Best of #econtwitter - Week of August 7, 2022 [1/3]
Welcome readers old and new to this week’s edition of Best of Econtwitter. Please submit suggestions — very much including your own work! — over email or on Twitter @just_economics.
This is part one of three.
Paper summaries
![Twitter avatar for @JacksonmMatt](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/JacksonmMatt.jpg)
Which types of social capital best explain economic mobility? Using data from Facebook, we consider more than a dozen social capital measures and our answers appear in a pair of papers in @Nature: nature.com/articles/s4158… 1/5
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZEIGKAUYAApsgu.jpg)
+
^very nice *correlations*:
![Twitter avatar for @ethanbdm](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/ethanbdm.jpg)
The paper considers threats to causal inference in some detail (e.g., see pp. 9-12 of paper 1).
Nonetheless, I'm not super convinced on the causal interpretation side.
2/
^+“Awfully big claims to be based on a study whose research design is just controlling.”
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![Twitter avatar for @marabarschkett](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/marabarschkett.jpg)
My paper with @PeterHaan8, @diw_jgeyer, and Anna Hammerschmid was published in the Journal of the Economics of Ageing (@EconAgeing). 🎉
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
How does raising the retirement age affect health?
In short: Health deteriorates. 🏥
![Twitter avatar for @leah_boustan](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/leah_boustan.jpg)
I have a new paper out @PNASNews with Ran, @jurafsky, @dallascard and co-authors. We trace 200,000 Congressional speeches about immigration from 1870-present. Speeches are:
🔸More positive now than ever
🔸But more polarized by party
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZFNrU7VUAEDNEz.png)
![Twitter avatar for @m_clem](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/m_clem.jpg)
What is the evidence that visas divert migrants out of irregular migration?
A new, groundbreaking study finds that sudden visa restrictions against displaced Venezuelans diverted them en masse into irregular channels.
By @OmarHGallego (pdf pg. 237+)—> etheses.lse.ac.uk/4372/
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZKUiQjWAAArHrN.jpg)
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZKUjuqXEAEQEq1.jpg)
^more related to immigration: “Expanding prenatal coverage to undocumented immigrants makes their children healthier”
![Twitter avatar for @JProtzko](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/JProtzko.jpg)
About 3 weeks ago I thought: "I wonder if behavior on economic games has been getting more selfish over time. But doing that study would be A LOT of work."
Thankfully, someone went through and found out
1956-2017, people have been getting less selfish
apa.org/pubs/journals/…
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFY23j2bXEAENIx0.png)
^challenges with interpreting this
![Twitter avatar for @anup_malani](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/anup_malani.jpg)
@ProfWEpstein has a nice 2019 paper on long term health insurance contracts. They are an alternative to mandates or subsidies to solve adverse selection. A big problem w/ LT contract is compliance. I wonder if job lock is a solution...
@JohnHCochrane
^@anup_malani also summarizes here the classic Einav-Finkelstein-Cullen JEP. Related: summary of empirical lit on causal impact of health insurance
![Twitter avatar for @NGarbirasDiaz](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/NGarbirasDiaz.jpg)
Very happy to see our paper w/@m_montenegro_z published @AEAjournals! Electoral irregularities are still common in many democracies. We designed an experiment to test if ICT-assisted citizen monitoring of elections could be effective in reducing them (1/n)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,h_314,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4c6bfda4-e92e-4144-a438-98c70298df57_625x625.png)
Public goods
![Twitter avatar for @heidilwilliams_](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/heidilwilliams_.jpg)
It was such a pleasure co-organizing the NBER Innovation Research Boot Camp for PhD students with @Afinetheorem and @bfjo.
We had an amazing group of economists make time to teach & talk with this group.
Here’s a thread on what we covered in 11 sessions (w/ links to slides)…
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZWOAUJWQAAZSeY.jpg)
^obviously extremely good, also extremely good:
![Twitter avatar for @calebwatney](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/calebwatney.jpg)
What are key, policy-relevant questions where we could use more academic research?
I spoke recently to econ PhD students at the NBER Innovation Bootcamp about holes that I think are not well-answered by the existing literature.
Here's my list of 11 in no particular order:🧵
![Twitter avatar for @matt_blackwell](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/matt_blackwell.jpg)
Interested in causal inference? I updated my course last year and have posted the course materials online. If you're teaching a causal inference course, please feel free to steal my lecture notes! mattblackwell.github.io/gov2003-f21-si…
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZLK9bNVEAAxGaW.png)
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZLMPswUUAItyx0.jpg)
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZLMO8CVQAI0J0U.jpg)
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZLMQfjUUAAOscH.jpg)
![Twitter avatar for @benvatter](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/benvatter.jpg)
If you're on the econ job market this year, I coded this little thing to keep track of applications last year. I just updated the download links, and it seems there are already hundreds of postings across AEA/EJM/AJO!
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,h_314,c_fill,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1e2e65a7-6c67-4eb3-8d17-7b06e86934ab_1200x600.png)
Interesting discussions
![Twitter avatar for @ethanbdm](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/ethanbdm.jpg)
Hi folks. A few months back I gave a talk at Caltech.
It was the best campus visit experience I've had in quite some time. And it has made me want to change campus visit norms a bit.
So today at lunch @sgehlbach told me I should tweet about it, which I'm now doing.
1/
![Twitter avatar for @startupecon](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_96/startupecon.jpg)
I admit to have freaked out a bit after seeing @toniwhited retweet this. The OP's other replies were *very* helpful additions and totally reasonable: other bias could be at play, categorical vars are weird and we assume a lot with the standard ME attenuation bias formula.
![Image](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFZVH95AVUAAET6x.jpg)
![Twitter avatar for @MaartenvSmeden](https://substackcdn.com/image/twitter_name/w_40/MaartenvSmeden.jpg)
Maarten van Smeden @MaartenvSmeden