Best of #econtwitter - Week of March 13, 2022 [2/2]

Mar 14, 2022

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

Matt Hauer@thehauer

We linked together a number of datasets including the @uscensusbureau, the @HMDatabase, @UN, and @NIH to estimate lead exposure from 1940-2015 and then 2015-2100. In 2015, 170 million people had elevated lead exposure as children (53%) -- some with VASTLY elevated exposure.

9:24 PM · Mar 7, 2022

3 Reposts · 24 Likes

Matt Hauer@thehauer

Reduced cognitive function is one of the most pernicious effects of lead. We estimate this lead exposure reduced the IQ of the average American by 2.6 IQ points. For the nearly 21 million people born between 1966-1980, this is an average deficit of 5.9 IQ points per person.

9:24 PM · Mar 7, 2022

1 Repost · 13 Likes

Gauti Eggertsson 🇺🇦@GautiEggertsson

Longish thread: I forgot the now mandatory promotional tweet of our recently published JME paper, "Kaldor and Piketty’s Facts: The Rise of Monopoly Power in the United States" joint with two of my former students Jake Robbins @thesugar and Ella Getz Wold @GetzWold. 1/x

11:03 PM · Mar 12, 2022

27 Reposts · 98 Likes

Nirupama Rao@nirupama_rao

My JMP was on the impact of the 1980 Windfall Profit Tax (WPT) on US oil producers. Sen. Democrats unveiled a new WPT today and it is similar to the 1980 WPT. Based on my work on the topic, I think the proposal is likely to reduce US output. 2/12 Paper:

tinyurl.com

11:34 PM · Mar 9, 2022

4 Reposts · 20 Likes

Vincent (Economic History) Geloso@VincentGeloso

Thread: My paper on revisiting income inequality in the USA is now online at the Economic Journal @RoyalEconSoc. Let me explain why it matters here. But first, just look at this graph which summarizes it all doi.org/10.1093/ej/uea… #econtwitter #econhist #inequality #Economics

2:48 PM · Mar 9, 2022

225 Reposts · 615 Likes

Anthony Lee Zhang@AnthonyLeeZhang

I wrote a new paper with @EXjiang! It's about house price dispersion, the effectiveness of housing as mortgage collateral, and how this affects mortgage credit provision. Here's the abstract and here's a link! And here's a thread summarizing the paper anthonyleezhang.github.io/pdfs/LTV.pdf

8:26 PM · Mar 7, 2022

17 Reposts · 76 Likes

Vincent Pons@VinPons

Very happy to share our paper on Electoral turnovers with @benjaminmarx & @vincent_rollet ! ⬇️ We built a dataset of national election results since 1945 to estimate the effects of turnovers on economic performance, trade, human development, conflict, and democracy (1/9).

NBER @nberpubs

Using the universe of presidential and parliamentary elections since 1945 and close-elections regression discontinuity design yields positive estimated effects of electoral turnovers on country performance, from @benjaminmarx, @VinPons, and @vincent_rollet https://t.co/Utde1V9pWy https://t.co/wzvMjjukGQ

1:30 PM · Mar 8, 2022

34 Reposts · 154 Likes

Matteo Maggiori@m_maggiori

New paper "Internationalizing like China"! We empirically characterizes the Renminbi’s bond market internationalization. We find that foreigners increasingly buy these bonds as substitute for developed government debt. We provide a model to understand China's strategy.

8:25 PM · Mar 11, 2022

42 Reposts · 130 Likes

Marcel Olbert@MarcelOlbert

New research alert! Over 140 countries agreed on a fundamental global corporate tax reform in 2021, with the framework by @OECDtax. Together with @rgomezcram from @LBS, we study the effects of this reform on firm values and countries' public finances. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

6:29 PM · Mar 8, 2022

17 Reposts · 59 Likes

Matt Grossmann@MattGrossmann

The effective tax rates on labor and capital converged globally since the 1960s, due to a 10 percentage-point increase in labor taxation and a 5 percentage-point decline in capital taxation.

nber.org

Globalization and Factor Income Taxation

12:12 PM · Mar 7, 2022

25 Reposts · 62 Likes

^new database

David Zipper@DavidZipper

@tomweingarten @Slate While we're talking about the dangers of traffic noise, here's some hot-off-the-press research examining 700+ European cities. Authors found that excessive vehicle noise leads to 1000s of preventable deaths each year. (IHD = Ischaemic Heart Disease) doi.org/10.1016/j.envi…

1:43 PM · Mar 9, 2022

5 Reposts · 11 Likes

^“unmeasured air pollution”?

IDinsight@IDinsight

(1/11)Today we share our evaluation of the @village_ent Development Impact Bond the first in sub-Saharan Africa for extreme poverty. Our RCT was the first to measure the impact of a #PovertyGraduation program during #COVID19🧵#VillageEnterpriseDIB #IWD2022 bit.ly/35yRELN

5:19 AM · Mar 8, 2022

33 Reposts · 65 Likes

More: Great Recession and mental health; cross-identity moral licensing; subnational Paraguay GDP; World Bank debt data revision patterns; liquidity constraints and education RCT; inheritance wealth

Interesting discussions

Shengwu Li@ShengwuLi

Let me offer a defense of complex models for everyday economic situations. Of course workers aren't literally taking the integral. They're behaving based on a mixture of heuristics, common sense, and folk wisdom. 🧵

Khoa Vu @KhoaVuUmn

Economist: Workers solve this complex dynamic programming problem with a Lebesgue integral to obtain the reservation wage. Also economist: https://t.co/r6JaPwDwYl

4:36 PM · Mar 12, 2022

68 Reposts · 478 Likes

Pascal Michaillat@pmichaillat

Since @kshantaram2 kindly requested it, here is a nontechnical summary of the research on unemployment and business-cycle stabilization presented at pascalmichaillat.org/t4.html. There are 10 main takeaways.

Pascal Michaillat @pmichaillat

What causes unemployment & its fluctuations? How should monetary & fiscal policies respond to such fluctuations? And how are the policies affected by the zero lower bound? These 500+ slides, based on 10 interconnected papers, try to provide some answers: https://t.co/IdRxxini1E

12:51 AM · Mar 11, 2022

5 Reposts · 18 Likes

Rachael Meager@economeager

nothing will make me lose respect for you faster than if your study abstract says you have a gajillion observations but in fact the key variable you study only varies at a much, much higher level than these "observations" (so e.g. "treatment assignment" is at the cluster level)

6:34 PM · Mar 10, 2022

20 Reposts · 393 Likes

⑆Luke Stein🇺🇦⑈@lukestein

@economeager — “No no, we have INDIVIDUAL data on the key predictor.” – “The highly endogenous one?” — “Yeah, but we instrument for it with [thing that varies at the aggregate level]”

7:11 PM · Mar 10, 2022

1 Repost · 51 Likes

Matthew Martin@hyperplanes

@economeager it's basically this