Best of #econtwitter - Week of July 11, 2021
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Best of #econtwitter - Week of July 11, 2021
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.
Paper summary threads
The headline result: we found tremendous gains in learning.
In the commonly used SD metric, this was 3.2 SD, but the SD is hard to use in this context because counterfactual learning is so low
Here are the test score distributions for intervention and control kids
14/n
New NBER paper calculates the magnitude of the "zoning tax" in different metro areas and compares it to median household income.
I.e. in SF, it takes ~4x the median household income to pay for the zoning strictness on a plot of land zoned for single-family housing.
A study of:
➡️ 50 unit market-rate housing projects in low-income areas
➡️ in 11 U.S. cities
➡️ covering 1483 buildings
Found that:
⬇️ rents fell 6% in the nearby buildings
⬆️ low-income migration INCREASED significantly
build. more. housing!
The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) @restatjournal
New @nberpubs on earnings and other behavioural responses to lottery wins.
Golosov, Graber, Mogstad, Novgorodsky:
🔹use admin data on US lottery winners
🔹show reduced form responses
🔹build model to study responses to UBI & top marginal tax rates.
nber.org/papers/w29000
^“UBI of $12,000 a year would reduce average household earnings by more than $6000”
The Journal of Health Economics accepted our paper with @surzua_chile and Tomas Rau, “Children of the Missed Pill”!
Pharmacies tinkering with oral contraceptives prices caused huge increases in pregnancies that resulted in less healthy babies.
Link: dropbox.com/s/93064jbm9x43…
1/N
Our paper "How debit cards enable the poor to save more" (with @pierrebachas @paul_gertler @SeiraEnrique) was published this week in @JofFinance
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jo…
🧵on our paper for anyone interested on #EconTwitter
1/N
A striking graph from @pqblair, @DebroyPapia and
@justinheck's new paper on the earnings of those with and without ('STARs'= Skilled through Training and Alternative Routes) bachelors degrees in 1976 & 1989 @nberpubs
nber.org/papers/w28991
📜 New @EJ_RES paper by Guido Ascari (@OxfordEconDept) & @TimoHaber (@CamEcon).
❗️ Empirical support in US agg. data for state-dependent pricing as an important feature of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy.
🔗bit.ly/AscariHaber2021
mini-🧵
Forward guidance is a big part of modern monetary policy, but how effective is it? Johannes and I explore this Q in a model of durable consumption subject to fixed costs. FG Is much less powerful than contemp. rates. Short thread 1/n
AEA Journals @AEAjournals
🚨 new @OrganizationSci "Employee Non-compete Agreements, Gender, & Entrepreneurship." is.gd/2DCl2Y
(Open-Access article not ready yet, but w/today's WH EO thought I'd mention it.)
Non-competes discourage women from founding startups😬esp. high-growth startups🧵
^see also: workers think noncompetes will be enforced, even in non-enforcing states
🚨Updated Working Paper Alert🚨
"Efficient Estimation for Staggered Rollout Designs", joint with @jondr44 (arxiv.org/abs/2102.01291).
This paper is all about how we can do better than DiD in setups with quasi-random treatment timing!
1/n
More: economists’ opinions about economics; dynamic inefficiency in Aiyagari; absolute income mobility across 8 countries; market design under labor monopsony; audit study of financial advisors; relaxing school discipline improved scores; Inca road persistence
Public goods
First ever publicly available micro-estimates of wealth released for *all* low- and middle-income countries.
Also includes granular population estimates
*beta* version of their interactive poverty maps➡️ beta.povertymaps.net
#opendata
More: Polish economic data; political economy teaching materials
Interesting discussions
I want to take a moment to defend calibration. A common critique of macro by non-macro people centers on the supposed lack of scientific rigor associated with calibration of models. 1/10
Under the guidance of @MarthaOlney, a team of Berkeley students has assembled wonderful material on the history of women econs at Berkeley.
It confirms many of historians' conclusions, in particular decreasing representation of ♀ after 1940 econ.berkeley.edu/women-history
This is probably a joke, but since the academic job market begins again soon: What is something that you (or someone you know) successfully negotiated for in academia that might not be obvious to others that they could ask for?
(Obvious: salary, summer months, research $.)
Keith Schnakenberg @keithschnak
^interesting replies e.g. on childcare
@florianspeters (Thread) Excellent question, but the answer is not simple: First, the next step would be to require data sharing. At this point, the JF only requires code sharing. (1/n)
Florian Peters @florianspeters
