Best of #econtwitter - Week of February 7, 2021 [2/2]
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.
Due to the high volume of papers this week, this is part two of two; part one is here.
Paper summary threads
Effect of artist death on artwork price and transaction volume:
Here is a picture of the effect. We find that on average, prices go up by 55% and the number of transactions by 63%. 13/N
New working paper with Joonkyu Choi, J. Daniel Kim, and Nathan Goldschlag nber.org/papers/w28417 highlights that startup performance depends critically on founding team including early joiners that are not founders.
Jennifer Doleac @jenniferdoleac
^memes: underrated for communicating complicated concepts
New working paper with @jacobsgoldin, Rizwan Javaid, and Brenda Schafer. See thread below!
NBER @nberpubs
I submitted my JMP so it’s finally time to do a thread! The paper asks why real wages have turned countercyclical and focuses on the causes and consequences of compositional shifts in the employed pool. I’ll start with a 4-point TL;DR summary, then get into details 👇
Using diff-diiff and RD, we found that administrative decentralization improves: school enrollment, student achievement, quality of teachers hired (measured by education level and scores on entry competency exams), and local resources investment in education.
In a blinded name-swap experiment, black female high school students were significantly less likely to be recommended for AP Calculus compared to other students with identical academic credentials. Important new paper from @DaniaFrancis:
smith.edu/sites/default/…
Today is @ShengwuLi's birthday! An incredible coauthor! An excuse to write about our ECTA paper on "credible mechanisms."
There, we made a theoretical prediction that in the online world, real 2nd-price auctions can't survive! Google made the prediction official soon after: 1/N
Excited to announce my JMP came out *today* in AEJ:EP.
Much gratitude to Noto and a fleet of helpful people full of good advice. I've been bowled over by how generous people are.
aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…
Andrew C. Johnston @datacrat
Does immigration increase crime?
"we document null effects of immigration on crime but positive and significant effects on crime-related concerns"
Disproportionate news coverage of immigrant crimes plays a key role.
ftp.iza.org/dp14087.pdf by @Nicolas_Ajz, @pdomingr, Undurraga
More: optimal dynamic UI, utility disconnections in the US, household preferences over schools, effects of ECB LOLR policy, trade restrictions and misallocation
Interesting discussions
so: people who are mildly more senior than a third year grad student, how do you tell which of your research ideas are good?
“How have 🇮🇳 gender relations changed over the past century?”
I’ll be discussing this with @srajagopalan and @arpitrage.
Tomorrow, 6 Feb at 8:00 pm GMT on @joinClubhouse.
Join us! joinclubhouse.com/event/mWERLnn6
^👀, will we need a “best of econ Clubhouse” newsletter soon? See also: “Thinking about doing a Clubhouse session on Econ PhD in Tech”
There's a stark difference in tech vs econ academia in terms of how a newbie ramp up / how a worker is managed
- in tech the manager/mentor spend a lot more time doing hands-on 'teaching'
- in econ (unless you're at MIT) it's much like 'drown you into the pool till you can swim'
In the past couple of weeks I've chatted more about my take-aways from my postdoc experience (without TT job lined up), and what I wish I had known when I accepted the job and when I started it.
🧵below.
Usual disclaimer. This is my personal experience. There's free disposal.
1/
I regularly spend time looking for papers on researchers' websites. I love it when a researchers' personal website...
[short thread]
I think of research design (informally) as being fundamentally about whether you have a story for where your identifying variation comes from--contrasted with the case where your identifying variation is basically an unknown residual.
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp
