Land, Labor, & Capital Comparative economic development, economic history, & data science mumbo jumbo.

Industrial Policy - A Round Up of Historical Case Studies (and Beyond)

This is a short literature review of recent papers on industrial policy (and related topics)...[Read more]

A Delightful (Informal) Romp Through Implementation Theory

As an undergraduate suffering through a graduate PhD micro course, I recall my professor bringing...[Read more]

Saying the Quiet Part

It’s often revealing when someone when someone “says the quiet part loud.” I thought this...[Read more]

Building a Dataset from UN Comtrade's API

The following is a simple program for building data sets using the United Nation’s COMTRADE...[Read more]

Quick Note: Writing large .csv files in R with fwrite()! and beyond

The problem. R can be nasty when it comes to reading and writing “large” datasets....[Read more]

Quick Note: Upgrading to Microsoft Open R in Linux

Below is a guide to installing Microsoft Open R for those using Ubuntu Linux and...[Read more]

Concrete Development & Path Dependent Capital in Afghanistan

It’s hard to imagine, but in the 1950s and 1960s Afghanistan was in the throws...[Read more]

Mapping Developments Middle East

Mapping The Manbij Offensive , summer 2016. The (currently ongoing) operation by Syrian Democratic Forces...[Read more]

One Helluva Property Right

Bloomberg published a long-form piece on the sale of a “Texas Ranch That’s the Size...[Read more]

Input-Output Tables & the Leontief Inverse in R - Part I.

Surahammars Ironworks/Surahammars Järnbruk, Sweden, 1919. From Sweden’s Tekniska Museet photo collection. In input-output economics, the...[Read more]

Forty Years of the S (& R) Programming Language

O.g. data scientist and S developer, Richard Becker, gave a shamelessly wonky keynote address on...[Read more]

The Weird History of Microfilm

From the University of Haifa Younes, Soraya Nazarian Library, vis-a-vis Atlas Obscura. The wonderful and...[Read more]

A Hunt for the Oldest Government Computer

Last year Popular Mechanics and WOODtv reported that a single Amiga has been running non-stop...[Read more]

Stalinist Russia from the Trondheim Archives

Delving into the fantastic collection of the Norwegian Municipal Archives of Trondheim, which has some...[Read more]

Rock Hudson's Telegraph to Nancy Reagan Before His Death From AIDS

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library care of Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed News A great long...[Read more]

Readings in the History of Asian State Capacity

A clip from the “Royaume d’ Annan comprenant les Royaumes de Tumkin et de la...[Read more]

Quick Note: Using 'ff' to quickly save giant data sets in R

Using a really powerful library to do something simple. For a current project, I am...[Read more]

Quick Note: A New Python IDE for Data Work (& RStudio Lovers)

Just a quick heads-up: I’ve been using Yhat’s new Python IDE, Rodeo, which is pretty...[Read more]

Digitizing & (Re-) Visualizing the Apollo 11 Landing

The Planetary DatArt blog digitized and evaluated the Apollo 11 lunar landing from some a...[Read more]

Tutorial: Big GIS Data in R & Functional Programming

Caption: "Thermal Map of North America. Delineating the Isothermal Zodiac, the Isothermal Axis of Identity,...[Read more]

Visualization: Oslo, Minnesota

Norwegian population settlement in the United States (and Canada) at the turn of the century....[Read more]

A Christmas with the Gipper & Nancy, 1983.

Merry Christmas with the Gipper. Nancy and President Reagan, Christmas Eve, 1983. From the Ronald...[Read more]

Tutorial: R Code Style for Empirical Economists

Make your code understandable. IBM's data center in the 1960s, Toronto. Source:ibm-1401.info/ Heuristics, Hunches, &...[Read more]

1972 Thailand & Burma

Copyright the Nick DeWolf Foundation from their fantastic Nick DeWolf Archive Flickr page here. I...[Read more]

Wozniakian Destruction

"Wozniakian Destruction" - The History of Phone Hacking & its Influence on 1970s Silicon Valley...[Read more]

Quick Notes - Coding Stata do-files with Sublime in Unix/Linux

I am used to writing code in notepad programs, such as N++ and the fantastic...[Read more]

Data Janitors & Data Carpentry.

Data Janitors and Data Carpentry: value in the nitty gritty? "Report on the investigation of...[Read more]

Found Photos from Vietnam - a Digitization Project

More at chieu-hoi.com.   Newly digitized photos from Vietnam war photographer, Charlie Haughey, appearing in...[Read more]

Visualizing Interlocking Directorates, 1913

From the St.Louis Fed. Fraser site.   "Exhibit 243: Diagram Showing Affiliations of J.P. Morgan...[Read more]

Geospatial Data in R

Taking Geospatial Data to R (& how to ditch ArcGIS) For R users it's very...[Read more]

Soekarno and Khrushchev, 1960

Indonesian President, Soekarno, and USSR's Khrushchev, 1960. Life Magazine. [Read more]

Tutorial: Growing Datasets in R

Figure: From the Field Museum archives, 1920, Photographer Herbert P. Burtch, Oriental Institute. "Men moving...[Read more]

Deng Xiaoping in the U.S., 1979

Deng Xiaoping speaks in D.C., the year relations between the People's Republic of China and...[Read more]

Hanoi, 1989

Workers commute: Hanoi, 1989. [Photo: David Alan Harvey of Magnum Photos, 1989] [Read more]

Useful new R programs from Stockholm.

There's a lot useful R programming that comes out of the Stockholm University economics community,...[Read more]

Data cleaning music: Nina Simone - Baltimore

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Suicides & Churches in Early 20th Century Seattle

From the Making Maps blog. Fantastic plots from old sociology research, originally published in Calvin...[Read more]

Review: Ezra Vogel's The Four Little Dragons - The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia

Singapore, 1967.  Location: "North Bridge road just after Capitol theatre." Copyright David Ayer.   Sometimes...[Read more]

Micro Maps of Conflict & the Weak States of Williamsburg

NYTimes infographics ahead of the times: a 1970s geography of Brooklyn street gangs. From this...[Read more]

From Iceland with Love

I got your back by Bara Heiða [Read more]