Best of #econtwitter - Week of July 25, 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
High speed internet increases poorer households' income.
AEJ:Policy: aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…
Ungated: github.com/georgewzuo/geo…
Really proud of this paper. I think the paper has a lot to say about the observed state of the world when it comes to overall TV advertising effectiveness and profitability.
I want to be clear about what the paper doesn't say.
1/
econometrica @ecmaEditors
^but “If this is right, why are there all these TV ads?”: Athey; another author
Interesting new @nberpubs WP by Impink, @andreapratnyc & @raffasadun.
🔢Firm-level communication measures derived from email + meeting metadata.
1⃣ CEO turnover leads to initial ⬇️in intra-firm comm., followed by a ⬆️~5m thereafter.
2⃣ ⬆️driven primarily by vertical comm.
We find that when residents of a zip code are first served by an urgent care center, total Medicare spending rises while mortality remains flat. Hospital spending increases the most. 5/
Hello, #EconTwitter! Excited to share [my first!] Working Paper Thread!🧵👇
In this paper, @talgross, @asacarny, David Silver, and I ask: how do hospitals respond to increases in payment rates?
We find: they increase admissions, reduce length of stay, and increase scale.
1/6
People are most likely to switch away from news programs during soft news stories, and least likely during sensational news.
Evidence from minute-by-minute viewership data from 🇮🇹: nber.org/papers/w29020 by Marco Gambaro, @vlarcinese, @ricpuglisi, and James M. Snyder Jr.
2/2
^one of the authors comments
To design social insurance, it is useful to know which households have a higher valuation of liquidity: who values an extra 💵 more?
In work in progress, we offer a creative approach to measure it. How?
See it at #NBERSI HF & AG (bit.ly/3wUFzrJ) or read 🧵 👇
1/
Who pays for the minimum wage?
In administrative tax data from Israel, lower-income business owners and those with higher shares of minimum wage workers pay the largest shares.
Since these are not the highest-income owners, redistributive effects are limited.
Here's one way to see the key result of the paper: a binned scatterplot. The vertical axis plots hospitals' change in Medicare visits before and after the policy change; the horizontal axis plots hospitals' change in reimbursement.
^another thread from a coauthor
Shameless self-promotion: @JPR_journal accepted my article “Central Banks and Civil War Termination”
[paper ➡️papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…]
Here's what I found, in 6 tweets:
1/6
Revised meta-analysis of school spending effects with
@c_mackevicius. Consistent pos relationship between spending and better outcomes in credibly causal studies. Robust to many modeling decisions, "fixes" for publication bias, and even confounding.
nber.org/papers/w28517
More: public housing and academic outcomes; racial inequality in mortgage markets; fluoride in water natural experiment; Roman infrastructure persistence; US medical debt stylized facts; theory and empirics; inheritance rights for women and child health
Public goods
If you're going on the market this fall with a real estate JMP (or something else you think might be relevant to my research) — reach out and we can schedule a quick Zoom call to discuss.
Can't promise to read paper in depth, but happy to chat.
Here are some other people who have made similar offers. Add your name below as well if you're willing to volunteer.
Finance/IO/Market Design:
Anthony Lee Zhang @AnthonyLeeZhang
^long thread of extreme generosity
Interesting discussions
Hidden curriculum observation: audiences are eager to classify "new" ideas as essentially understood or unimportant to conserve their scarce attention. Can seem unfair/ungenerous, and in a way it is! But anyway hit them on the head with why it's new and important.
This was my keynote on the hidden curriculum. I focused on mental health and success. I thought it came together. dropbox.com/s/mcvazhmel97h…
^see also: “Tips for new professors (& students)”
I did a couple of mock interviews for people applying to RA/Economicky type stuff, and just a couple of observations:
(1/11)
Thread about the publication process in Economics. It is inefficient. It probably made sense pre-Internet, but it is clearly antiquated by now.
It may not be the best solution, but I have a proposal. And I'm curious to hear other proposals from #EconTwitter
