Image
user avatar
Matt Clancy
@mattsclancy
Abundance and Growth Fund Program Director at @coeff_giving. Creator of newthingsunderthesun.com. See mattsclancy.com for more.
Des Moines, IA
mattsclancy.substack.com
Joined March 2012
1,788
Following
9,871
Followers
Posts
  • Pinned
    user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    May 11
    The Abundance and Growth Fund goal is to raise broadly shared economic growth. We support work ranging from research to fieldbuilding to practice, with an initial focus on innovation, energy, clinical trials, housing, and state capacity. More here!
    Image
    How do you get Abundance and Growth?
    From abundanceandgrowth.org
    3.2K
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Nov 14, 2024
    Worst part of the new @dwarkesh_sp podcast is when @gwern casually drops this Fermat’s Last Theorem
    Image
    106K
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Aug 26, 2021
    This page layout (and font size) is the barrier to reading academic work that no one is talking about.
    Image
    Image
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Jan 9, 2023
    No single social science paper is decisive, but I really like this one. Seen in conjunction with other papers using a variety of methods, I think the case is strong that something troubling is afoot in science. Thread (references at the end).
    nature.com
    Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time
    Nature - A decline in disruptive science and technology over time is reported, representing a substantive shift in science and technology, which is attributed in part to the reliance on a narrower...
    268K
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Jan 1, 2024
    GPT5 after lawsuits force it to be trained exclusively public domain text.
    Image
    123K
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Jul 9, 2025
    The Abundance and Growth Fund at Open Philanthropy is hiring! We’re looking for 2-4 people to help expand this new $120+ million program to accelerate economic growth and reduce the cost of living through strategic grantmaking and research. (1/4) openphilanthropy.org/research/annou…
    174K
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Jun 18, 2021
    New post! It takes more and more R&D to get the same rate of innovation, whether you measure innovation by: transistors on a circuit agricultural crop yields years of life saved machine learning benchmarks total factor productivity, or firm growth.
    Image
    Innovation gets (mostly) harder
    From mattsclancy.substack.com
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Sep 25, 2025
    Earlier this year, the President’s budget proposed a 40% cut to the NIH budget. This sparked an obvious research question: What if the NIH had been 40% smaller in previous years? Here’s what Pierre Azoulay, Danielle Li, Bhaven Sampat, and I found when we looked at grants that
    Image
    126K
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Aug 1, 2019
    I wrote a beginner's guide to #EconTwitter and would love any comments! Main goal is to have a place to point our grad students, but I tried to write it so anyone interested could use it. matt-clancy.com/a-beginners-gu…
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Mar 16, 2022
    This take is plausible, and novel to me. It links three ideas: - personalized tutoring is a very good method of education - tutoring for the wealthy elite was common through most of history, but no more - absence of genius today erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-we-stopp…
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Nov 9, 2022
    A bit of professional news: I am excited to announce that tomorrow I am starting a new position as a Research Fellow at @open_phil!
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Mar 24, 2022
    #EconTwitter, how would you respond to this (paraphrased) question I got from a student in intermediate micro in our choice under uncertainty lab?
    Image
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Jul 16, 2022
    Shout it from the rooftops @tylercowen!
    Image
  • user avatar
    Matt Clancy
    @mattsclancy
    Jan 17, 2024
    Science giveth (mRNA vaccines that save lives) and science taketh away (nuclear weapons that could destroy civilization). I spent ~7 months working on a report estimating the net social impact of science, given risks and benefits of new scientific capabilities. 1/14
    Image
    99K