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 ↔️ 👇🏻

^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]

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]

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…

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

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

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…

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

Alexander Berger @albrgr

Impressive paper from @chikaokafor_: scholar.harvard.edu/files/okafor/f…

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/

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

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… 🧵⬇️

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

^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

^discussion in the replies