Maria Balgova

Labour economist studying geography of jobs, matching, and pay at @BankofEngland. @OxfordEconDept PhD, @iza_bonn fellow, made in 🇸🇰

[Eleonora Alabrese @EleAla]

Excited to be co-organising the 3rd Workshop on “Text-as-Data” in Economics @UniofBath, 16–17 July 2026.

We have two fantastic keynote speakers, Daniel Chen and Milena Djourelova, and welcome submissions on NLP, LLMs, ML, and related methods across economics and neighbouring fields.

Deadline: 24 May — please share widely!

[Maria Balgova @BalgovaMaria]

@MerrynSW I know it's not short but: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I find it's impossible not to want more after reading this book.

[Pedro Serôdio @pdmsero]

Is AI killing jobs?

New data shows that, more than three years after the release of ChatGPT, there is no evidence for a significant impact of AI on overall employment in the UK.

In our new report, we break down the labour force into different occupations and use four measures of AI exposure to determine how likely they are to be affected by the technology.

Surprisingly, occupations with higher exposure to AI have grown faster than least-exposed ones, not slower. This holds across all four measures, and across two different data sources.

The wage picture is different. Pay in AI-exposed occupations has lagged the rest of the labour market since 2019.

But that gap opened three years before ChatGPT, which makes AI an unlikely candidate for the observed wage compression.

This flattening of the wage structure is visible across the within-occupation distribution and strongest at the top quartile, which is consistent with labour market dynamics that predate generative AI.

[Martha Gimbel @marthagimbel]

Many of us are trying to figure out where the AI labor market transition may be going. But that's fundamentally unknowable. So instead of trying to predict the future we can instead look back to try to figure out what may be coming...by reading 19th c english literature 1/

[Joe Hazell @JADHazell]

When interest rates fall, do people spend more? And if so why? We argue monetary policy affects consumption mostly because house prices rise when rates fall, and households borrow against their homes.

With superstar coauthors Angus Foulis, @AtifRMian and Belinda Tracey.

1/5

[Birthe Larsen @BirtheLarsenCph]

Please read our new research on “What makes hiring difficult” Published in European Economic Review

🔑 Findings:

1) search &training frictions discourage hirings as much as labour costs
2) mainly for younger &smaller firms
3) many firms prefer hiring employed to unemployed workers.

Abstract
We use a novel firm survey linked to Danish administrative data to examine the factors that shape hiring decisions. Our analysis reveals three key findings. First, search and training frictions are as influential as labor costs in discouraging hiring despite potential needs. Second, these frictions disproportionately constrain younger and smaller firms, while firms with high-wage policies are less likely to report labor costs as an obstacle. Third, employers’ beliefs play a critical role: many firms prefer hiring employed rather than unemployed workers, perceiving the latter as lower ability due to negative selection or skill depreciation. Firms holding such beliefs are also more likely to report that labor market frictions impede their hiring decisions.

[Alex Imas @alexolegimas]

This essay “The Last Temptation of Claude” by Harry Law is excellent.

This part stuck out: de skilling doesn’t just happen. People dont make one choice—it’s hundreds and thousands of little choices. Off load a memo, off load a section of the paper, etc. they all seem small but then you wake up one day and hey that thing that used to be easy is now quite hard, or even impossible.

The temptation is real, so as with all temptation, it’s important to be deliberate and have rules. Everyone will be different, I have mine (write everything on my own, read old fiction)—but they might sound dumb or not work for others.

https://t.co/TQbCSFLD84

[Alan Cole @AlanMCole]

It’s a truth universally acknowledged—and you’re absolutely right to notice this—that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be not merely wealthy, but, also, and more precisely, in want of a wife.

This isn’t about gossip—it’s about social incentives.

[Luis Garicano 🇪🇺🇺🇦 @lugaricano]

My New Year post is a letter to a young person trying to find their direction in a world disrupted by AI. My advice, in four words: take the messy job. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Happy New Year!

[The Mind Scourge @TheMindScourge]

The model is aviation, and pilots specifically. The computer (mostly) flies the plane itself. The result is a much safer flying environment than if everything was 100% manual

But pilots are essential to the process. They’re an offline module in case the electronics fail, as an authority figure, and as the human interface between the aircraft, its passengers and crew, and the rest of the world. Their day to day responsibilities involve monitoring the outputs of the increasingly brilliant systems. They are also there to take responsibility for what happens. The AI isn’t a responsible party

Lawyers will be the same. They’ll be fine

[Joanna Stern @JoannaStern]

Last month, Anthropic asked if I wanted to test its Claude-powered vending machine in our offices.

One month later: The vending machine business is bankrupt, but morale is higher than ever, we have a free PlayStation—and a new pet fish!

[Maria Balgova @BalgovaMaria]

@NewLeftEViews If a very unequal country had flat income tax & social security contributions, wouldn't the lines on both charts also be flat?

[Elena Pellegrini @Ele_Pellegrini]

🚨 Job Market Paper 🚨

Wealth Inequality and Labor Mobility: The Job Trap

Does wealth affect workers’ ability to move to better jobs? Why do some remain stuck with low wages?

My answer: The Job Security Premium

Paper: https://t.co/PB3iKxtsju

1/12 #EconTwitter #EconJobMarket

[Paul Novosad @paulnovosad]

What happens when online job applicants start using LLMs? It ain't good.

1. Pre-LLM, cover letter quality predicts your work quality, and a good cover gets you a job
2. LLMs wipe out the signal, and employer demand falls
3. Model suggests high ability workers lose the most

1/n

[Maria Balgova @BalgovaMaria]

And now out as a Bank of England Staff Working Paper! https://t.co/kNEbw2v04I

[Maria Balgova @BalgovaMaria]

Why don't firms publish pay in their job adverts?

We present the first experimental evidence on how (not) posting wages changes the applicant pool, and whether that gives firms a reason to hide wage info.

Great short thread by my co-author Lukas + link to the full paper👇

[Lukas Hensel 🇺🇦 @LukasHenselEcon]

🚨🚨New WP Alert (https://t.co/fsjoncPIZX)🚨🚨
@marcjosefwitte, @BalgovaMaria, @TsegayTselassie, and I have a new working paper using a field experiment to study the causal impact of pay information in job adverts on application numbers and applicant skills. A🧵

[Birthe Larsen @BirtheLarsenCph]

We're hiring at the econ department at Copenhagen Business School.

Please come work with my wunderful colleagues and/or me on a tenure-track assistant professorship at @CBScph . All fields considered.

Apply through EJM.

https://t.co/mUNKjaNRVQ

[Stefan Schubert @StefanFSchubert]

Sweden has reliable statistics unusually far back in time, which makes it a useful country to look at for long-running trends.

@StatsSweden shows >40 mums are not a new phenomenon: in the late 1800s, 12% of children were born to women >40, compared with 5% today.

[Simon Jäger @simon_jaeger]

📢 Come work with us - we are hiring!

@Princeton Industrial Relations Section is hiring Senior Research Specialists!

Work directly with faculty, dive into labor economics research, and prep for grad school.
Apply 👉 https://t.co/AOEc7kvPS9
Please spread the word!
@econ_ra

[Rory McCarthy @roryisconfused]

Thinking of this piece the neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote before he died, on how he perceived smartphone use as essentially a neurological catastrophe.

He’s advocating for something like the opposite of mindfulness — instead, the problem is that we’re too stuck in the moment.