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

Apr 04, 2022

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. Part one is here; part three is here.

Paper summary threads

Josh Kalla@j_kalla

🚨NEW PREPRINT w/ @dbroockman. We conducted a real-world experiment to study the effects of partisan media. In Sept 2020, we paid people who normally watch Fox News to instead watch CNN. Median person was paid $15/hour for 7 hrs/week for 4 wks to watch CNN. Thread on results 1/

1:38 PM · Apr 3, 2022

212 Reposts · 664 Likes

^request for the mirror image of this experiment; thread from coauthor here

Gemma Dipoppa@gemmadipoppa

How do states fight against organized crime? We know that repressive methods are often ineffective and can generate more violence. Can policies targeting criminal revenues do better? We study a policy targeting mafia misappropriation of public subsidies. Here is what we find: 🧵

Gianmarco Daniele @Giammacco

Happy to see 👇paper published with @gemmadipoppa. We study a policy targeting mafia-linked firms misappropriation of subsidies. Some firms, with cues of ties with organized crime, manage to avoid checks by applying for smaller subsidies. https://t.co/OZog4KxvTP https://t.co/eH7wIkROdG

7:09 PM · Mar 29, 2022

29 Reposts · 118 Likes

Gemma Dipoppa@gemmadipoppa

3/ We find that a group of firms starts self-selecting below the threshold of application of the law right after its enforcement. This behavior is driven by mafia-affected cities and sectors traditionally infiltrated by organized crime.

7:09 PM · Mar 29, 2022

1 Repost · 6 Likes

Simon Loewe@LoeweSimon

TLDR: 1) "Legal" firm size is complex and hard to verify 2) Essentially no penalties for misdeclaration in the tax data (data with bunching) 3) Social security data harder to manipulate (no bunching here) 4) Costs of regulation may be much smaller than previously estimated 2/4

9:40 PM · Apr 2, 2022

Kevin Drum@kdrum

How high is medical inflation? jabberwocking.com/how-high-is-me…

10:25 AM · Mar 29, 2022

5 Likes

Christian Wolf@ChristianKWolf

Very excited to see this paper out in print! As always it was a pleasure to work with Mikkel. Brief summary thread ⬇️

journals.uchicago.edu

Instrumental Variable Identification of Dynamic Variance Decompositions | Journal of Political Economy: Vol 0, No ja

2:34 PM · Mar 29, 2022

32 Reposts · 189 Likes

Jonathan Zhang@jzhangecon

We study the VA Disability Compensation program which provides persistent cash transfers to disabled veterans. The program has no wealth or income requirements and no explicit work restrictions: basic income! The program is massive (~2/3 SSDI expenditures) and growing (2/9)

1:30 PM · Mar 28, 2022

1 Repost · 3 Likes

Johannes Stroebel@stroebel_econ

🚨What factors determine the social integration of international migrants? @michaelcbailey, @drew_m_johnston, Koenen, Kuchler, @DomRussel and I explore this question by studying the social networks of Syrian migrants in Germany (🧵 follows, details at pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jstroebe/PDF/…)

6:12 PM · Mar 31, 2022

17 Reposts · 51 Likes

Michael Hankinson@msgHankinson

District elections decrease the supply of new multifamily housing, but increase equity in where housing is built. This equity gain is problematic for long-run inequality as less new housing increases prices. My article w/ Asya Magazinnik conditionally accepted in @The_JOP. 1/13

6:20 PM · Mar 30, 2022

124 Reposts · 431 Likes

^still begging someone to start a ‘best of polisci twitter’ newsletter

Mohamed Saleh@msaleh1982

I am very happy to announce the public release of Egypt’s 1848 and 1868 individual-level population census samples. The digitization of these samples is a project that I’ve worked on since my PhD in 2009-2012 (1/n)

IPUMS International @ipumsi

ANNOUNCING new historical data release--two Egypt census samples from the 19th century now available to users! Thanks to data produced by @msaleh1982. https://t.co/lWgh8Ky3mX

4:01 PM · Mar 30, 2022

160 Reposts · 1.02K Likes

Noah Williams@Bellmanequation

So much gold in Sargent's "Learning from Lucas," "One morning in early 1973, Neil [Wallace] popped his head over the partition between our offices and said ‘Tom, our project is fatally flawed and over.’ Neil told me that he had read... (Lucas, 1972a)."

tomsargent.com

8:40 PM · Apr 1, 2022

33 Reposts · 131 Likes

Public goods

Katie Genadek@katiegenadek

We are live! #1950Census 1950census.archives.gov

4:06 AM · Apr 1, 2022

12 Reposts · 131 Likes

Andrew Chen@achenfinance

The 2022 release of openassetpricing.com is live!! @TomZ_Econ and I provide 200 anomaly returns through the end of 2021, two new predictors (red in pic), and fixes for dozens of issues. Openness + detailed docs + Github + annual updates = extremely high quality data. 💪🧵