Best of #econtwitter - Week of February 26, 2023: paper summaries
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Best of #econtwitter - Week of February 26, 2023: paper summaries
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.
Idiosyncratic favorites
🚨New WP🚨 w/Takuya Hiraiwa & @MichaelLipsitz
"Do Firms Value Court Enforceability of Noncompete Agreements? A Revealed Preference Approach"
Not for workers at the 79th earnings pctile! Firms didn't raise pay to ensure NCAs could be enforced in court. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… /1
Using admin data covering all workers in WA, and three complementary difference-in-differences approaches, we find that earnings did not bunch at the earnings threshold. /5
Finally, we answer a related question: do shareholders suffer because firms are unable to enforce NCAs for a large portion of their workforce?
We find that the answer is no: Tobin's q is unaffected by the law. /8
Paper summaries
In our recent working paper w/ @JakubGrossmann2 and @FPertold, we show that an increase in parental allowance (PA) led to a substantial decrease in maternal labor supply.
👉papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Across Berlin, Holocaust victims are remembered with stumbling blocks. The memorials always leave a deep impression on me. Do such memorials affect attitudes? In a new paper, we find the blocks have a negative “effect” on the vote-share of the xenophobic AfD party.
@miguelmaria In our paper, we collected the time and location of all nearly 10,000 Berlin stumbling blocks. We then exploit this temporal and geographic variation and correlate it with the AfD’s vote share across seven elections in local precincts (N = 2200).
We find that in the 4 days following the payments, child abuse/neglect-related visits drop. But, they return to similar levels quickly thereafter. Effects are strongest for male children and non-Hispanic White children. 4/
Across five countries we show that people's trust responses are surprisingly stable over the life course - they don't change much from the first to subsequent waves.
Thrilled to share about our WP!
We study tradeoffs inventors face b/w expanding their network of collaborators to get new ideas vs fearing they might get stolen.
We show that despite having a larger pool of potential coauthors, inventors partner with fewer new collaborators. 1/
CEPR @cepr_org
What is the return to more years in college?
In the largest public univ in Singapore, a 4th year (determined by grade-based RD) yields 12% extra $$ (lasting at least 4 years)
Mechanism: probably human capital accumulation.
1/ @alxndr_trc & I just released a Digital History of Macroeconomics interactive platform digitalhistoryofscience.org/dhm/ a project funded by HES @Societies_HET
@alxndr_trc has shown the main features; I’ll show you a (tiny) sample of what we can learn from it about history of macro
Alexandre Truc @alxndr_trc
Our paper on reconstructing the private data of US citizens from publicly released Census statistics is now out in PNAS. You can read about it here: blog.seas.upenn.edu/u-s-census-dat… and find the paper here: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…. Read on for the TLDR. 🧵
^not having read the paper, would be interested in a clearer quantification of “how bad is this”
Three percent of US voters are registered to vote in two states. Their voting reflects incentives and costs, being more prevalent in swing states and auto-mailed ballot states, from Gordon B. Dahl, Joseph Engelberg, @RunjingLu, and @w_mullins_ nber.org/papers/w30972
^ …?
How important are emerging economies to funding international development organisations?
No-one has ever looked at this systematically over time - so, @SamHugh3s and I look back a decade, and forward to 2050.
5 key findings:
The Thrift Transplant:
Americans whose parents came from high-savings countries put away more for retirement themselves.
New finding from Jason Richwine.
Draws on new questions in the CPS-- and reinforces UK and German findings of a Thrift Transplant.
^(this is in dollar terms, not percentage terms — complicates interpretation)
My chapter "Finance in a Theory of Money" has just been published in the new @mercatus festschrift for Richard Wagner, where I argue for an "ecological" monetarism. mercatus.org/hayekprogram/r…
Summary thread below. 🧵
In a randomized field experiment at a large ride-sharing platform, we randomly assign drivers into teams and have them compete for cash prize for a week. We find that treated drivers work longer hours and earn 12% higher revenue. pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10.12…
🚨NOW IN PRINT🚨
Harsher penalties are intended to deter crime & focus of policy and research often on offenders. I instead focus on police & find
1⃣ Police respond to changes in punishment severity
2⃣ Severity & enforcement effort are complements
journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/72…
(1/5)
I am happy to share that my paper "Too much commitment? An online experiment with tempting YouTube content" (with Claes Ek @econGU) is now published in JEBO:
A new article by Keuschnigg, van de Rijt and Bol
doi.org/10.1093/esr/jc…
finds that the relation of average cognitive ability and wages plateaus at the top 10 percentiles.
They used Swedish data; I use similar Finnish data and find that the relation gets steeper near the top.
@Scientific_Bird @tylercowen The Swedish conscript test has like 9 points total and only integers. If the Finnish has a finer scale, that could explain it.
The test was probably not design for studies of long-term outcomes of conscripts, but only an effective way to sort cohorts of men for assignments
More paper summaries
Important paper by Philippe Aghion, Ufuk Akcigit, Ari Hyytinen, and Otto Toivanen. Parental education explains most of the correlation between parental income and invention. But the extent of its causal effect can be shaped by education policy. nber.org/papers/w30964
Can subsidies help poorer places grow?
Place-based policies are gaining substantial traction among U.S. policymakers. The leitmotif is that directing job subsidies and other aid to poorer regions might help them grow and recover from adverse shocks
Is this the case?🧵1/
Happy to share a new and improved version of "Policymaking under Influence" 😊😊
Comments are more than welcome and appreciated!
Link: doi.org/10.31235/osf.i…
Abstract:
It’s finally here!
@grattonecon @bartonelee2 in
DRAIN. THE. SWAMP.
A Theory of Anti-Elite Populism
PDF👇 + 🧵
gratton.org/papers/DrainTh…
"#Inattention Matters: An Analysis of Consumers’ Inaction in Choosing a #Water Tariff" with Florian Heiss & @carmine_ornaghi available open access at @JEEA_News
