Bruce Bradbury

@brucebradbury.bsky.social

610 followers 530 following 150 posts

An Australian economist writing on social and economic policy and outcomes.
https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/bruce-bradbury

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Economics 30%

Education 20%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 1d

How can social protection policies help? One partial answer is to provide greater support for people with moderate impairments. In Australia, increasing JobSeeker allowance, relaxing income tests, relaxing job search requirements - in other words moving towards a UBI.

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 1d

AI might not take our manual jobs. But can our ageing bodies handle it? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/o...

Opinion | When A.I. Took My Job, I Bought a Chain Saw

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Diane Coyle, Lesley A. Hall, Christian E. Weller , and 4 more Diane Coyle, Lesley A. Hall, Christian E. Weller, Rod Dacombe, Henry Farrell, Bruce Bradbury, Michael Jones‐Correa

Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore @sjblakemore.bsky.social · 12d

New job at Cambridge!

Professorship of Public Policy

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/profess...

Professorship of Public Policy

The Board of Electors to the Professorship of Public Policy invite applications from candidates whose work falls within the field of public policy. We are looking for a successful and dynamic leader

www.cam.ac.uk

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 13d

Males get more free time. (The hours add up to over 24, because it restricts to those who participate in the activity. But the gender gap persists when averaged over all). www.abs.gov.au/statistics/p... #ABS

Time spent per day. Men have 5.8 hours and women 5.4 hours of 'free time'.

Reposted by Jérôme Denis, McKenzie Wark, Bruce Bradbury , and 2 more Jérôme Denis, McKenzie Wark, Bruce Bradbury, Katrina Navickas, Élise Féron

🏳️‍⚧️ Tár-Tár Binks @josie.zone · 14d

I try to avoid linking to Substacks but this essay is FASCINATING

I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.

I'm calm. I'm calm. I promise.

marcusolang.substack.com

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 14d

Going to be one of the most downloaded papers ever!

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 14d

"parallel trends in the log of an outcome variable precludes parallel trends in levels. The paper closes with an examination of a valiant recent attempt to wriggle out of this troubling functional-form constraint" Looking forward to reading.

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 15d

This looks like a must-read for diff-in-diffs folks.

www.nber.org/papers/w34550

Reposted by Kris Inwood, Bruce Bradbury

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 15d

This looks like a must-read for diff-in-diffs folks.

www.nber.org/papers/w34550

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 18d

As one of the substack responders said, this introduces questions about moral behaviour which researchers are nervous about. Also, are some people with CD very economically successful? Even so, I agree with your implied conclusion that we shouldn't be ignoring this.

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 19d

"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more."
pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...

Pluralistic: The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI (05 Dec 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

pluralistic.net

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, John Kennedy, James P. Collins , and 26 more Dorothy Bishop, John Kennedy, James P. Collins, Ken Caldeira, Hugo Mercier, Johannes Haushofer, Philip N. Cohen, Martin Paul Eve, Pierre Bataille, Rebecca Sear, Paul E. Johnson, Ian Hussey, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Climent Quintana‐Domeque, Aaron Sojourner, Andrew Livingstone, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Dominik Vogel, Barrett, Bruce Bradbury, Zen Faulkes, Richard Pettigrew, Johannes Breuer, Marcus Credé, Richard M. Carpiano, Hisham Zerriffi, Juan Ramón, Michael Scharkow, Fiona Spooner

Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 20d

Big new blogpost!

My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more.

--> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 25d

"We show that, in finite samples, first-differencing and novel rolling estimators can offer researchers a practical alternative to the fixed effects estimator"

Climent Quintana-Domeque @climent.bsky.social · 25d

"On the (Mis) Use of the Fixed Effects Estimator"

(by @dlmillimet.bsky.social and Marc F. Bellemare)

published in the Oxford Bulletin of Economics & Statistics.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

On the (Mis) Use of the Fixed Effects Estimator

Data that span multiple units and time periods allow controlling for time-invariant heterogeneity correlated with the covariates. While researchers can do this in different ways, the fixed effects es....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Daniel L. Millimet, Bruce Bradbury

Climent Quintana-Domeque @climent.bsky.social · 25d

On the (Mis) Use of the Fixed Effects Estimator

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reposted by Guy Grossman, Bruce Bradbury

Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · 27d

One observation about this interesting new paper on the credibility revolution in political science journal articles is that all (?) of its interesting findings are correlational, not causal

osf.io/preprints/so...

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 28d

So, if there is a substantial +ve causal relationship between x and y (as identified by a properly specified instrument), but the OLS is small, this could be because some unobserved confounder has a +ve impact on x but -ve on y (or vice versa).

