. Novelty is also pivotal for top-5 publication, but only when grounded in credible causal methods: introducing genuinely new causal edges or paths markedly increases both the likelihood of acceptance at leading outlets and long-run citations, while non-causal novelty exhibits weak or even negative effects. Papers engaging with central, widely recognized concepts tend to attract more citations, highlighting a divergence between factors driving publication success and long-term academic impact. Finally, bridging underexplored concept pairs is rewarded primarily when grounded in causal methods, yet such gap filling exhibits no consistent link with future citations. Overall, our findings suggest that methodological rigor and causal innovation are key drivers of academic recognition, but sustained impact may require balancing novel contributions with conceptual integration into established economic discourse.

This paper leverages generative AI to build a network structure over 5,000 product nodes, where directed edges represent input-output relationships in production. We layout a two-step ‘build-prune’ approach using an ensemble of prompt-tuned generative AI classifications. The ’build’ step provides an initial distribution of edge predictions, the ‘prune’ step then re-evaluates all edges. With our AI-generated Production Network (AIPNET) in toe, we document a host of shifts in the network position of products and countries during the 21st century. Finally, we study production network spillovers using the natural experiment presented by the 2017 blockade of Qatar. We find strong evidence of such spill-overs, suggestive of on-shoring of critical production. This descriptive and causal evidence demonstrates some of the many research possibilities opened up by our granular measurement of product linkages, including studies of on-shoring, industrial policy, and other recent shifts in global trade.

The study measures scientists’ polarization on social media and its impact on public perceptions of their credibility. Analyzing 98,000 scientists on Twitter from 2016 to 2022 reveals significant divergence in expressed political opinions. An experiment assesses the impact of online political expression on a representative sample of 1,700 U.S. respondents, who rated vignettes with synthetic academic profiles varying scientists’ political affiliations based on real tweets. Politically neutral scientists are viewed as the most credible. Strikingly, on both the ’left’ and ’right’ sides of politically neutral, there is a monotonic penalty for scientists displaying political affiliations: the stronger their posts, the less credible their profile and research are perceived, and the lower the public’s willingness to read their content. The penalty varies with respondents’ political leanings.

Using basic health statements authorized by UK and EU registers and ~9,100 journalist-vetted public-health assertions on topics such as abortion, COVID-19 and politics from sources ranging from peer-reviewed journals and government advisories to social media and news across the political spectrum, we benchmark six leading large language models from in 21 languages, finding that—despite high accuracy on English-centric textbook claims—performance falls in multiple non-European languages and fluctuates by topic and source, highlighting the urgency of comprehensive multilingual, domain-aware validation before deploying AI in global health communication.

Cass Sunstein's essay 'On Bob Dylan' describes Dylan's 'dishabituating' style -- a constant refusal to conform to expectation and a penchant for reinventing his musical and lyrical identity. In this paper, I extend Sunstein's observations through a large-scale computational analysis of Dylan's lyrics from 1962 to 2012. Using o3-mini-high (a large language model), I extract concept-to-concept relationships from the lyrics and construct directed knowledge graphs that capture Dylan's thematic structure. I then quantify shifts in sentiment, metaphorical expression, thematic diversity, and network complexity over time. The results indicate that Dylan's lyrics increasingly rely on metaphor, display an evolving sentiment profile, and exhibit heightened dishabituation -- measured here as a growing variance in the network centrality of key concepts. I also find that references to movement, protest, and mythic imagery fluctuate in ways that align with well-known phases of Dylan's career, reflecting the dynamic and unpredictable quality of his art. These findings not only deepen our empirical understanding of Sunstein's thesis but also introduce a novel computational method for analyzing an artist's evolution-offering broader applicability to the study of cultural and creative change.