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
scholar.harvard.edu
12:59 PM · Aug 18, 2020
225 Reposts · 620 Likes
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.
3:56 PM · Aug 22, 2020
47 Reposts · 177 Likes
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)
4:52 PM · Aug 17, 2020
18 Reposts · 99 Likes
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
11:03 PM · Aug 17, 2020
71 Reposts · 117 Likes
^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.org
Emigration Rises Along with Economic Development. Aid Agencies Should Face This, but Not Fear It
2:04 PM · Aug 18, 2020
236 Reposts · 444 Likes
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)
10:40 AM · Aug 20, 2020
611 Reposts · 1.67K Likes
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/
4:10 PM · Aug 17, 2020
26 Reposts · 75 Likes
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.
10:55 AM · Aug 18, 2020
23 Reposts · 95 Likes
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
11:15 AM · Aug 17, 2020
2 Reposts · 11 Likes
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
9:24 AM · Aug 19, 2020
23 Reposts · 42 Likes
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 👇
3:23 PM · Aug 19, 2020
30 Reposts · 137 Likes
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
11:56 AM · Aug 21, 2020
117 Reposts · 250 Likes
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).
12:54 AM · Aug 22, 2020
34 Reposts · 134 Likes
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.
5:47 PM · Aug 17, 2020
77 Reposts · 265 Likes
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/…
1:46 PM · Aug 19, 2020
87 Reposts · 201 Likes
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
4:19 PM · Aug 19, 2020
3 Reposts · 157 Likes
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
tandfonline.com
4:01 PM · Aug 20, 2020
54 Reposts · 284 Likes
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.…
6:12 PM · Jul 23, 2019
94 Reposts · 216 Likes
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
7:33 PM · Aug 18, 2020
82 Reposts · 377 Likes
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 ☞
4:54 PM · Aug 18, 2020
24 Reposts · 86 Likes
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
z-y-huang.github.io
3:17 PM · Aug 21, 2020
27 Reposts · 70 Likes
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.
10:48 PM · Aug 20, 2020
147 Reposts · 881 Likes
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