Best of #econtwitter - Week of January 30, 2022 [2/3]
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.
This is part two of three. Part one is here and part three is here.
Paper summary threads
"Measuring Geopolitical Risk" constructs a measure of adverse geopolitical events and associated risks. The GPR index is described and updated at matteoiacoviello.com/gpr.htm. The index spikes around the two world wars, the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and after 9/11. (1/6)
AEA Journals @AEAjournals
***NEW PAPER***
Excited to tell you about my new paper with @adammosman and Andrew Weaver, “Discrimination Against Women in Hiring”. Half of establishments in our survey in Egypt admit to discriminating against women and we show how discriminators suffer.
1/ When outsiders enter an academic field, do they create new knowledge? Do newcomers launch new areas of research? New paper by @StephanRisi, me, Emma Kerr, Emer Brady, @lanukim, Daniel A. McFarland, @jurafsky, @james_y_zou and Londa Schiebinger: journals.plos.org/plosone/articl… 🧵
Why do bond prices move so much (and in common)? This puzzle was noticed in 2001 by Collin-Dufresne, Goldstein, and Martin (tinyurl.com/CDGM2001). We take an intermediary asset pricing perspective and show that just 2 dealer factors go a long way towards a resolution. 2/5
Excited that my paper “Parents, Infants, and Voter Turnout” is now out (and open access) in @qjps! I provide some of the first evidence on how having an infant affects turnout in the U.S. Here are the coefficients on child age from a linear probability model of female turnout:
^someone should start a ‘best of #poliscitwitter’ newsletter thanks (and perhaps include info such as: is this graph causally identified)
WFH saves employees about 70 minutes a day on average. Most (about 60 minutes) from no commute, and the rest (about 10 minutes) from less preparation in the morning. About 1/2 of this saved time goes to working more and 1/2 to leisure/tasks, so employers and employees benefit.
^“effective savings of 15% of the work week! HUGE GAINS”. Bloom tweets out a lot of these graphs, eg
🚨 In today's American Economic Review: 🚨
Imperfect Markets versus Imperfect Regulation in U.S. Electricity Generation
New paper! Tl;dr is we analyze a unique form of housing credit: the Chonsei/Jeonse system, popular in the Korean housing market. We show what determines Chonsei deposit size in equilibrium, and the effects of monetary policy on the Chonsei system
anthonyleezhang.github.io/pdfs/jeonse.pdf
Public goods
I have spent the first week of every year, for the last 32 years, updating data on my website, and 2022 is no different. My website: damodaran.com My data page:
🔥 new comprehensive dataset on state-by-state spending on children 1997-2016 !
Margot Jackson @margot_jackson
More: blockchain lectures; macro methods notes; Africa economic history course
Interesting discussions: on grad school
Some non-contradictory things:
(1) You can get into an econ PhD without real analysis
(2) Those who do have other apparent strengths
(3) Doing it will help you get in, ceteris paribus
(4) For some people it's useful during the PhD and after; for others it's not
Formal mathematics is a language.
Like any language, getting good at writing in it requires practice.
Real analysis teaches how to write in that language.
Sure, you don't need to know the Hahn-Banach theorem.
But you do need to know to write precise theorems/proofs
Anthony Lee Zhang @AnthonyLeeZhang
^another round of discussion this week on the topic of analysis and grad school
Here’s a fun data point on phd admissions…
My Yale class was accidentally emailed the committee’s rankings of all 65 students admitted. So I knew I was #59. It also had a ranking of those on the wait list…
Shout out to my good friend who was #65 but also got into Stanford.
