Things are grim. But in more frivolous news...

@jamesbrandecon.bsky.social and I have been chipping away at `dbreg`, a 📦 for running big regression models on database backends. For the right kinds of problems, the speed-ups are near magical.

Website: grantmcdermott.com/dbreg/

#rstats

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New blog post, on the impact of cheap verification on data science hiring, work, and compensation: jamesbrandecon.github.io/blog/posts_h...

Wrote a second blog post! This time it's about using LLMs as part of an ensemble imputation method, relying on their "knowledge" of the world to provide additional prediction signal. Seems to work well, especially for bigger models!

jamesbrandecon.github.io/blog/posts_h...

Have a day off so I made some small updates to FKRBDemand.jl (new name!). Hopefully it's now easier to use the Fox-Kim-Ryan-Bajari method to estimate a random coefficient model with market-level data (2-step approach described here: www.jamesbrandecon.com/blog/0jxkvfr...)

github.com/jamesbrandec...

New paper with @adam-n-smith.bsky.social
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Our paper develops a new approach for estimating demand nonparametrically while imposing economic constraints and comes with a new package, NPDemand.jl! Some things we do in the paper 1/

My group at Microsoft is hiring again! This time looking for junior candidates specifically wanting to study advertising. Academic friends (econ or business school especially), please let me know if you have PhD students we should look at!

Listing here: jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/jo...

In case non-twitterers are interested: A demand estimation approach that I've always liked but never tried is Fox-Kim-Ryan-Bajari 2011. Wanted to see how easy it'd be to package + whether it would perform better than FRAC.jl, so I wrote a quick gist. Works well! gist.github.com/jamesbrandec...

To me it feels like the common setup in industry where there are “business people” and “data people” is a pit stop toward a world where the best business folks can do some basic data analysis themselves. Is that a common view? Are there MBA programs w that view (I.e. with basic coding courses)?

This paper is one of my favorites in a long time, and also resonates as an understudied issue in IO whenever we study big firms: what do you do if your supply side consists of a forecaster, a capacity planner, a price setter,etc.? Are there other new papers on this? academic.oup.com/qje/advance-...