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 29d

That's good. But in my haste, I scrambled my explanation. The 2SLS is the ratio of the reduced form y=f(Instrument) to the first stage x=f(Instrument). So, 2SLS is larger for weaker first stage. The OLS could be larger or smaller depending on the relationship with unobserved vars.

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 29d

However, if the gap between 2SLS and OLS is large, it means the first stage is weak. In this case estimates can be biased. Search for literature on 'weak instruments'.

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 29d

Normally the 2SLS will be larger than the OLS. Consider the case of a random experiment, but using 2SLS to correct for incomplete compliance. The OLS will be the intention to treat estimate, and the 2SLS inflates this to remove the downward bias due to noncompliance. /2

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Nov 28

Evaluating machine learning procedures using 120 cases? Nonsense. The infographic is the best part of the paper.

Reposted by Bruce Bradbury

Tom O'Grady @drtomdog.bsky.social · Nov 28

New from my phd student @joshgoddard98.bsky.social: he shows, using many election and panel studies across the advanced democracies, that housing status has replaced occupational class as a key predictor of voting. Class voting is now about assets, not income www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Housing and electoral behaviour: The changing face of class voting in advanced democracies

Scholarship on the relationship between social structure and electoral behaviour has traditionally operationalised voters’ economic or class situation…

www.sciencedirect.com

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Nov 28

One in 20 Australian Indigenous adult men are in jail. (original source: www.abs.gov.au/statistics/p...)

Greg Jericho @grogsgamut.bsky.social · Nov 27

The latest corrective services data is out today, and it points a horrific picture of the systemic racism in our judicial system #PointLive
live.thepoint.com.au

Males (Average daily number) Indigenous Non-indigenous
2022 3,881.7 270.8021887
2023 4,119.4 266.419147
Sep-24 4,454.5 263.0404971
Dec-24 4,518.3 259.3942345
Mar-25 4,652.8 265.7101833
Jun-25 4,715.1 269.4114629
Sep-25 4,717.3 267.8862789

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Nov 28

Though causality runs in both directions - "Taken together, these results point to a simple but important insight: the entry period into the [Australian] NDIS is a time when caring responsibilities increase, not fall. "
e61.in/navigating-t...

Navigating the NDIS may increase caring responsibilities in the early years – e61 INSTITUTE

e61.in

Reposted by Bruce Bradbury

Greg Jericho @grogsgamut.bsky.social · Nov 27

The latest corrective services data is out today, and it points a horrific picture of the systemic racism in our judicial system #PointLive
live.thepoint.com.au

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Nov 27

So, call "relative poverty" a measure of inequality if you want, but it is an indicator that has a much more specific moral and political meaning than other more general inequality indicators.

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Nov 27

For example, many countries set official "absolute" poverty lines which change over time in line with prices rather than national income. However, the lines set in rich countries are always much higher than the lines set in poor countries. /4

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Nov 27

"Unacceptable" is a political concept that will vary depending on the resources available in any given country. It reflects both the ability of a country to do something about it, as well as a view that the poor should not have a living standard that is well below the norm for their society. /3

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Nov 27

My take: While a poverty measure based on low consumption provides useful information, the relative framework is also important. In this context, I think of a poverty line as a threshold below which people have an "unacceptably low level of consumption". /2

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Nov 26

Lawrence Eppard thinks he was wrong about poverty. I think he was right in the first place. Discussion on The Temple of Sociology substack. templeofsociology.substack.com/p/absolute-v...

Absolute vs. Relative Poverty in Social Science

A New Article on Relative Poverty by Lawrence Eppard

templeofsociology.substack.com

Reposted by Bruce Bradbury

Andrea Garnero @agarnero.bsky.social · Nov 26

The Economist makes a good point in warning that, at some point, high may be too high, and that we should look beyond the effects on employment. But, I don’t think there is (yet) any consensus that we reached the maximum as they seem to imply in their piece.

The Economist @economist.com · Nov 24

As governments champion a consensus on wage floors, scholars are getting cold feet. A growing body of research suggests that they can degrade jobs, even if they don’t destroy them

Why governments should stop raising the minimum wage

After a decade of rises, there are now far better tools for fighting poverty

econ.st

Reposted by Alan Richardson, Bruce Bradbury, Maria Abreu , and 1 more Alan Richardson, Bruce Bradbury, Maria Abreu, Pádua Fernandes

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · Nov 18

This is terrifying.

"[AI agents] can... infer a researcher's latent hypotheses and produce data that artificially confirms them."

...

"We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people" -@seanjwestwood.bsky.social

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