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

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.orgEvaluating the effectiveness of a universal eHealth school-based prevention programme for depression and anxiety, and the moderating role o…Evaluating the effectiveness of a universal eHealth school-based prevention programme for depression and anxiety, and the moderating role of friendship network characteristics

^“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. 🧵👇🏻

Michael Hallsworth @mhallsworth

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

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…

^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.orgRacial Inequality in the U.S. Unemployment Insurance SystemFounded 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.

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)

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

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…

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

^“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.orgarticle.title

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.comRisk-Free Rates and Convenience Yields Around the WorldThis paper constructs risk-free interest rates implicit in index option prices for 10 of the major G11 currencies. We compare these rates to the yields of gove

Florian Ederer @florianederer

Even entrepreneurship is partisan, especially since the election of President Trump. Republicans increase their relative entrepreneurship during Republican administrations and decrease it during Democratic administrations. nber.org/papers/w30249

Hamed Nilforoshan @h_nilforoshan

Excited and honored to share that our #ICML2022 paper, “Causal Conceptions of Fairness and their Consequences” (w/ @jgaeb1, Ravi Shroff, and @5harad) has received an outstanding paper award!!! See 🧵for key findings and results Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2207.05302 1/17

Teresa Fort @Tfpiasecki

Excited about a new NBER working paper that studies the distinct welfare effects of input versus final goods tariffs with @pol_antras @FelixTintelnot and @AgusGutierrez92 nber.org/papers/w30225 1/5

nber.orgTrade Policy and Global Sourcing: An Efficiency Rationale for Tariff EscalationFounded 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.

Sean Last @Sean__Last

New paper shows that greater historical reliance on seasonally migratory ("transhumant") pastoralism predicts a greater modern in-group bias in trust, plausibly because migration exposed people to more hostile outgroups and lessened the benefits of allies. nber.org/papers/w30259#…

Arpit Gupta @arpitrage

Hunter gatherers were pretty sophisticated, with complex trade and kinship networks. Discussion here suggests that cooperation and positive sum interactions (rather than warfare) maybe began ~200-300kya, and pro-peace social institutions grew ~80kya.

Human Systems and Behavior Lab @HSB_Lab

When did peace emerge in our evolutionary history? In a new preprint I argue that intergroup cooperation extends at least to the beginning of our species. Peace developed much more recently because it is extraordinary difficult to achieve. https://t.co/JB30qOW86a

Joe Henrich @JoHenrich

Such a great paper by @JF_Schulz, showing the impact of the Church and cousin marriage on the emergence of democratic institutions (@DumanBRad): academic.oup.com/ej/advance-art…