Best of #econtwitter - Week of May 16, 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.
Paper summary threads
Ben Moll@ben_moll
Do wealthier households save a larger share of their incomes than poorer ones?
I suspect most people's prior is that the answer is "yes." Turns out that's incorrect, or rather: things are considerably more subtle, at least in our Norwegian wealth tax registry data.
A short 🧵:
6:28 PM · May 13, 2021
146 Reposts · 602 Likes
Felix Koenig@Feli_Koenig
We use social security records to track work patterns during the staggered roll-out of television broadcast towers🗼across the US. Government priority rules led to quasi-random variation in TV exposure across towns. What happened in treated towns? 3/7
1:47 PM · May 13, 2021
14 Likes
Felix Koenig@Feli_Koenig
Workers close to retirement are by far the most responsive, while effects on prime-aged workers are modest. We find that cheap round-the-clock entertainment led to a substantial increase in retirement rates but not much change elsewhere. What’s the takeaway? 5/7
1:47 PM · May 13, 2021
2 Reposts · 10 Likes
Anna Stansbury@annastansbury
One recent paper that's substantially influenced my thinking is German Gutierrez & @so_piton: "Revisiting the Global Decline of the (Non-Housing) Labor Share"
The headline: (non-housing) labor shares have *not declined* in any major advanced economies except the US and Canada 🧵
8:18 AM · May 11, 2021
41 Reposts · 143 Likes
Jesse Bruhn@jmb112485
🚨🚨WORKING PAPER ALERT🚨🚨
"Competition in the Black Market: Estimating the Causal Effect of Gangs in Chicago"
Read this thread to learn how I obtained 15 years of gang maps from the Chicago PD and used them to study how gangs influence neighborhoods 1/N
Brown Economics @Brown_Economics
Bravo Working Paper # 2021-004 Competition in the Black Market: Estimating the Causal Effect of Gangs in Chicago by Jesse Bruhn (@jmb112485 ) #EconTwitter
https://t.co/rRMR0fcdFc https://t.co/klQ71cO00p
1:55 PM · May 11, 2021
117 Reposts · 412 Likes
^a map here
Dean Eckles@deaneckles
We replied to 2000 users' tweets of false info with a fact-checking link. What effect did this have?
Not exactly what we had hoped:
Mohsen Mosleh @_mohsen_m
RESULTS: Social corrections...
🡆Decreased quality (by ~1%), increased partisan slant and language toxicity, of the users’ subsequent retweets
🡆No effect on primary tweets
[This suggests effect is driven by redirecting people's attention, rather than causing reactance per se]
4/ https://t.co/YS0LB2cTA5
5:12 PM · May 11, 2021
18 Reposts · 71 Likes
commie lee jones@commieleejones
MIT researchers 'infiltrated' a Covid skeptics community a few months ago and found that skeptics place a high premium on data analysis and empiricism.
"Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution."
arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07993…
1:56 PM · May 10, 2021
5.06K Reposts · 13.2K Likes
Karthik Muralidharan@karthik_econ
India's ICDS is the world's largest early-childhood development program. In a new @nberpubs WP bit.ly/2QYgTjl, @aganimian @c_r_walt & I show with a large-scale RCT that adding a worker to ICDS centers improved education, and nutrition, and was highly cost effective 🧵1/
2:36 PM · May 10, 2021
117 Reposts · 275 Likes
Stephen Holt@SteveBHolt
A 4-yr old who randomly won a seat in Boston preschool:
-⬆️likelihood of graduating HS (6 p.p.)
-⬆️likelihood of attending college (5.4 p.p.)
-⬇️suspensions and likelihood of juvenile incarceration
-⬆️likelihood of SAT above bottom quartile.
nber.org/papers/w28756
2:37 PM · May 10, 2021
30 Reposts · 84 Likes
Elizabeth Weber Handwerker@ElizWebHand
I have a paper with @sarapfmoreira and Dave Piccone in this AEA P&P! “The Life Cycle of Businesses and Their Internal Organization” examines the managerial composition of 1.8 million U.S. establishments “born” since 1992. 1/5
AEA Journals @AEAjournals
The May 2021 issue of AEA Papers and Proceedings (111) is now available online at https://t.co/SooN7ALmtG.
