Isabel Pastoor
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pastoorisabel.bsky.social
Isabel Pastoor
@pastoorisabel.bsky.social
680 followers 1.7K following 93 posts
Applied Economics PhD student at the University of Minnesota
Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellow at UMN Life Course Center
RA at IPUMS

Labor, women+children+families, economic demography, health
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Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
besttrousers.bsky.social
Citation standards should no longer ask that you say the date a website was accessed - primarily because it's kind of embarrassing to have to say you looked at a website 3 days before a proposal was due.
November 11, 2025 at 1:21 AM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
bgrueskin.bsky.social
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
laurenhlb.bsky.social
SNAP update. Insane one. So USDA is now saying on a huge lag:
- issue partial payments using a bad-math formula;
- CLAW BACK full issuances that any state sent *properly* under last week's guidance;
- if you don't CLAW BACK benefits, we won't pay the federal share of SNAP administrative costs (??)
11/8 SNAP guidance that states can only send partial benefits and suggests clawback otherwise penalty for failing to do so 11/7 USDA memo that told states to issue full benefits
November 9, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
vicbar.bsky.social
🚨 We are hiring! ‼️‼️

tenured track assistant or associate prof in economics at university of Melbourne @unimelb.bsky.social

welcome applications from all fields (but especially from econometrics)

econjobmarket.org/positions?sh...
EJM - Econ Job Market
econjobmarket.org
October 16, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
atrubek.bsky.social
I havent read such a banger of an essay in a very long time. This is so well-written!
Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani
It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
lithub.com
November 8, 2025 at 5:37 PM
pastoorisabel.bsky.social
Current University of Minnesota policy bars “academic departments and other centers on campus, [from] ‘addressing matters of public concern or public interest.’”
November 7, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
timobres.bsky.social
Great quote from proto-IO scholar John Malcolm Blair!
briancallaci.bsky.social Brian Callaci @briancallaci.bsky.social · 4d
Earlier this week I came across a book with this dedication page (from 1938).
November 6, 2025 at 8:29 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
aaronsojourner.org
How does employer access to prisoners’ labor through work release impact the well-being of those workers & of free workers?

New working paper by Sue Helper, Suresh Naidu, Akseli Palomaki, Adam Reich, + me provides evidence, focus on auto manufacturing in AL
#EconSky
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Coercion and Monopsony in Modern American Manufacturing: Evidence from Alabama Prison Labor Susan Helper Suresh Naidu Akseli Palomaki Adam Reich Aaron Sojourner We study coercion and monopsony in contemporary U.S. manufacturing labor markets. We combine administrative data from the Alabama Department of Corrections work release program with a unique survey of workers in the Alabama auto supply chain where workers report their work-release status. We first present descriptive patterns of work-release labor, finding that the use of incarcerated (i.e., work-release) labor is concentrated in the auto supply industry, especially in the Montgomery area, where Hyundai’s assembly plant is located. In the survey, the share of plant-level workers who are incarcerated is negatively correlated with non-incarcerated wages. The survey also enables estimation of hypothetical quit elasticities separately among incarcerated and non-incarcerated workers. Incarcerated workers are estimated to have quit elasticities less than half that of non-incarcerated workers. Because Alabama law requires employers to pay the same wage to incarcerated and non-incarcerated workers in the same jobs, the additional monopsony power introduced by employer access to incarcerated workers creates an incentive and ability for employers to reduce plant-level wages to, and employment of, non-incarcerated workers. We build a quantitative model of firm-specific labor supply that, for incarcerated workers, distinguishes the roles of coercion (the risk of physical harm in prison from not working), wage garnishment that blunts the consumption effect of higher wages, and monopsony (limited mobility across employers). Using it, we estimate effects on free and incarcerated workers’ welfare from i) reforming prison conditions to eliminate violence, ii) eliminating prison labor wage garnishment, iii) imposing a $15 minimum wage, &iv) abolishing prison labor. Free worker welfare goes up in all scenarios...
November 3, 2025 at 2:20 PM
pastoorisabel.bsky.social
Interesting because this is also the argument of pro-commercial sexual exploitation liberal feminists, who Douthat just claimed have ruined the workplace.
coreyryung.bsky.social Corey Rayburn Yung @coreyryung.bsky.social · 5d
In "The Redistribution of Sex," Douthat suggested the solution to incel violence was for society to give them women to have sex with. Really. www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/o...
November 6, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
adamserwer.bsky.social
Cool. What would you call the other wing then? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/u...
“I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said over the weekend at the R.J.C. event. “Here’s what I do know: You can sit in a basement with weird people and say weird things. It’s a free country.”
November 6, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
pamherd.bsky.social
I do wonder what it was like to be a woman working at the NYT and wake up to the “Did Women Ruin the Workplace” headline.
November 6, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
gaiaghirardi.bsky.social
New publication in @actasociologica.bsky.social!

