Best of #econtwitter - Week of August 1, 2021 [2/2]
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 two, this week — part one is here.
Paper summary threads
Whelp, after years of reconstructing data, I have a new version of my working paper: on the short- & longer-lasting impacts of industrial policy in South Korea.
SK's contested policy had durable consequences for their industrial development...
🔗osf.io/preprints/soca…
🚨New paper with @simon_jaeger @cp_roth @Schoefer_B measuring worker beliefs about outside options reveals systematic biases:
ninaroussille.github.io/files/JRRS_Bel…
Catch our pres at 1pm EST TODAY at NBER-SI LS
w/ discussion by @alanmanning4 :
youtube.com/channel/UC79EL…
🧵👇
^Gregor Schubert comments
“Overall, our results imply that ridesharing has decreased US alcohol-related traffic fatalities by 6.1% … [yielding] annual life-saving benefits ranging from $2.3 to $5.4 billion.”
Charles Fain Lehman @CharlesFLehman
Interesting paper & @voxeu column (links👇) by Coibion et al.:
👉Causal evidence for effect of macro-uncertainty on household spending
🔧RCT based on ECB Consumer Expectations Survey
❗️ (baseline): 1 sd⬆️in uncertainty⬇️monthly spending by almost 5ppt on impact+3months later
Thrilled that my paper “Neo-Fisherian Policies and Liquidity Traps” has just been accepted at the AEJ: Macro. It has been around for ~3 years, but in the making much longer, >10 years ...
sites.google.com/site/florinbil…
1/n
Today, @AEAjournals: Micro has two papers on market power that consider 40 years of history AND cover most of the US economy.
One by me. The other by @conlon_chris @MSinkinson and Backus.
thread 1/n
non-gated links:
chrisconlon.github.io/site/common_ow…
sganapati.com/files/Ganapati…
Will rising automation cause chronic unemployment? How will Biden's stimulus affect employment, inflation and productivity? Does productivity react to monetary interventions? In a new paper, @mw_econ and I provide a model to think about these debates crei.cat/wp-content/upl…
I wrote an article for the Journal of Economic Perspectives issue, which is out today, on using administrative micro data for empirical macro research
A popular book did the rounds ~a decade ago arguing "We Are Misled by African Development Statistics"
*Phenomenal* new paper⬇️finds "no support for the view that growth is on average measured less accurately or manipulated more in developing than in developed countries"
Noam Angrist @angrist_noam
What predicts mega-empires in 1500 BCE- 1500 CE?
Agricultural productivity, enabling prosperity?
No.
Duration of agriculture & proximity to the steppe.
Conflicts with nomads may have selected for agricultural societies that scaled up & militarised.
nature.com/articles/s4159…
Beyond happy to see this accepted!
It’s a paper on politicians' preferences for redistribution. Here is a short thread on what we do:
1/6
The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) @restatjournal
New paper in HKS Misinfo Review! We show how thresholding on 100 public shares introduces bias in Facebook's @SocSciOne dataset. tl;dr -- the threshold causes the percentage of clicks to mainstream and fake news on Facebook to be overestimated by 2-4X.
David Rothschild @DavMicRot
^“FB/@SocSciOne should add a "catch all" URL for each domain name to their URLs data set.”
Are the social sciences becoming more interdisciplinary? According to this interesting new working paper, the answer is "yes" but interesting heterogeneity across fields (and yes *even* econ is becoming more interdisciplinary): researchgate.net/profile/Hongyu…
More: teacher compensation and inequality; Medicaid and race gaps; using ML to decompose entrepreneur pitch videos; institutions and noble lies; mechanizing agriculture; upward absolute mobility across countries; cash transfer RCT; firm apologies field experiment; Medicaid live rep access; labor rationing
Interesting discussions
I hadn't yet posted anything about Hugo Sonnenschein, who passed away two weeks ago.
It recently hit me that the best way for me to pay tribute to him would be to talk about one of his last major contributions, on "linking mechanisms"
The idea is simple and elegant. 1/15
#EconTwitter Like last year, the EEA just announced that the European JM will be held online.
While there are some downsides to this, it definitely had some good points: 🧵
^not all positive reactions to this news, you can search around. Related, and this is from today not last week, but likewise the AEAs:
