Best of #econtwitter - Week of July 24, 2022 [3/4]

Jul 26, 2022

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.

This is part three of four.

Paper summaries

Jack Andrews@DrJackAndrews

Out now in Psychological Medicine, we report the effects of a large RCT of a universal school-based CBT informed intervention for adolescent mental health. Despite increasing m/h knowledge, we found null, and some small iatrogenic effects, a🧵 cambridge.org/core/journals/…

cambridge.org

Evaluating the effectiveness of a universal eHealth school-based prevention programme for depression and anxiety, and the moderating role of friendship network characteristics | Psychological Medicine | Cambridge Core

7:00 AM · Jul 18, 2022

222 Reposts · 592 Likes

^“iatrogenic” := made it worse. More context: “this trial adds to a small but growing body of research that indicates universal school MH interventions can lead to an *increase* in internalising symptoms”

Steve Yadlowsky (@ ICML 22)@graduatedescent

There’s so many methods for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects these days! But how do you decide which one to use? And how do you know if it worked well? I’ve spent the last year+ working on evaluation metrics to answer these Qs. 🧵👇🏻

8:51 PM · Jul 18, 2022

50 Reposts · 352 Likes

Michael Hallsworth@mhallsworth

A 🧵on the evidence around nudging. Basically: the recent debate has been pretty dumb on both sides.

1:25 PM · Jul 22, 2022

133 Reposts · 427 Likes

Michael Hallsworth@mhallsworth

We know this because @sdellavi & @ElizabethLinos analyzed all trials run by @BITAmericas and @OESatGSA over several years. Average effect size of 1.4pp (8% relative) was "still sizable and highly statistically significant". No publication bias possible. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.398…

1:25 PM · Jul 22, 2022

19 Reposts · 120 Likes

^other thread on nudging

Daphné Skandalis@DaphneSkandalis

Our WP on Racial Inequality in Unemployment Insurance w/ @mioana & Maxim Massenkoff is out: nber.org/papers/w30252 Using rich admin data on UI claims, we show that differences in state rules create a Black-White gap in replacement rate & don’t maximize overall welfare.🧵👇(1/7)

nber.org

Racial Inequality in the U.S. Unemployment Insurance System

7:01 PM · Jul 19, 2022

38 Reposts · 132 Likes

Alexander Berger@albrgr

Three more recent NBER working papers finding negative impacts of particulate pollution: nber.org/system/files/w… (ship emissions in US increase infant mortality) nber.org/system/files/w… (pollution in china reduces fertility) nber.org/system/files/w… (US coal reduces test scores)

10:34 PM · Jul 22, 2022

36 Reposts · 129 Likes

Danielle Sanderson Edwards@drdsedwards

I find that being eligible for the school bus increases attendance by an additional 1-2 school days and reduces chronic absenteeism by 2-4 percentage points (about 20%) for economically disadvantaged students. 6/16

12:50 PM · Jul 19, 2022

1 Like

anna 🤝 economics@economicsanna

NEW PAPER OUT IN @JHealthEcon with @dukester24, Bruce Guthrie, @dataevan and @MattXSutton This started as work looking into the removal of incentives in a pay-for-performance scheme in England (Quality and Outcomes Framework; QOF) sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

2:34 PM · Jul 18, 2022

10 Reposts · 56 Likes

Jaakko Meriläinen@jmerilainen

❓ A good politician is competent and honest, but does the political class meet this ideal? ✔️ Yes (at least in Finland)! @mmjokela, @JanneTukiainen, @asa_vonschoultz, and I have a new working paper on the cognitive and non-cognitive abilities of politicians. A short 🧵: 1/N

1:53 PM · Jul 19, 2022

33 Reposts · 130 Likes

^“a cognitive advantage of elected politicians compared to the general population of 0.1-0.3 standard deviations”

Gord Burtch@gburtch

New paper /w @Kevin_Hong, Nina Huang and Yumei He. An RCT with a dating app. We provide some users info (within peer profiles pages) about peers' inbound request volumes. Treated users reallocate attention to less busy peers, matching efficiency improves:

pubsonline.informs.org

article.title

6:54 PM · Jul 18, 2022

4 Reposts · 28 Likes

Will Diamond@wdiamond_econ

Have a (semi) new paper I'd like to share! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… We estimate the "convenience yield" of government debt in 10 major currencies- the rate of return investors are willing to forgo to hold government debt compared to a asset which pays the same cash flows.

papers.ssrn.com

Risk-Free Rates and Convenience Yields Around the World