@filippogch.bsky.social and I use a novel decomposition method (@ang-yu.bsky.social and Elwert) to study if and how *childcare arrangements* under age 3 shape disparities in children’s cognitive skills

➡️ journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

1/5
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
November 6, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
signesvallfors.bsky.social
📣 Job alert! 📣 2 fully funded PhD positions in sociology/demography in the ERC Starting Grant SeRO, which studies the impact of local violent crime on sexual and reproductive health in Mexico. Please share and apply!
PhD post 1: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
PhD post 2: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
September 4, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
johncawley.bsky.social
New data on the #EconJobMarket as of Nov 2. Based on total # of job listings on JOE, this year continues to be even weaker (by 11%) than during COVID (2020). 1/many #EconSky
November 5, 2025 at 10:11 PM
pastoorisabel.bsky.social
Three year old officially a huge NIMBY. She suggested tearing down buildings and trees that obstruct her view of the full moon from our house.
November 6, 2025 at 12:48 AM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
lawcourtsapsa.bsky.social
The APSA Law & Courts Section is searching for the next Editor of the Journal of Law and Courts (starting Jan. 2027).
Apply by Feb. 1, 2026.
Questions? Contact the Search Committee:
K. Randazzo, A. Badas, D. Hughes, J. Schoenherr.
November 5, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
sbworkersunited.org
BREAKING: After months of stonewalling by Starbucks, unionized baristas just voted 92% to authorize a ULP strike unless Starbucks finalizes fair contracts & stops union busting.

If forced, our baristas will strike in dozens of cities on November 13 – the company's busiest sales day of the year.
Starbucks unionized workers say they'll strike on Nov. 13 if coffee giant doesn't finalize contract
Union members say they are ready to strike on the chain's Red Cup Day if Starbucks doesn't finalize a contract with their union by then.
www.cbsnews.com
November 5, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
kate-linthicum.bsky.social
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was groped Tuesday by a man on the street who kissed her neck and touched her chest.

“If they do this to the president," she said, "what must happen to all the young women women?"

She's calling for new measures to end harassment

www.latimes.com/world-nation...
Mexico's president was groped on the street. Now she's waging war on rampant sexual harassment
Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's first female president, is pushing measures against sexual harassment after she was groped by a stranger on the street.
www.latimes.com
November 5, 2025 at 4:22 PM
pastoorisabel.bsky.social
This was also our wedding poem.
katieaki.bsky.social Katie Aki ✶ @katieaki.bsky.social · 5d
this was our wedding poem :-)
November 5, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
claudia-sahm.bsky.social
Another study found that a 1 pp increase in the rate reduced overall card spending by 9%. But that was driven by account holders who carry a balance or have low credit scores. Spending by those who pay off their balance or have high credit scores was unaffected. www.bostonfed.org/publications...
The Credit Card Spending Channel of Monetary Policy: Micro Evidence from Account-level Data
www.bostonfed.org
November 5, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
leximcmenamin.com
here is my story about how Zohran's focus on community amid the loneliness epidemic helped young people connect their politics to an organizing infrastructure, that interviewed ZM, and does not use the NYT's framing of "they don't know how to make friends" :-) and also ran 4 days before NYT's lol
Zohran Mamdani's Establishment-Fighting Campaign Built Community for Young People
“What Mamdani has done is not only inspire and mobilize young people, but he has exposed the establishment and some of their calcified views of participation and inclusion.”
www.teenvogue.com
November 5, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
mcpli.bsky.social
Also a surprise upset in St Paul, Minnesota as Kaohly Her, who came to the United States at age 4, becomes the city’s first Hmong (and first Asian) mayor.

www.startribune.com/st-paul-mayo...
Kaohly Her wins historic election, will be St. Paul’s first Hmong mayor
Her, who entered the race in August, defeated her former boss Mayor Melvin Carter in his bid for a third term.
www.startribune.com
November 5, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
notalawyer.bsky.social
if democrats are serious about winning they need to learn from tonight and convert to islam
November 5, 2025 at 2:48 AM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
jfbonnefon.bsky.social
It's hiring season at @iast.fr!

- 2y research postdoc contract
- Full autonomy, you are your own PI
- Awesome multidisciplinary environment
- All social and behavioral sciences welcome
- Seed funding for projects and workshops
- Gorgeous city in the south of France

www.iast.fr/research-fel...
September 20, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Isabel Pastoor
itsafronomics.bsky.social
"Why don't people support welfare programs?"

Racism. More specifically, anti-Blackness.

White folks asked about who welfare serves overestimate the number of Black people on welfare. Not only that, but just the mere THOUGHT of who welfare supports led less white people to support it. #blacksky
Race and Redistribution in the United States: An Experimental Analysis∗ Jesper Akesson, Robert W. Hahn, Robert D. Metcalfe and Itzhak Rasooly† February 12, 2022 Abstract It is often argued that many White Americans oppose redistributive welfare policies because of animosity toward Black Americans. While a host of observational studies lend credence to this view, it has not yet been rigorously tested using the tools of randomized inference. In this study, we do exactly this by conducting two incentive-compatible experiments (n = 9, 775) in which different participants are randomly given different information about the share of welfare recipients who identify as Black and White. Our empirical analysis yields four main findings. First, most respondents greatly overestimate the share of welfare recipients who are Black. Second, these exaggerated beliefs reduce support for welfare among White respondents, a causal claim that we establish using treatment assignment as an instrument for beliefs. Third, just making White participants think about the racial composition of welfare recipients––holding constant their actual beliefs––reduces their support for welfare. Fourth, providing accurate information about the racial composition of welfare recipients does not influence support for welfare (relative to not receiving any information).
November 3, 2025 at 12:32 AM