Best of #econtwitter - Week of April 24, 2022 [2/3]

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.

This is part two of three.

Paper summary threads

Florian Ederer @florianederer

Autocracies overstate yearly GDP growth by as much as 35% when checked with more objective nighttime lights activity. Democracies have a much better economic track record once GDP figures are adjusted for manipulation.

Luis R. Martinez @LuisRMartinezA

"How Much Should We Trust the Dictator's GDP Growth Estimates?" is now forthcoming at the Journal of Political Economy: https://t.co/sa31QJOtvS

Robert Ulbricht @ulbricht_robert

My work on Mismatch Cycles (with @ana_gfigueiredo and @isaacbaley) just got accepted @JPolEcon. A summary: In the data we see a lot of mismatch btwn workers' skills and skill requirements posed by their jobs (eg @fatihguvenen, @BKuruscu, @econtanaka and @DavidWiczer). 1/N

Alex Eble @alexeble

Why do certain beliefs persist in the face of strong evidence that contradicts them? How do some societal inequalities persist across generations? This 🧵 explains a new paper I have with @trifen_hu studying these questions through the lens of #gender nature.com/articles/s4156…

nature.comGendered beliefs about mathematics ability transmit across generations through children’s peers - Nature Human BehaviourEble and Hu show how a common stereotype—the belief that boys are innately better at mathematics than girls—transmits across generations through children’s peers and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, pushing maths scores up for boys and down for girls.

Justin Sandefur @JustinSandefur

The Great Indian Poverty Debate, 2.0 A new World Bank paper says Indian poverty has fallen, but is higher than we thought. A rival study from India's IMF rep says India, like China, is approaching zero poverty. I tried to parse the debate: cgdev.org/blog/great-ind… 1/

cgdev.orgThe Great Indian Poverty Debate, 2.0Has the Modi government accelerated or decelerated poverty reduction? It’s hard to know, as India has effectively stopped measuring poverty. A new World Bank paper using private-sector survey data finds the share of people living below $1.90 per day has been falling, but is higher than we thought, a…

Lukas Freund @_LukasFreund_

Elegant new working paper -- "New Pricing Models, Same Old Phillips Curves?" -- by @a_auclert, Rigato, Rognlie, @ludwigstraub. 👉 The aggregate Phillips curve for a menu cost model looks like the New Keynesian Phillips curve, but with a higher slope. web.stanford.edu/~aauclert/new_…

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp

Reading through this now, and I think this is gonna be a great paper for linking how "reduced-form" and "structural" folks think about estimation. (Not surprising given the team) Some brief translations to whet your appetite for reading this... (I am still in progress!) 1/

Peter Hull @instrumenthull

What do structural models identify in a general potential outcomes framework? The answer depends on whether the instruments are "included" or "excluded" New great-looking paper from a fantastic research team https://t.co/uOeCdb0qFq https://t.co/gULxXUZTVC

Kirill Borusyak @borusyak

📢@XJaravel, @jannspiess and I just posted a new draft of "Revisiting Event Study Designs: Robust and Efficient Estimation" As before: - Challenges of diff-in-diff estimation by OLS - Robust and efficient imputation estimator NEW: - Application to MPC! arxiv.org/pdf/2108.12419…

K. Kıvanç Karaman @kivanc_karaman

Did gold/silver standard keep the value of money stable? Did it allow states to insulate monetary policy from politics? The short answer is no. Because politics cannot be kept out of monetary policy. The figure below summarizes the long-run evidence.

Seema Jayachandran @seema_econ

Monetary rewards for undertaking a desirable behavior partly offset people's costs to change their behavior; it's the remaining money that improves their economic well-being. My new short paper on this idea, applied to payments for conservation. seemajayachandran.com/pes_tradeoff.p…

Language models pop-up section

Context: https://beta.openai.com/playground/

Ben Golub 🇺🇦 @ben_golub

Ben Golub 🇺🇦 @ben_golub

GPT-3 passes the Turing test for Twitter critique of economic thought with flying colors

Ben Golub 🇺🇦 @ben_golub

@instrumenthull unsafe content indeed

quan le 🍚🥢 @qlquanle

grading papers in the age of gpt-3 gonna be fun

Paul Novosad @paulnovosad

I hope the staff at @OpenAI are checking their server logs carefully.

Interesting discussions

Ben Golub 🇺🇦 @ben_golub

For almost every signaling reason to do something, there is a countersignaling ("I'm so cool I don't have to worry about this”) account of the opposite behavior. Examples 🧵

April Burrage @AprilBurrage

I am not a fan of Beamer but I have to use it. Why is this the standard in economics?

Ben Golub 🇺🇦 @ben_golub

A favorite of mine: refraining from asking questions in class for fear of revealing ignorance. Familiar to many students. A lovely guy, widely held to be the smartest in his MIT econ cohort, would ask "naive" questions freely. Huge public good.

Kevin Bryan @Afinetheorem

@ben_golub Forgot I sent home luggage w/ my dress clothes before interview at the Fed at age 22. Showed up in sneakers & a polo. Got the job anyway (I apologized and explained!); later heard the staff econs at lunch thought I must be some superstar student. Countersignaling w/ errors!

Kevin DeLuca 🤝 @cantstopkevin

Advice for econ depts: if a job candidate misses their flight, you should actually be MORE likely to hire them. On time for every flight = wasting lots of time at the airport. Missing the job interview flight shows they are just being super efficient even when the stakes are high