Best of #econtwitter - Week of March 20, 2022 [2/2]
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.
This is part two of two. Part one is here.
Paper summary threads
Very excited about this new working paper with @aislinnbohren & @alexoimas, "Systemic Discrimination: Theory and Measurement"
dropbox.com/s/sp72pogz0lem…
We develop theoretical & empirical tools to model & measure the systemic drivers of discrimination in many settings
Summary 🧵:
🚨New Working paper🚨 with Marco Grotteria and @lakshminyn
Foreign Influence in US Politics
We hand collect data on meetings between legislators and foreign country lobbyists and find that countries that meet more often get more government resources.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
1/X
1/ Wanted to do an #EconTwitter 🧵 on a new + important topic that's growing in the literature: rigorous evidence about how policy-makers use + respond to evidence! Most of these papers are very recent, many still WP
^and a followup thread
Who gains from this? "We find considerable evidence that graduate students are excessively optimistic regarding the state of academic job market, their chances to become faculty, and their chances to publish in the very best scientific journals."
Can the effect of street lighting on public safety endure over time? In a new paper w/ @dmitre88, @tahamonster & @jd_lerner, we report results from a 3 yr follow-up of the first RCT of street lighting. Large treatment effects endure three years later! 👇
achalfin.weebly.com/uploads/8/5/4/…
The top-line result of this study of microlending is that it helps women start businesses and earn income. But unfortunately, the businesses they are starting are often multilevel marketing businesses, where you mostly make money by signing up other people. (1/7)
MDRC @MDRC_News
A meta-analysis of 1,506 studies of cooperation in social dilemmas (eg the Public Goods Game) conducted across 70 societies (k = 2,271) found little cross-national variation in #cooperation psyarxiv.com/z82tf (via @g_spadaro90)
It’s been more than 2 years since schools began shutting down due to COVID! In a new review, @lhmosco and I look at actual estimates (not projections) of learning loss and/or dropout rates from 27 countries.
Paper cgdev.org/publication/le…
Blog cgdev.org/blog/two-years…
🧵 1/12
The 12 Fed regional banks published 4,715 working papers between Jan 2006 and June 2021. NY (not surprisingly) and St. Louis (!) were the most prolific. via @cconces & @CParaSkinner papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
More: ⬆gas price ⬆electric cars; teacher perceptions of underperforming students; occupational licensing and race; sex ratio IV; FX reserves; legal counseling in evictions; refugee mental health
Interesting discussions
There is a very bad idea popular in the humanities, among historians, and in popular culture that trying to massively extend human lifespans is immoral hubris, & that more generally, society must be short-signed due to the urgency of our current problems. nytimes.com/2022/03/15/pod…
^thread!
Some evidence on time to the (Econ) PhD...
Turns out median age at the PhD has fallen over the last 2-3 decades, in econ as well as soc sci and STEM.
🤔 1/n
What kind of starting salary (and stock options) do PhD economists get at places like Facebook and Amazon?
^not any different info from (and smaller sample than) Glassdoor or levels.fyi, but replies may be of interest
Many journals in economics require exclusive submission: a submitted paper not be under consideration elsewhere.
Given the long review times at econ journals, this delays publication of research. Given fixed tenure clocks, it creates large career risk for junior economists....
^thread; more, on possible solutions, from Malani
Nice one, @ZachWeiner. Actually, it's standard advice for PhD students that one should not worry about getting perfect grades, because it's better to spend time on research.
^some actual serious discussion in the replies. Full image, because Substack crops (from SMBC):
