Best of #econtwitter - Week of August 23, 2020

Welcome readers old and new to this week’s edition of the Best of Econtwitter. Recommendations always welcome over email or on Twitter @just_economics.

New papers

Stefanie Stantcheva @S_Stantcheva

[1/20]”Understanding Tax Policy: How do people reason?” New working paper on how people understand, reason & learn about taxes. What are the mental models that people use to think about taxes? I want to uncover not just factual knowledge but also reasoning

Victor Chernozhukov @VC31415

Could investing in early childhood development be one of keys to eliminating systemic racism? The data show striking differences in early childhood development. Figures below on test scores are from our JASA paper, reanalyzing Fryer and Levitt (AER). Left: 1y; Right: 7y.

Mohammad Akbarpour @akbarpour_

How to overcome double coincidence of wants without money? Theory&empirics of a policy that could save twice as many lives in France's kidney exchange. With awesome coauthors @CombeJu, @YinghuaHe, Victor Hiller, Rob Shimer, Olivier Tercieux. paper: stanford.io/3hfGv2I(1/N)

Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner

Thread by my amazing co-author on our new paper @PNASNews Black newborns are 3x more likely to die in-hospital than white newborns under the care of the same doctor when the doctor is white, but only 2x as likely when the doctor is Black. More detail below.

Rachel Hardeman, PhD, MPH @RRHDr

Today, a study conducted by myself, @Fixed_Effects, @aaronsojourner & @LauraHuangLA published in @PNASNews: https://t.co/oLRMbSELqD Cc:@KatherineJWu @ByNinaMartin @PublicHealthUMN @UMNews @minnpop @CTurlington @neel_shah @afrakt @UREssien @mg_galvin 1/12

^like anything race-related, this created a bit of hubbub. e.g.: Vinay Prasad, Omar Wasow

Michael Clemens @m_clem

As people in poor countries get richer, they have a *greater* tendency to emigrate. I just released two major studies, one joint with @MariapiaMendola, exploring this remarkable phenomenon. Long-read summary here: cgdev.org/blog/emigratio… Topline in this thread —>

cgdev.orgEmigration Rises Along with Economic Development. Aid Agencies Should Face This, but Not Fear ItAs people in poor countries get richer, they are more likely to emigrate—despite many governments’ attempts to use development assistance to deter emigration. Read CGD’s new work on the relationship between emigration and wealth.

Amy Orben (is on leave 🌴🌴) @OrbenAmy

Just pre-printed: New analysis of 91,267 10-80 year-olds (up to 9 waves of data each) tracks the trajectories of life satisfaction from early adolescence into old age. 📢 Core findings: 1) there is an unparalleled drop in life satisfaction scores during adolescence (1/5)

Judith Scott-Clayton @jscottclayton

I'm very excited to have a new paper out today on the college enrollment patterns of displaced workers, joint with my @CommunityCCRC colleague Veronica Minaya and incoming Stanford Econ PhD student Brendan Moore. nber.org/papers/w27694. 10-tweet thread summary here! 1/

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Important findings here: — WWII war production contracts reduced black/white wage gap mostly by reducing discrimination. — The reduction in labor market discrimination caused black kids to do ether in high school and raise their graduation rates.

Lukas Freund @_LukasFreund_

👇 Short summary by @yfatihkarahan of his paper, with Heise & Şahin "The Missing Inflation Puzzle". 👉 Growing disconnect b/w wages and prices, almost entirely driven by goods prices. 👉 Import penetration ⬆️ + market concentration ⬆️ explain the missing inflation in goods.

Fatih Karahan @yfatihkarahan

In case you missed, we have a first draft of the paper presented at #NBERSI (Monetary Econ). This is a result of policy discussions at the time (with usual disclaimers). https://t.co/Y7OGHuPZfX

Mike Bird @Birdyword

The Rogoff/Yang 'Peak China Housing' paper doesn't cover a huge amount of new ground but it's a nice summation of the case. Figure 16 is a personal favourite among the many horrifying China housing finance charts. nber.org/papers/w27697

Tommaso Porzio @PorzioTommaso

Two trends shaped the 🌍 post-WWII: 1. Farmers became city dwellers -> More than 50% of pop now lives in a city 2. Global surge in formal education -> Average yrs of school doubled! In a new WP w/ @federi_ro & Santangelo we show that 2. contributed to 1. Thread 👇

Zachary Bleemer @zbleemer

New paper: Banning affirmative action causes Black and Hispanic youths to have lower overall and STEM degree attainment and to earn persistently lower wages into their mid-30s. A thread. Three-page summary zacharybleemer.com/wp-content/upl…; Full paper zacharybleemer.com/wp-content/upl… #EconTwitter

Arindrajit Dube @arindube

New paper draft on #monopsony with @ihsaanbassier & @snaidunl using matched employer-employee hourly wage data from Oregon. We use a matched-worker event study to estimate the impact of firm component of wages on separations elasticity (and use it to measure labor market power).

Newly-published and other papers

Justin Sandefur @JustinSandefur

Two pretty damning RD graphs for AEA's 'chart of the week' from new Sheetal Sekhri paper: aeaweb.org/research/chart… Getting into an elite college in India... 1. Doesn't improve your college exit-exam scores. 2. But does massively increase your salary.

John Protzko @JProtzko

What happens when you give literally every single child in a country a laptop? They use it for gaming, music, and it doesn't improve educational attainment. Among those who attened college they are more likely to choose health fields over art. papers.ccpr.ucla.edu/index.php/pwp/…

Julian Kozlowski @kozjuli

My JMP found a home! Thanks to my advisors, @Lagos_R_ , Laura, and Venky for all their support. Short thread on the paper:

AEA Journals @AEAjournals

Forthcoming in AEJ: Macroeconomics: "Long-Term Finance and Investment with Frictional Asset Markets" by Julian Kozlowski. https://t.co/lcsgfSnLdp

Isabel Fulcher @isabelfulcher

Out today is our paper on estimating causal effects on a network! This was joint work with twitterless Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen and Ilya Shpitser. This project occupied a significant portion of my PhD… and about 10% of my life… so enjoy! tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10… 1/n

Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome

Seems like a rather important new paper on the supposed polarization of American jobs/wages (caused by tech, trade, etc). Middle wage workers are disappearing, BUT increasingly moving to high wage - not low wage - jobs. Especially women. nber.org/papers/w26064.…

Good threads that should be blogposts

R. Vincent Pohl @rvpohl

A few thoughts on working in policy research as an Economics PhD. A thread that could be interesting for Econ JMCs in light of a shortage of academic jobs, but hopefully not just because of that. cc @graykimbrough 1/n

Michael Clemens @m_clem

Before this tweetstorm passes, a final cloudburst ⛈️⭢⛅ If you follow the research on how emigration rises with development, you might be asking: Wait, didn't I just see a paper finding the exact opposite? If so, this thread is for you. Step in ☞

Dominic Russel @DomRussel

Today @zongyhuang @paulineyliang and I are releasing results from our survey of econ RAs / pre-docs #EconTwitter Summary slides here: z-y-huang.github.io/predoc_survey/… Full data appendix here: z-y-huang.github.io/predoc_survey/… A thread on some of our results 1/15

Jordan Peeples @JordanPeeples4

*A thread for upcoming first-year Econ PhD students* As the academic year is approaching, I would like to give brief advice based on my experience as a first-year PhD student who performed poorly in math camp and the first set of midterms but did better as the year progressed.

More links that don’t fit

Papers: 1918 flu JEL, education in Africa, historical Italian labor share, labor share by US states, capital gains and labor demand, job search assistance RCT