Best of #econtwitter - Week of January 2, 2022 [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.
This is part two of two. Part one is here.
Paper summary threads
Omer Moav@Omer_Moav
The Origin of the State: Land Productivity or Appropriability? My JPE with @PascaliLuigi and Joram Mayshar. I consider this my most significant work in 25 years of research.
journals.uchicago.edu
The Origin of the State: Land Productivity or Appropriability? | Journal of Political Economy: Vol 0, No ja
1:51 PM · Jan 1, 2022
219 Reposts · 1.09K Likes
^“wheat is fascist builds state capacity”; more summary from an older thread:
Nathan Lazarus@NathanLazarus3
As an instrument, they used the relative productivity of local cereal and tubers. Tubers are naturally suited to tropical environments. Tubers are a worse proposition in northern latitudes (darker shades of grey) and tuber societies are equatorial (red). 7/
12:47 AM · Aug 8, 2018
1 Like
Nathan Lazarus@NathanLazarus3
State-building, meanwhile, took off in areas that gained new access to cereals, even outside of colonies. (I’m skeptical of the magnitude of this, there were lots of other state-building pressures they don’t control for, like the slave trade and commodity trades.) 10/
12:47 AM · Aug 8, 2018
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Ruveyda Nur Gozen@RuveydaiZGi
By exploiting the variation in policy adoption timing across states, I show that the number of women inventors rose significantly (especially in the long-run) after the adoption of independent property rights.
4:10 PM · Nov 23, 2021
4 Reposts · 27 Likes
^a JMP
Simon Jäger@simon_jaeger
Two cool new papers on intergenerational mobility in Germany and Sweden I came across recently. The one on Germany, by Dodin, @SebastianFind, Henkel, @Dominik__Sachs and Schüle cleverly overcomes the measurement problem in 🇩🇪
5:55 PM · Dec 28, 2021
21 Reposts · 141 Likes
Robert Dur@DurRobert
Evidence is accumulating that online teaching reduces learning outcomes:
doi.org/10.1086/669930 by Figlio et al. (2013)
aeaweb.org/articles?id=10… by Alpert et al. (2016)
aeaweb.org/articles?id=10… by Bettinger et al. (2017)
doi.org/10.1093/jeea/j… by Cacault et al. (2021)
(1/3)
12:25 PM · Jan 2, 2022
510 Reposts · 1.31K Likes
More: climate change and food; opioid epidemic; air quality in India; commitment savings box; wage diffs by major
Survey of economists
Special pop-up section for navel-gazing purposes:
Álvaro La Parra-Pérez@AlvaroLaParra
🧵Happy New Year! Doris Geide-Stevenson & I ran a new round of the "Consensus Among [AEA] Economists" survey after the ones in 1990, 2000, & 2011. Not only do economists agree on many issues, but consensus ⬆️ on many fronts. Let's check some results! dropbox.com/s/9npyqbbidcjm… 1/12
1:57 PM · Jan 1, 2022
29 Reposts · 100 Likes
Álvaro La Parra-Pérez@AlvaroLaParra
When looking at common questions across survey rounds, 2020 exhibited a remarkable increase in the share of questions that met our 3 measures of consensus (i.e., strong consensus).
Let's have a closer look at some results for individual questions that I found interesting.
5/12
1:57 PM · Jan 1, 2022
3 Likes
^“I do worry sometimes that this is just education polarization” says guess who, cf:
Jeremy Horpedahl 🍞@jmhorp
AEA members identifying as liberal outnumber conservatives by 4:1 margin
This is consistent with other data, but I think a slightly bigger gap than past surveys
Álvaro La Parra-Pérez @AlvaroLaParra
More than 1,700 AEA members replied to the survey (thanks, everyone!). For comparability with previous rounds (done on paper and sent only to people in the US), this paper excludes the answers from people outside of the US. Respondents' demographics are shown below 2/12 https://t.co/wj5Uj98j0S
3:59 PM · Jan 1, 2022
2 Reposts · 10 Likes
Sandro Sharashenidze@neocentrist
We now have an updated version of the list of "things economists agree on" (aeaweb.org/conference/202…).
Highlights:
1. 98% like floating exchange rates
2. 97% think immigration is good for the US economy
3. 95% think that tariffs are bad
1/2
aeaweb.org
4:45 PM · Dec 30, 2021
146 Reposts · 747 Likes
Sandro Sharashenidze@neocentrist
4. 94% think fiscal policy can be useful as stimulus when below full employment
5. 93% want to enforce antitrust laws
6. 90% would expand the EITC
7. 86% would prefer more income equality in the US
8. 71% think that inflation is a monetary phenomenon
9. 74% believes in u*
2/2
4:45 PM · Dec 30, 2021
29 Reposts · 264 Likes
Interesting discussions
Elliot Lipnowski@ElliotLip
Economic theory is full of surprising results that are easy to describe to a layperson. Thinking about upcoming teaching, some (below) came to mind.
What other ones come to mind?
[I'm abusing tweeetic license and omitting caveats needed to make all these statements correct.]
2:50 PM · Dec 30, 2021
135 Reposts · 610 Likes
^thread, replies
Matt Notowidigdo@ProfNoto
My annual tradition continues -- my 10 favorite economics papers published in 2021, ordered alphabetically
[Meant to do this yesterday, but I had a paper rejected on New Year's Day -- Happy New Year! -- so I decided to deal with that instead]
Matt Notowidigdo @ProfNoto
Just under the wire again, but I continue my annual tradition -- my 10 favorite economics papers published in 2020, ordered alphabetically
[Was pretty tough this year; might have to do an "honorable mention" list in January...]
4:45 AM · Jan 3, 2022
123 Reposts · 543 Likes
^see also here and quote tweets there