Best of #econtwitter - Week of March 28, 2021
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Best of #econtwitter - Week of March 28, 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.
A lot of good papers this week!
Paper summary threads
Curious when growth began? Turns out productivity growth in England began in 1600, almost a century before the Glorious Revolution. Check out my new paper: eml.berkeley.edu/~jsteinsson/pa… Joint with Paul Bouscasse and @eminakamura2 1/8
Here is our estimate of productivity (in black) along with real wages (in gray) over our sample. After 1600, the rapidly expanding population holds back real wages relative to productivity. Before 1600, swings in real wages are largely explained by swings in the population. 6/8
Thread on new paper where 7 different researchers replicate two different findings. Lots of variation in data cleaning and estimation strategies!
Nick HK @nickchk
New working paper! "Old Boys' Clubs and Upward Mobility Among the Educational Elite" with @joepricebyu and @v_michelman. Link here: nber.org/papers/w28583 1/N
I’m so excited to see this paper in print. It was such a fun paper to work on.
For the record, the sound of many funds rebalancing is noise.
Here’s a quick rundown of what we do in the paper… 1/n
Review of Asset Pricing Studies @RevOfAssetPric
1/ Is There a Replication Crisis in Finance? (Jensen, Kelly, Pedersen)
"Using a Bayesian model, most factors can be replicated, can be clustered into 13 themes, work in a new large data set, and are strengthened by the large number of observed factors."
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
The @MedsPatentPool ensures access to life-saving drugs against HIV, TB & Hep C through licensing agreements—enabling generic manufacturing of otherwise patent-protected drugs
New NBER working paper looks how it works & finds benefits well exceed costs. nber.org/papers/w28545
Does studying economics make you richer? Students who just reached the GPA threshold to major in economics got $22,000 more per year in salary (!). Many end up in higher-paying industries.
(US university)
by @zbleemer and Aashish Mehta
Forthcoming at @AEAjournals
^thread from one of the authors here
1/ New preprint! The “Socioeconomic Roots of Academic Faculty,” with @alliecmorgan @laberge_nick @DanLarremore Mirta Galesic: osf.io/preprints/soca…
We surveyed 7000 U.S. faculty from 8 disciplines to study how socioeconomic status shapes the academic workforce. 🪴 A summary:
^like all navel-gazing, generated a lot of discussion, see replies/QTs, eg:
The paper about how lots of faculty have academic parents is well and good, but it’s not exactly news that (a) most professions are fairly heritable (b) compared to other high education white collar jobs, professors are actually (much) less heritable nytimes.com/interactive/20…
💡Short Metrics Thread💡"Better Lee Bounds" by Semenova (2020, arxiv.org/pdf/2008.12720…).
Today, Semenova (sites.google.com/view/semenovav…) presented her work on the Chamberlain Seminar (chamberlainseminar.org/home). They will upload her presentation soon.
More: Suez Canal and welfare, US real estate agents, Weimar hyperinflation and Nazi vote share, Great Migration networks and crime, reputational herding in asset management, place-based hiring subsidies
Public goods
Google Scholar now has a public access tab, where you can see how many of your articles are not available. Click on it and it allows you to upload a PDF of the missing ones. This is fantastic! 🙌🏻
Beyond excited to say that THE-RCT dataset is out in the world! This is the largest individual-participant dataset from higher education randomized controlled trials to date, and it has already allowed us to answer some critical questions in the field. For example...
1/5
OSKB_COS @OSKB_COS
This is highly exciting for those of us interested in the implications of industry heterogeneity. Link to data at nber.org/research/data/…
Francois Gourio @FrancoisGourio
Interesting discussions
'Who should do (or not do) a econ phd?' is a question I get asked often
So I wanted to share some of my thoughts today:
- production vs consumption of research
- digging 3 layers vs 17 layers deep
- 'why' vs 'how'
Details 👇
^lots of discussion, eg, eg. Related: this thread on ‘what it takes to succeed’
Question for #EconAdvice from an anon: It's decision season for prospective graduate student. Any suggestions on how to make the decision, if you're lucky enough to have choices? Any regrets in how you did it?
My feed is full of new PhDs announcing that they've accepted job offers. Congratulations!
If you're headed to the tenure track, here's a few reasons you should
~~~~ Submit Something Soon ~~~~
1/
^thread of economists giving some words of encouragement. Context here: “There's a traditional competition between freshmen at a university in Brazil, where they gather the biggest number of famous personalities to say some words of encouragement…”