Best of #econtwitter - Week of January 30, 2022 [1/3]

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 one of three. Part two is here and part three is here.

Paper summary threads

Jessica Leight @leightjessica

Caught up on this recent NBER WP on labor productivity growth and industrialization in Africa by McMillan and @AlbertZeufack nber.org/papers/w29570 Offers a very useful overview of trends in manufacturing and structural transformation in SSA; worth quick 🧵 #EconTwitter

nber.orgLabor Productivity Growth and Industrialization in AfricaFounded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

Sylvain Catherine @sc_cath

3⃣ The effects of these labels on the demand for apps are striking. Immediately after their release, downloads of data collecting apps dropped relative to their Android counterparts. These graphs show the share of iOS downloads in the total downloads of Android and iOS versions.

Stefanie Stantcheva @S_Stantcheva

What are people's main concerns about taxes? In new paper w @bea_ferrario we provide answers and discuss new methods. We show how to design & analyze open-ended survey questions to elicit people's first-order concerns on issues. Thread ⬇️ scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantche… 1/N

Daniel Firoozi @DanielFiroozi

In my new paper I show that Democratic candidates gained votes when Appalachia’s poorest counties were declared “economically distressed” based on local poverty, unemployment, and income. #EconTwitter

Thomas Sampson @thom_sampson

Has Brexit hurt the UK's economy? New paper with @swatdhingraLSE reviews the evidence ukandeu.ac.uk/working-paper/… We conclude UK economy was around 2 to 3 percent smaller at end of 2019 because of Leave vote Fall in GDP equates to loss of £650 to £1000 per person per year 1/

Kids special pop-up section

Dr. Kimberly Noble @KimberlyGNoble

NEW FINDING: Cash support for low-income families changes their infants' brain activity. The first study from our #BabysFirstYears randomized control trial of poverty reduction is out, in @PNASNews. pnas.org/content/119/5/… ( 🧵)

pnas.orgThe impact of a poverty reduction intervention on infant brain activityThis study demonstrates the causal impact of a poverty reduction intervention on early childhood brain activity. Data from the Baby’s First Years study, a randomized control trial, show that a predictable, monthly unconditional cash transfer given to low-income families may have a causal impact on i…

Dr. Kimberly Noble @KimberlyGNoble

The new paper reports the impact of the monthly cash support on infant brain activity after one year of the intervention. Infants of mothers in the high-cash gift group had more high-frequency (fast) brain activity compared with infants of mothers in the low-cash gift group.

^results were covered in NYT and Vox Future Perfect and, relatedly, received a high level of (useful) scrutiny, e.g.:

Brendan Nyhan @BrendanNyhan

I really hope this is true but it's one paper, p=.02 with largest outcome added after preregistration, main result uses a post hoc combination of measures, and acknowledged sensitivity of results to differences between groups. Let's wait and see.

Jason DeParle @JasonDeParle

Striking research with relevance to the child tax credit debate: payments to poor mothers changed their babies' brains in ways that predict cognitive gains.https://t.co/LXGgdxKUed

dylan matthews @dylanmatt

Useful critique of the PNAS baby EEG paper I wrote up on Monday IMHO the results of this specific paper are much less interesting than the broader experiment, which will be gathering a lot more socially relevant data once kids are 3, 4, etc.

astralcodexten.substack.comAgainst That Poverty And Infant EEGs Study...

Berk Özler @BerkOzler12

Today in Development Impact, I discuss the options when your pre-analysis plan specifies raw & covariate-adj. impacts, but they differ hugely: what should we infer? How should we think about the problem? How should media report findings from such papers? blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluati…

^a Stuart Ritchie thread that hits on similar points

Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner

@dylanmatt @StatModeling @slatestarcodex @StuartJRitchie Estimates on multiple outcomes all point towards benefit, tho most are imprecise. Is it a slam dunk that ends the literature? No. Is it categorically more credible than prior evidence & should it push priors towards theory that $ tends to benefit infant brain development? Yes.

^Matt Darling offers a defense

In a separate study:

Samuel Hammond 🌐🏛 @hamandcheese

Devastating new results on the effects of state-funded pre-K programs. In policy you rarely get stronger study designs than random assignment + multi-year longitudinal follow-up. Yikes. doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi…

Derek Thompson @DKThomp

The evidence of state pre-K effectiveness has gotten worse over the last 50 years, leading to today's extremely discouraging study pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35007113/ So, either pre-K is getting worse, or we're getting better at measuring how ineffective it is at raising achievement

^John List suggests this is a scaling issue, and has a related book coming out

Noah Smith 🌐+🧦=🐇 @Noahpinion

Evidence about pre-K shows: 1. Small, targeted programs are good 2. Academic benefits fade, social benefits last longer 3. Some programs are really bad 4. Big, scaled-up programs are pretty meh 5. Poor kids benefit more 6. Pre-K helps parents work

noahpinion.substack.comPre-K is day careBut free day care does sound like a good idea!