Best of #econtwitter - Week of August 1, 2021 [1/2]
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 one of two, this week — part two is here.
Paper summary threads
Really neat new paper in latest issue of JEP by @maxkasy (with killer graphs).
aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…
(Also looking forward to the other companion papers from the same symposium by @tedmiguel and Guido Imbens). Here's a "what I learned" 🧵
Maximilian Kasy @maxkasy
Paper provides accessible, useful overview of types of publication selection that can arise and their consequences. Awesome graph #1: publication probability under selection on significance on the left (perhaps familiar)
Awesome graph #2: if there is selection, we can detect it in bunching of p-values (perhaps relatively familiar – on the left) but also in observing patterns of replication.
Our paper (with Mark Egan and Hanbin Yang), “Recovering Investor Expectations from Demand for Index Funds,” is accepted at @RevEconStud. We use an IO-style demand estimation approach to recover beliefs about the performance of the stock market and other assets. An overview:
We built a new study to measure systemic, nationwide patterns of discrim WITHIN firms.
How? We basically ran separate studies at 100+ Fortune 500 firms, sampling entry-level jobs from across the country. We sent more than 80k apps all, making this the biggest audit study ever.
^coauthor Christopher Walters with another thread; Peter Hull comments
Very excited to present my work on air pollution & small firms in urban Uganda (joint w @bassi_vittorio @mattkahn1966, N. Lozano Gracia & @PorzioTommaso) at #NBERSI Urban Econ tomorrow (youtu.be/pXRYLXEehK0)!
A preview ⬇️ 1/
We document the association between parental income and the share of children that obtain an A-level degree (Abitur) with Mikrozensus data. We find that a 10 percentile increase in the parental income rank is associated with a 5.2 percentage point increase in the A-Level share.
^coauthor Sebastian Findeisen’s thread
𝗣𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗨𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲. Optimal Income Taxation with Spillovers from Employer Learning
(1/N) How should we adjust the tax system if firms have to learn about worker productivity from imperfect info (like statistical discrimination models)? #EconTwitter
sites.lsa.umich.edu/ashcraig/wp-co…
🚨New paper alert🚨
Partisan Fertility and Presidential Elections
By Gordon Dahl, Runjing Lu (@RunjingLu), Will Mullins
NBER WP nber.org/papers/w29058
Ungated version papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
The surprise 2016 election of Trump led to partisan changes in fertility
(1/3)
🚨New working paper🚨w/ @ArkhangelskyD, Guido Imbens, and @xiaoman_luo. We propose the RIPW estimator that makes TWFE regression robust to treatment effect heterogeneity under general designs (incl. staggered adoption)
arxiv.org/abs/2107.13737
I’ll walk through some details. 1/n https://t.co/4LSp6jtagb
Dmitry Arkhangelsky @ArkhangelskyD
^coauthor Dmitry Arkhangelsky’s thread
A puzzle about bargaining: People tend to make offers that split the difference 50-50 between the last two offers. 🤔
But the last two offers are endogenous! Splitting the last two offers may not split actual, or expected surplus. What's going on? 🧵
A passion project
🚨School-based Mentoring Relationships & Human Capital Formation🚨
A new lens for understanding the returns to education
Schools as incubators of natural mentoring relationships btwn students & their teachers, counselors & coaches
edworkingpapers.com/ai21-441
🧵
*New Working Paper*
Heat, Crime, & Punishment (w/@abehrer)
Key points:
1⃣Heat increases violent crime (but not non-violent crime) due to psychological aggravation
2⃣What can help? Newer buildings (w/AC), higher incomes, less access to guns
hoover.org/sites/default/…
(1/4)
Public goods
I'm excited to announce the next phase in the life of remotestudentexchange.org!
This fall, professors everywhere can again open their classes to students from low- and middle-income countries.
What's new: Students, you can now receive letters of participation *AND GRADES*!
1/n
This is a new handle for all RA opportunities in macroeconomics. This helps students interested in gaining macro research experience wade through the numerous tweets about RA opportunities. #economics #macroeconomics @econ_ra
^related-ish: intermediate macro teaching materials
Interesting discussions
I'm going to attempt the first (?) Twitch livestream commentary of an NBER session — what looks to be an interesting paper by Santosh Anagol, Fernando Ferreira, Jonah Rexer on Zoning Reform; tomorrow 7/29 at 11:45am ET.
twitch.tv/arpitrage
^innovation. Recording still up
This is interesting, out today from @NSF: a first-of-its-kind survey of business innovation in the U.S. ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf21334 #innovation
Fascinating thread by @arindube: Lester's (1946) range of indeterminacy is back! A lot of wisdom in the institutionalist tradition by researchers like Dunlop, Lester, Lewis or Slichter. One way forward: integrate more ethnographic work in labor! jstor.org/stable/pdf/180…
Arindrajit Dube @arindube