Economists update data center local-impact paper with new instrument from historical fiber connectivity
Afinetheorem · x · 2026-09-22
Economist Diana Van Patten's team has updated their empirical paper on the local economic effects of data centers, introducing a new instrument for data center development that leverages historical determinants of fiber connectivity and foreign growth in large-scale facilities. The estimated effects are substantial and qualitatively align with their earlier draft.
The post also cites Alex Olegimas's commentary on reading empirical AI economics papers: clean-identification research prized by top journals can take years or decades to get right, but the AI era also demands faster, imperfect signals right now.
More from AGI Musings
- Commenters spar over China's open-model lead and whether the US would nationalize Nvidia — AIFlow_ML · 2026-09-22
- Schmidhuber: I published the first concrete RSI algorithms back in 1987 — SchmidhuberAI · 2026-09-22
- French essay: AI's gravest peril isn't doing our tasks but sparing us the inner transformation they demand — anselm · 2026-09-22
- 10k agents compress a century of work into 88 hours: multi-agent swarms' capability and risks are underestimated — mattbeane · 2026-09-22
- MIRI president Nate Soares says he can no longer rule out an intelligence explosion within six months — victor_explore · 2026-09-22
- Could an agent swarm replicate 95% of YC startups? Capability isn't commitment — abhiadesai · 2026-09-22