Best of #econtwitter - Week of May 1, 2022 [1/3]
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Best of #econtwitter - Week of May 1, 2022 [1/3]
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 one of three.
Paper summary threads
South Africa’s alcohol ban reduced violence by about 20%
The ban led to an estimated 77 fewer homicides, 790 fewer assaults & 105 fewer rapes PER WEEK.
econstor.eu/bitstream/1041… by @kai_barron & colleagues; forthcoming in the Review of Economics and Statistics.
🚨 Excited to announce that “How Much Do Platform Workers Value Reviews? An Experimental Method” with @ssuri and @LSCULT, has just been published in the proceedings of #CHI2022.
bit.ly/3y21i5f
🧵 Here’s a quick thread that explains what we did👇:
After they completed a recruitment task, we gave each worker the choice between a positive review or a bonus randomly selected from {$25, $50, $75, $125, $175}. The freelancers got whichever option they chose.
We estimate a median WTA of $48.54 for a single positive review!
Happy to share our paper with Guido Tabellini!
Have you ever talked with someone with a different ideology from yours and felt that you were starting from a radically different set of beliefs on *factual* aspects of reality? This feeling motivated our paper. #EconTwitter
A 🧵
CESifo @CESifoGroup
Past political repression during Stalin's regime still undermines present-day social trust within the countries of the Former Soviet Union.
People living near former gulags also have lower civic engagement. The effects are independent of living near the arrest sites.
Ethnic stratification appears especially high in West Africa.
📉 Negatively related to trust in relatives, neighbours etc
📈 Positively related to conflicts.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…. Hodler et al, Journal of Development Economics.
Why is this not a *major* point of discussion?
Today's publication of Many Labs 4 is the 5th (yes, really) and final publication from the Many Labs series of replication studies.
Creating this series was exciting, challenging, & exhausting. I learned a ton. Hopefully, you did too. A short summary...
New working paper w @jefflarrimore & David Splinter, relevant for anyone using UI benefits reported in the CPS
Takeaway: CPS missed over half of UI expansion. After correcting, UI dramatically reduced poverty rates, which would have reached a 6-decade low davidsplinter.com/LMS-UI.pdf
Interesting discussions
A key discovery of the RCT revolution in development was that most programs did not work as they were supposed to.
But when I get asked to referee papers these days, it's always about a low-cost intervention with transformational effects.
I don't know what to make of it. 1/n
Role of algorithms in modern social media is more complex - they don't just maximize engagement and in fact hold down certain kinds of low-quality content. Strongly recommend @deaneckles testimony (expert at MIT Sloan, ex-Facebook) ide.mit.edu/wp-content/upl… - one relevant excerpt:
Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias
Econ is lacking in supplementing empirics with real-world insight. When was the last time you wrote a paper on Uber and talked to an actual driver? Or on lending practices where you talk to the people applying for loans? I want those interviews with the long lit reviews sections.
Crowdsourcing a lecture on data sources/availability for my PhD students:
Including what’s available (ACS, CPS, PSID, NLSY, IPEDS, SIPP, etc), short description, pros and cons, etc.
Thanks for sending me your ideas and notes.
#econtwitter
