Best of #econtwitter - Week of April 24, 2022 [1/3]
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 one of three.
Paper summary threads
Key findings sites.dartmouth.edu/nyhan/files/20…
-Viewership of potentially harmful alternative & extremist YouTube channels heavily concentrated among subscribers
-Viewers frequently come from off-platform sources
-Algorithmic recs from normal content rare
-"Rabbit hole" patterns very rare
Brendan Nyhan @BrendanNyhan
In 1980, higher GDP per capita and higher female labour force participation were associated with lower fertility in OECD countries.
By 2000, these relationships had reversed.
nber.org/papers/w29948?…
Harry Wheeler (@hbwheel) and I have updated our working paper on Opportunity Zone investment with new data from 2020.
dropbox.com/s/mh891vmlt2yn…
A short summary:
What happens if you skimp on phonics and tutor struggling readers using context clues, etc?
RCT finds huge 0.9sd gains in 1st grade! So control group treated.
🚩 🚩 🚩
New RDD study (albeit w/ v high attrition) finds *negative* impacts by 3rd grade.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/…
New work with @edkong and Mark Shepard: jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-…
ARPA made zero-premium silver plans available to folks < 150% FPL. But only two at the most: the second-lowest (benchmark) and lowest-cost plans on the tier
Is *which* two plans are lowest-cost—$0—stable over time?
How widespread a concern is non-independence in studies of national-level outcomes? We reviewed the 100 highest-cited cross-national studies in economics and psychology. Our review showed that attempts to control for non-independence are rare, and have not increased since 1993.
Real food prices—food prices relative to total inflation—are on the rise, with countries experiencing price hikes even prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With @ClemensGvL and @carmenmreinhart, we consider the risk of a global food crisis:
World Bank Research @wb_research
Recent NIH investigations coincide with a decline in the productivity of US scientists with previous collaborations with China, with implications for both the US and China, from Ruixue Jia, Margaret E. Roberts, Ye Wang, and Eddie Yang nber.org/papers/w29941
Public goods
Ok everyone. By popular demand, here's the Beamer PPT template. Go signal your hearts out while also being able to easily drag and drop images and draw figures without using tikz!
timothyjlayton.com/s/Beamer_templ…
David Cutler @Cutler_econ
1/ Can A.I. do our literature reviews for us? Stop everything and try elicit.org, an amazing new tool that uses large language models to answer research questions via empirical research- in the video below I ask it "Does social media negatively impact mental health?"
^didn’t work for my lit but YMMV
Interesting discussions
In honor of tax day 2022, I am going to share a story about how--as a grad student--I argued against the IRS and won. 1/
What’s weird about this is that this huge salary gap is justified on the basis of hypothetical “outside academia” salaries, and I don’t think this kind of gap exists outside academia at all any more.
Deadric T. Williams @doc_thoughts
^request: empirics
Three years into my PhD program, I think I've finally figured out a paper reading system that works well for me.
There are 4 main steps in my workflow: finding papers, storing papers, reading papers, and annotating papers.
A brief 🧵 on my what I use:
#EconTwitter: what are the most costly mistakes you've made in running a RCT in the field (so we can all collectively avoid them)? I'll start (actually 2, but from the same project): launching the baseline without implementers having made non-reversible inv in the program.
^somewhat related: “highest impact RCTs of all time?”
