Best of #econtwitter - Week of January 8, 2023: interesting tweets

Welcome readers old and new to this week’s edition of Best of Econtwitter. Please submit suggestions — very much including your own work! — over email or on Twitter @just_economics.

A slightly different format this week (also, gmail may cut off the email, and you would need to open in the browser to see all tweets). Feedback, as always, is welcome.

AEAs discussion

Martha Olney 🏳️‍🌈 @MarthaOlney

Registration at #ASSA2023 was 6,000 in advance vs 12,000 at #assa2020 in San Diego. Missing include 1.5k job market candidates, ~2-3k interviewers, others. Impact: $900K loss on meeting. Effect: reg fees will go up for 2024. Per #aea sec/treas Rousseau at business meeting.

^prompted a lot of discussion

Kevin Bryan @Afinetheorem

@paulgp @Susan_Athey We are deluding ourselves: job market coordinating device/cross-subsidy made AEA literally 5x cheaper than other fields/brought people to sessions. We destroyed the only full-field econ conference & the job market is *already* unraveling (I'm missing 2 job talks while I'm here!)

^“stop destroying public goods - most efficient job market, cheapest field conference, most "neutral" field for policy advice” [TW: politics] + blackpill (extremely speculative)

Ryan Decker @UpdatedPriors

Here is the deal folks: with the job market part gone, people will only attend if they are presenting something. You have to accept more *people*. I don't mean more papers; I mean more people.

Ryan Decker @UpdatedPriors

I doubt we ever return to the old equilibrium. But I suspect that one way to boost attendance would be to make the paper submission deadline not be ~8 months before the conference. Presumably this would be very hard to do--it must be a huge challenge to process ASSA submissions. https://t.co/ose3Hj27dW

Ryan Decker @UpdatedPriors

I doubt we ever return to the old equilibrium. But I suspect that one way to boost attendance would be to make the paper submission deadline not be ~8 months before the conference. Presumably this would be very hard to do--it must be a huge challenge to process ASSA submissions.

Martha Olney 🏳️‍🌈 @MarthaOlney

Registration at #ASSA2023 was 6,000 in advance vs 12,000 at #assa2020 in San Diego. Missing include 1.5k job market candidates, ~2-3k interviewers, others. Impact: $900K loss on meeting. Effect: reg fees will go up for 2024. Per #aea sec/treas Rousseau at business meeting.

Scott Imberman @imbernomics

Change the dates for future contracts. Let’s move ASSA to spring or summer and attendance will jump. The job market is no longer a restricting factor.

Martha Olney 🏳️‍🌈 @MarthaOlney

Registration at #ASSA2023 was 6,000 in advance vs 12,000 at #assa2020 in San Diego. Missing include 1.5k job market candidates, ~2-3k interviewers, others. Impact: $900K loss on meeting. Effect: reg fees will go up for 2024. Per #aea sec/treas Rousseau at business meeting.

Dan Stein @DanStein_econ

Some reflections on #ASSA2023 #EconTwitter . TL;DR I had a nice time, but the "magic" of this conference was running into so many old friends, which was drastically reduced this year. Also the hybrid sessions have got to go. 🧵

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp

For example, what if there was a presentation + respondents that got turned into a set of papers? (This is what the JBES does with its lecture). I think many senior and mid career economists would value the opportunity to debate the state of their fields 4/

^post your discussions more people, they are usually more useful than the original paper

Andy Garin @andy_garin

Impressions on #ASSA2023: 1. New Orleans was fun but too far from where I live. The conference should be held in Chicago every year, or, better yet, Decatur IL 2. The energy of young people sprinting around streets suits was lacking. In person interviews should be mandatory and

Interesting discussions

Jonathan T. Rothwell @jtrothwell

As is widely known & discussed, U.S. male labor force participation rates have gradually fallen since 1960 (by ~0.14ppt per year) from 97% to 88.6%. This has been called a "crisis" by Eberstadt and others & has been attributed to trade, technology, culture, & video games. . .

Ariel Ortiz-Bobea @ArielOrtizBobea

I wish academics going up for tenure could see some of the letters that students & colleagues write on their behalf. In a profession where rejection is the norm, it's too bad that amazing expressions of appreciation & gratitude remain secret. Never to be seen by the subject.

Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs

More academics, especially ones with families and stable jobs, should be on HomeExchange. Realizing we can stay in a house for free anywhere in the world has made me really update on how much travel we can do each year.

Public goods

swyx 🇸🇬 @swyx

ChatGPT’s current killer app isn’t search, therapy, doing math, controlling browsers, emulating a virtual machine, or any of that other cherrypicked examples that come with huge disclaimers. It’s a lot more quotidian: Reformatting information from any format X to any format Y.

Kaleb Nygaard @KalebNygaard

🗣️New data set 📈📉 *Target* Fed Funds Rate 1971-present. I believe this is the first time this dataset has been collected in one place🥳🥳 This isn't available on FRED or anywhere else, as far as I know. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d… 1/6

Fin

Jadrian Wooten @Wootenomics

I'll probably regret this in the morning...

Gabriel @gp_mihalache

Has anyone tried adding their newborns or toddlers are coauthors to papers, to give them a head start in the eventual job market? 🤔 Asking for a friend...

Philip Mulder @Philipcheesy1

Hate to see a good IV go to waste #ASSA2023 #NOLA