Best of #econtwitter - Week of April 25, 2021
Welcome readers old and new to this week’s edition of Best of Econtwitter. Thanks to those sharing suggestions, over email or on Twitter @just_economics.
Paper summary threads
Being just above/below the cutoff for getting into one's preferred program doesn't impact odds of marrying, but it radically alters odds of marrying someone *in your preferred program*. #NBERday
^“Q: What is college for? A: Getting married”, long thread
So happy to see this paper published! I quantify the magnitude of innovation spillovers. When a firm (exogenously) produce one new patent, that triggers .2 additional patent in the same area. These spillovers are very local (they basically disappear within a 50 miles radius)
Journal of Financial Economics @J_Fin_Economics
Migration can transmit shocks across borders! New WP by Caballero, Cadena, and Covak. Clever identification: Mexican municipalities differ in their exposure to U.S. labor markets because of where local migrants to the U.S. ended up working.
bit.ly/3mZItYZ
1/3
Think #CommonOwnership can only be bad? Think again!
Here's our new paper that theoretically & empirically studies how common ownership affects corporate innovation.
florianederer.github.io/co_innovation.…
Comments welcome, especially from @SayWhatYouFound who loves cliffhanger titles.
Thanks to @monicajdeza for presenting her excellent paper (with @JCMecon and @keish_solo) on local access to mental health services and crime in my graduate seminar class. TLDR: More access to mental healthcare, less crime. Paper here: docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid… Short thread 👇
^TLDR: regressive
Democrats have started using racial justice framing to promote their progressive policies (eg, student debt relief is good b/c it will close the racial wealth gap). Is this language helpful for their causes? In a new working paper with @j_kalla, we find NO osf.io/tdkf3
In a study, Harvard MBAs worked in teams to form micro-businesses. When the teams were *randomly* assigned, the most diverse (on race and sex) teams performed the worst. But the effect goes away when students are allowed to pick their own teams.
nber.org/papers/w28684
Economics seminars during Covid-19:
🔹the number of seminars ⬇️ by 20%
🔹share of female seminar speakers ⬆️
🔹share of leading economists ⬇️, share of young economists ⬆️
🔹distance between host and speaker institutions ⬆️
by 20%
cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/… by Marcus Biermann
More: where politicians live; monetary policy uncertainty and trend inflation; IT and returns to scale; loans and monetary shocks; slavery and US economic development; collective bargaining; Twitter political influence
Public goods
To-do lists for empirical papers using various research designs. What a great resource! Thanks @smilleralert! #EconTwitter
Sarah Miller @smilleralert
🚨🚨Package release 🚨🚨
I just released an R package and Shiny app for evaluating the power of tests for pre-trends in DiD/event-study designs.
github.com/jonathandroth/… 1/N
Interesting discussions
^annual indispensable Kevin Bryan post
An interesting thread on a perennial question: the unusual concentration of rewards in economics at a few (6/7) top institutions. Hypothesis:
1) Concentration of raw talent
2) Uneven playing field (e.g. NBER)
3) Returns to education
4) Award process
Worth pondering.
Jake Vigdor @JakeVigdor
(^reminder JBC is US-located only)
Thoughts on learning to "fail fast" in research. When you have a new idea, and the project is worthwhile only if P, then you need to check P first, not last. Examples: 1. You can only establish causality with a certain kind of data. 🧵
^lots of replies, eg
David Blackwell would be turning 102 today.
He's best known for the Blackwell information ordering, the way to formalize when some signals give you more information than other signals.
A thread on Blackwell's lovely theorem and a simple proof you might not have seen.
1/
The economics of capital income taxation are hard. The empirics also. This does not keep most people to hold very strong beliefs about them (pro and con).
^branching threads of discussion, e.g. Gourio-Werning-Lustig-Cochrane
THREAD: On the role of bad social science in the Vietnam War—and how not understanding local conditions, and thinking through endogeneity (yes, endogeneity) can lead to policy conclusions with tragic, deadly consequences.