Best of #econtwitter - Week of August 15, 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
Excited to release a new version of our paper, "Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization", with more data!
We've added three new countries and added additional survey years for existing countries.
Let’s take an Apple iPhone ad as an example. First, the ad airs in EST in a popular TV show. We see a spike in searches coming from IP addresses in EST, but we do not see anything like that coming from the IP addresses in PST. 3 hours later, the pattern is flipped.
What happened when CA banned race-based affirmative action at public universities in 1998?
The wages of minorities in their 20s-30s declined as a direct result.
"Banning affirmative action exacerbates socioeconomic inequities."
Forth @QJEHarvard: zacharybleemer.com/wp-content/upl…
We find a "hangover effects" of reduced Monday labor hours of ~2/3 of an hour with most of that time lost before noon.
Also identified are "happy hour effects"-reduced Friday labor hours on football Fridays. Magnitudes are similar w/ effects driven by afternoon reductions. 2/4
Using detailed data on Norwegian candidates and their use of mass and social media in recent elections, the authors show that (1) candidate quality increases with list rank, and (2) candidates in safer ranks shift from intra-district to extra-district media exposure.
White males are consistently overrepresented as characters in children's books.
nber.org/papers/w29123
Brief summary of this new paper with Anson Soderbery
Q: how did US set tariffs when unconstrained by trade agreements? Impose optimal tariffs on terms of trade grounds? On behalf of special interests? Or in public interest?
Hard to know bc GATT has been around a long time!
NBER @nberpubs
More: how fast do technologies grow; edtech interventions in LMIC; pricing eurobonds; extending the OTJ search model; music mood and stocks
Public goods
‼️ new data alert ‼️
Hey #econtwitter! Sharing the dataset I built on bankruptcy exemptions. Exemptions are a key policy lever governing the amount of debt relief bankruptcy offers households. Access here: sashaindarte.github.io/public_goods/ (1/n)
More: stata binsreg update
Interesting discussions
For applied economics, @Stata is still the only game in town. AEJ:applied (@AEAjournals) hasn't published a paper *without* @Stata replication code since July'19.
Has been great to talk to students on the market — you're doing super interesting work and should reach out if you want to chat.
Three general comments I've noticed which may help you frame your work.
1. Contribution, not just motivation.
Arpit Gupta @arpitrage
Oh my god so apparently prolific recently went viral on TikTok and that would be the funniest possible explanation for the weird gender breakdown of everyone's recent studies
from: https://t.co/4e3YwQ3YRw
Vlad Chituc @VladChituc
^see also, on Prolific vs. MTurk
I have a UK edition of Why We Fight! You can preorder at this link.
Also, a short thread on what I learned about covers, rights, and publishing in the British market.
Great thread.
tl;dr Clever Econ 101 analysis suggested that war on opium poppy in Afghanistan would mostly raise prices to farmers not reduce quantity and divert production to Taliban controlled regions increasing their tax revenues and power--and that is what happened.
Jeffrey P. Clemens @jeffreypclemens
I’m wondering if others agree with me on this: Describing a study as a randomized experiment because it uses Becker-Degroot-Marschak to elicit willingness to pay is incorrect. The randomized variation is being used to create incentive compatibility, not to identify a parameter.
At the #DITE2021 conference, I was asked to comment about the difference for Black/Latino/a/x assistant professors. There are few items that I feel I have missed. So let me provide a summary.
Long thread! I hope it is useful.