3:43 PM · May 12, 2021
4 Reposts · 22 Likes
Jaime Arellano-Bover@J_ArellanoBover
Very happy to have this article come out in @AEAjournals Papers & Proceedings!
The session, "Long-Term Effects of Early Life Outcomes", was joint with two great papers by Ashna Arora + @urfriendlen + @HjortJ and @SteveRo48195125 + Patralekha Ukil 1/n
1:36 PM · May 13, 2021
26 Reposts · 125 Likes
Justin Sandefur@JustinSandefur
Do high-stakes exams promote consistent educational standards?
New working paper + blog post with @jrossiter0 @mabrehkojo and @aishadanali, looking at exams taken by millions of students across West Africa.
cgdev.org/publication/do…
cgdev.org/blog/can-ghana…
1/
4:05 PM · May 12, 2021
18 Reposts · 38 Likes
Liliana Varela@liliana_vvarela
Thrilled to see this paper (finally) coming out! Below is a short summary. 1/5
The Review of Economic Studies @RevEconStud
Exchange Rate Exposure and Firm Dynamics
https://t.co/OD2emevFTv
Juliana Salomao, University of Minnesota & NBER & CEPR and Liliana Varela, London School of Economics & CEPR
#economics https://t.co/QvlpKNPJeA
10:18 PM · May 14, 2021
51 Reposts · 390 Likes
More: labor market power; government debt maturity management; MP transmission; immigration restrictions and patents; unemployment and entrepreneurship; graphics in applied econ papers; synthetic control; Craiglist and local newspapers
Meta
Apostolos Filippas and John Horton develop a model of econtwitter matching some stylized facts (and predicting some new ones) in a way that will be striking to econtwitter regulars:
Luke Stein does an ex post video discussion, linked here
Public goods
Melissa Dell@MelissaLDell
(1/2) Knowledge base on deep learning methods for data curation is up: dell-research-harvard.github.io/blog.html Covers methods from computer vision and NLP. I found it overwhelming at first to tackle the vast DL lit, hope links to resources for getting started will be of potential use to others
dell-research-harvard.github.io
Blog
6:49 PM · May 11, 2021
130 Reposts · 635 Likes
Interesting discussions
C. Kirabo Jackson@KiraboJackson
Yes. I landed a job offer based on positive impressions of my work on a referee at the QJE. The paper was rejected, but that apparent "failure" turned out to be quite fortuitous!
Joshua Goodman @JoshuaSGoodman
Yesterday in a mentoring session, I accidentally said something helpful. A mentee later wrote:
"One of the things you said that really stuck out to me is to realize rejections (to journals, conferences, etc.) are another way in which I am getting my name and my work out there...
2:33 PM · May 14, 2021
4 Reposts · 101 Likes
Shengwu Li@ShengwuLi
Here’s a thing I didn’t realize in grad school about doing theory: Your role in research can stay the same for most of your career. In some other econ fields, assistant professors get ‘promoted’ to a more managerial role, overseeing a team that does the late-PhD stuff. 🧵
2:41 AM · May 15, 2021
8 Reposts · 144 Likes
John Cawley@cawley_john
A new memo from our AEA ad hoc committee on the job market has been posted. In brief: there is evidence of a rebound in the demand for PhD economists. Summary w/ graphs follows... 1/5
#EconTwitter #EconJobMarket @AEAInformation @JOE_listings @EconSpark
aeaweb.org
American Economic Association
8:36 PM · May 10, 2021
24 Reposts · 75 Likes
Steven Ruggles@HistDem
/1. The Census Bureau plans to add intentional errors to the 2020 census to protect the confidentiality of census respondents. The Census Bureau insists that the intentional error is necessary to combat the threat of “database reconstruction.”
6:51 PM · May 15, 2021
108 Reposts · 312 Likes