Best of #econtwitter - Week of December 12, 2021
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.
Paper summary threads
Gabriella Conti@Gabri_EllaConti
📣🟧🟩🟨📣🟧🟩🟨📣
V. happy that paper 1️⃣ of a large-scale multi-arm RCT of 🏥 insurance in India 🇮🇳 w/ @anup_malani @cynthia_kinnan @AlessandraVoena et al. is out as WP!
👉🏻ifs.org.uk/publications/1… @TheIFS
✅ Uptake ⬆️
✅ Access ⬆️ use
✅ +ve spillovers
❌ Health ↔️
👇🏻
8:35 AM · Dec 8, 2021
7 Reposts · 14 Likes
^forgive the rare paper commentary but: amazing experiment, would this have gotten more retweets if it had been in Oregon
Stefanie Stantcheva@S_Stantcheva
Do taxes affect innovation? Over the course of the 20th century, personal & corporate income taxes have significantly shaped innovation in the US, as we show in a paper with @ufukakcigit, Tom Nicholas & @JohnRGrigsby in @QJEHarvard. scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… A short thread🧵[1/17]
8:30 PM · Dec 8, 2021
88 Reposts · 345 Likes
Stefanie Stantcheva@S_Stantcheva
MACRO results: personal & corporate income taxes have significant negative effects on the quantity of innovation and on the number of inventors residing in a state. Elasticities range from 0.8 to 1.8 for pers’l net-of-tax rates and 1.3 to 2.8 for corporate taxes. [9/17]
8:31 PM · Dec 8, 2021
8 Reposts · 13 Likes
Robert Dur@DurRobert
How much should we trust experts' predictions about the effects of behavioral interventions?
Megastudy by @katy_milkman et al finds:
🔹experts are about 10 times too optimistic about effect sizes
🔹no correlation between predicted and actual effects
nature.com/articles/s4158…
10:31 AM · Dec 9, 2021
16 Reposts · 44 Likes
Ziad Obermeyer@oziadias
Your doctor sends you for a lab test.
Ever wondered if the outside temperature on the day of the test changes its result?
Neither did @devingpope or I… until we did this study!
Turns out, temperature distorts results
Thread—new paper in @MedCellPress
Cell Press @CellPressNews
Ambient temperature influences the results of some of the most used laboratory tests, and these distortions likely affect medical decision-making, including whether to prescribe medications. Read more in @MedCellPress here: https://t.co/xFw646sycI
@oziadias, @Devin_G_Pope https://t.co/7EOePmvjau
6:02 PM · Dec 10, 2021
60 Reposts · 202 Likes
Kevin Chen@jiafengchen42
Excited to share a new working paper taking a closer look at causal inference in school choice settings, where students are matched to schools via algorithms. The paper derives the identified causal estimands under heterogeneous treatment effects (1/n)
arxiv.org/abs/2112.03872
3:27 AM · Dec 8, 2021
32 Reposts · 170 Likes
Zachary Bleemer@zbleemer
**New paper** Over the past 20 years (but not before!), Black and Hispanic college graduates have been steadily earning degrees in relatively lower-paying majors.
The main culprit? An increasingly-common public university policy.
A thread. #EconTwitter zacharybleemer.com/wp-content/upl…
2:09 PM · Dec 8, 2021
336 Reposts · 1.01K Likes
Matt Darling 🌐💸🌇@besttrousers
"Our conclusion is that the main contribution of the Malaney-Weinstein work is that it provides a striking example of how to obscure simple concepts through an uneconomical use of gauge theory."
Timothy Nguyen @IAmTimNguyen
Published on the arxiv today is my response to @PiaMalaney + @EricRWeinstein's work on "Economics as Gauge Theory" which Eric Weinstein presented at UChicago last month: https://t.co/AlhcudavoX Summary of the objections is as follows: (1/n) https://t.co/4uLCUsid0I
5:48 PM · Dec 8, 2021
13 Likes
Alexander Berger@albrgr
Impressive paper from @chikaokafor_: scholar.harvard.edu/files/okafor/f…
9:52 PM · Dec 8, 2021
2 Reposts · 4 Likes
Guy Grossman (he/him)@guygrossman
🚨 new working paper 🚨
I’m happy to share “The Electoral Consequences of Cellphone Coverage Expansion” with @GeShuning, @kkosec, @Apoorva__Lal, and Benjamin Laughlin. Link to preprint at osf.io/y94d5/
osf.io
10:53 AM · Nov 23, 2021
18 Reposts · 77 Likes
Nick Bloom@I_Am_NickBloom
What is the biggest reason people are quitting their jobs right now?
WFH
For more see wfhresearch.com and follow #wfhresearch
9:51 PM · Dec 9, 2021
10 Reposts · 56 Likes
More: DiD lit review; finance and cannabis industry; satellite data for poverty measurement; international enviro cooperation; Netherlands crime; taxes and benefits across Africa; ETF liquidity; alcohol taxes; government performance under populists; trade and inequality; violence against adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa
Public goods
Peter Nencka 📊@peternka
📣 new data alert! 📣
Excited to release v1 of the Census Place Project with @enrico_berkes and @EzraKarger
fsb.miamioh.edu/nenckap/
Paper: ezrakarger.com/census_place_p…
🧵⬇️
1:40 PM · Dec 6, 2021
115 Reposts · 397 Likes
Interesting discussions
Natalia Emanuel@NataliaHEmanuel
Here’s a data download for first round interviews. Wisdom I received and things I learned along the way when I was on the JM last year. Please feel free to add your 2c! (I’ll post my notes on flyouts soon)
long 🧵 1/x
#EconTwitter #EconJobMarket
2:59 PM · Dec 8, 2021
106 Reposts · 463 Likes
^nearly every tweet from this thread could be included, on its own, in the newsletter
Shengwu Li@ShengwuLi
Abstracts exceeding 200 words are a signal that the authors do not believe the reader’s time is valuable. This is usually bad news about the rest of the paper.
Evan Washington @evanewashington
is there any academic sin worse than an overlong abstract? like buddy i'm trying to decide if i wanna read your paper at all, i'm not trying to read your entire paper to find that out
7:25 PM · Dec 9, 2021
21 Reposts · 196 Likes
^discussion in the replies