Genevieve Kanter, PhD

▶️ New study: Conflicts of interest on CDC vaccine panel were at historic lows prior to RFK Jr dismissal In our @JAMA_current study , we looked at disclosed conflicts of interest (COIs) in ACIP and VRBPAC (FDA vaccines committee) between 2000 and 2024. We found that: ▪️although levels in ACIP were pretty high in 2000 (~40%), they have ⬇️ since then ▪️ since 2016, COI levels have been 6% for ACIP and 2% for VRBPAC ▪️ most COIs were related to research, not to personal income like consulting ▶️ Takeaway: although Secretary Kennedy is not wrong to be concerned about COIs in health care, ACIP was not the dumpster fire of COIs that many had assumed Joint with the amazing Peter Lurie and excellent Toni Mankowitz @USCSchaeffer @USCPrice ja.ma/45Jebk0 schaeffer.usc.edu/research/cdc-a… …terpillar-coyote-chxz.squarespace.com/s/Kanter-Confl…

“The claim that the Trump administration is making that Americans are getting the best deal is clearly false,” says Harvard Medical School professor Ameet Sarpatwari. Gift link to story by Rebecca Robbins on TrumpRx prices in NYTimes: nytimes.com/2026/03/18/wor…

A health technology company "built a business on scooping digital medical records of individual patients... and distributing the information to law firms." 😮 Washington Post gift link below: wapo.st/4dteuEX

A court decision halting RFK Jr.’s changes to the childhood immunization schedule hands an indirect, if temporary, win to vax industry that’s maintained its products are safe and effective. Reax to ruling from PhRMA, BIO, GeoVax, Sanofi and more: news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and…

Takeshi Amemiya, a giant in econometrics, passed away. Rest in peace. economics.stanford.edu/news/takeshi-a…

"Judge Brian E. Murphy issued a preliminary ruling finding that Kennedy’s reconstitution of a key vaccine advisory panel ... were likely illegal. Specifically, he ruled, those policy changes violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies ought to consider and implement policy changes." A win for federal advisory committees. As the kids say, FACAround and find out?

Christopher Sims, RIP. A giant of macroeconomics has left us. Here is his homepage: princeton.edu/~sims/

R.I.P. Christopher Sims (21 Oct. 1942 - 14 March 2026) - a giant in macroeconomics and one of the finest human beings I have ever met -

Link to free PDF: static1.squarespace.com/static/60efc12…

We showed a 72% drop in FDA advisory committees this past year from their 20-year average. Is this a problem? A lot of folks, including former FDA leaders and CEOs of companies that prepped for canceled meetings think so. Link to @LizzyLaw_ 's @statnews article below (paywall) & free link to PDF in replies.

5 lessons from Vinay Prasad’s turbulent tenure at the FDA Prasad brought his convictions to the agency — and reaped chaos. My thoughts on an eventful week for one of the most outspoken people in medicine. statnews.com/2026/03/08/vin…

NEW FDA vaccines chief Vinay Prasad will leave the agency at the end of April Gift link below

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers. The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇 For @Nature: nature.com/articles/d4158…

I really want people to see the story above the story here, which is that whether you're reading Citrini, or listening to Jamie Dimon at a cocktial party, the conversation about AI is a marketplace of competing science fiction narratives. That's not to say I think the technology is a parlor trick. But rather that the level of uncertainty is so high, and the quality and supply of real-world, real-time information about AI's macroeconomic effects so paltry, that very serious conversations about AI are often more literary than genuinely analytical. And I think that observation sets up another important point: I feel lucky to be able to have conversations about the frontier of AI with executives and builders at frontier labs; economists at AI conferences; investors in AI; and other AI folks at off-the-record dinners where important truths can theoretically be shared without risk. I can't emphasize enough that "nobody knows anything" is about as close to the reality here as three words are going to get you. Nobody what's going to happen this year, or next year, or the year after that. There is no secret cigar-filled room of people who have unique access to some authentic postcard from the future. When you drill down underneath the bluster, the boosterism, the fear, the anxiety, what's there at the bottom is genuine uncertainty, a vacuum into which storytelling is flooding. The frontier labs don't really know what they're building exactly, and economists don't really know how to model the thing they claim they're building (genuine recursively self-improving AI agency isn't really analogous to something we know about). I wish more people talked about and thought about this subject thru that sort of lens: We're trying to model the economy-wide effects of a technology whose properties the frontier labs can't even really describe yet. Whatever you think about AI today, be prepared to change your mind soon.

Hey Econ Twitter! My better half has a new book out today, a graduate textbook for teaching quantitative economics. Check it out! mitpress.mit.edu/9780262051057/…

The FDA is increasingly turning to ad hoc expert panels instead of federal advisory committees for external advice. FDA watchers generally agree these expert panels "are likely unlawful," USC Schaeffer's @ProfGenKanter tells @RAPSorg. raps.org/news-and-artic…

where do phd economists end up after graduation? i built a dataset covering 8,000+ individual placements from 40 top econ departments worldwide spanning up to 30+ years explore it all with a new interactive visualization tool. free and open! 👉 econphdplacements.com

New post: What is the impact of AI on productivity? I review all of the studies and data that I can find and try to provide a synthesis. There’s a lot of disagreement on what we know about the productivity impact. Part of the reason for this is the disconnect between the micro and macro evidence. The micro studies overwhelmingly find positive productivity benefits (except for one notable exception), but these productivity benefits are yet to show up in the macro data. There is also a disconnect on who benefits most: micro (mostly) finds low-skill/less-experienced workers see higher returns, the (limited) macro evidence is more mixed but leans toward higher wage/higher ed people seeing more of the benefits. I discuss potential reasons for the micro-macro gap in the post and 🧵 below. Importantly, this is a living post. I will update it continuously as new data comes in. If you see something I'm missing, please let me know and I will add it. For regular updates, please consider subscribing to the substack. Here is the link: aleximas.substack.com/p/what-is-the-…

SCOOP: Trump plans to nominate economist Brett Matsumoto to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to people familiar with the matter. Matsumoto has worked as an economist at the BLS since 2015. By @mattgrossman and Alex Leary wsj.com/economy/trump-…

Had an in-depth conversation with Michael Gibney at @PharmaVoice on politicization at the FDA and its impact on drug approvals, the pharma industry, and patients. pharmavoice.com/news/fda-polit…