Best of #econtwitter - Week of January 24, 2021 (2/2)
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Best of #econtwitter - Week of January 24, 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.
Part 1 is here: Rare(?) double issue this week because of the continued high volume of papers!
Paper summary threads
We find that some individuals respond to stock market rises with spending “splurges” on credit cards, changing their normal spending by 2-3x their normal spending in a given month following increases in stock prices. 2/6
I am excited to announce that my paper with @DavidCRibar, 'Daughters and Divorce' is now forthcoming in the Economic Journal @EJ_RES.
In this paper, we investigate whether and why does the gender of children influence parental risks of divorce.
(a thread)
Our key contribution is to show that this effect is strongly age-specific, manifesting only among parents with teenage children.
During this period, the relative divorce risks of families with fb daughters become up to 10% (!) higher than those of families with fb sons.
Really important paper. Massive data collection for 39 countries back to 1841. Finds the typical investment advice to young people - which relies on relatively recent US data -that you should invest heavily/all in stocks may be riskier than previously thought. Key figure:
Journal of Financial Economics Recent Acceptances @jfinecon
Real net total returns are 4% for Paris and 4.8% for Amsterdam and come entirely from rental yields. These returns are lower and riskier than estimated in Jorda et al. (2019, QJE) for the same cities, closing most of the gap in Sharpe ratios with equities they document.
New research finds that live streaming university lectures *increases* educational inequality (randomised experiment).
👇
➕ effect for top 20% students
➖ effect for bottom 20% students
In JEEA, by Cacault, @hildebrand_ch, Lucchetti, @mipellizzari
academic.oup.com/jeea/advance-a…
We show that monetary policy can have sizable effects on productivity: monetary easing endogenously raises aggregate TFP and generates a positive "supply shock" that amplifies the effects of the positive "demand shock". 2/n
Study: ”Great Migration increased support for Democrats and encouraged civil rights activism…Effects driven by both Black & white voters, and were stronger in counties with less discrimination and with larger working class & unionized white population.” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cf…
This paper by Dani Rodrik et al (drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rod…) is basically a very scary elaboration of this Lant Pritchett blog post: cgdev.org/blog/why-are-g…
Global diffusion of capital and skill-intensive manufacturing reduces space for labor-intensive productivity growth paths.
Important new findings by De Vries, Kruse, Mensah, and @kunalsen5 in their paper 'Re-industrialization' at the @cepr_org #STEG conference that manufacturing employment shares have actually been *increasing* in many African countries in the 2010s
youtube.com/watch?v=0a9TXi…
In other words: if you are using night lights in time series, with place fixed effects (the most common use case!), you might be massively overestimating the impacts on GDP. 9/14
Is the Rent "Too (Damn) High?" @clwatsonecon (on the market!) and I evaluate the monopoly power of landowners. Markups are ~30% of rent. Local concentration is correlated with higher rent. Policies like zoning interact with market power. Link here: tinyurl.com/y3628n7j
^future tweets using anything like the “new!” image may be banned from the newsletter FWIW
Incredibly detailed study of Chicago from @bocar_a, @dean_c_knox, @jonmummolo, and @romangrivera1 confirms the commonsense view that the racial identity of police officers is important to policing, and that more diverse forces would be better.
dropbox.com/s/yzo3b1knn4vf…
As income rises, households increase the quality of what they consume. This fosters inequality in labor earnings because, as we show in this paper with Nir, Arlene and Ben, high-quality goods are more intensive in skilled labor than low-quality goods.
Market experiments conducted at Purdue and published in the Journal of Political Economy nearly 60 years apart. @PurdueKrannert @JPolEcon doi.org/10.1086/712445 (1/3)
JDE Forthcoming (our work with @juanf_vargas): we show that migration from Venezuela had strong electoral effects in Colombia. Mechanism: strategic electoral misinformation, whereby parties use migration to demonize the competitor's political agenda
sandravrozo.com/wp-content/upl…
The data work going into this paper on the impact of changes in very narrow categories of federal R&D funding on subsequent patent and entrepreneurship behavior by researchers is really impressive: nber.org/papers/w28160
I am not sure if it is considered good manners to tweet about *other people's* papers, but I like this one so much, I'll do it anyway.
A thread about "Optimal Feedback in Contests" by Ely, Georgiadis, Khorasani and Rayo. And #Bitcoin.
1/12
@Jeffely @gjgeorgiadis #EconTwitter
More: transmission of shocks in Eurozone; marriage dowries in India; wage gains for migrants to US; macro fluctuations and emergent behavior; R&D tax credits
Interesting discussions
Some more thoughts on "do research you enjoy" vs "follow this advice to write 3 AERs":
I had a strong negative reaction to advice to simply "do research you enjoy" in grad school and I think I've finally figured out my main issue with this advice
I’ve been reflecting this past year since the job market on my decision to stick with academia over industry. One thing I think I can add to the conversation is my experience as a first-gen PhD having watched the ups and downs of my Dad’s (crazy!) career in industry. 1/N https://t.co/UL4erTHaqB
Anthony Lee Zhang @AnthonyLeeZhang