Best of #econtwitter - Week of May 23, 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
Cicada broods worsen long-term child test score and attendance outcomes through insecticide contamination in ground water.
Variation from periodic cicadas by Charles Taylor.
semanticscholar.org/paper/Working-…
New paper using LEHD linked to productivity data is out. Key findings: (1) high-productivity firms grow faster by drawing workers away from other firms, (2) this reallocation collapses in recessions, yielding a sullying effect. A thread:
“We show that published papers in top journals that fail to replicate are cited more than those that replicate. This difference doesn't change after publication of failure to replicate. 12% of postreplication citations acknowledge the replication failure.”
advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/21/e…
This took an enormous amount of work (for real), and I am super excited to see this out in the NBER and forthcoming in REStud!!
Very surprised by some of the results: borrowers quickly learn from past experience, which eliminates over-optimism (but not present focus).
NBER @nberpubs
Now out in @NatureHumBehav A systematic review and meta-analysis of discrepancies between logged and self-reported digital media use
nature.com/articles/s4156…
We show that media use self-reports are only moderately correlated with log measures & question their validity
^affects a lot of econ papers!
Important fact about market concentration from Amiti and Heise. For US manufacturing, concentration has not risen *once you take imports into account*. Previous studies that found large rises, eg Autor et al QJE 2020, report concentration for *domestic* producers
h/t @M_C_Klein
We ask a demographically representative set of Americans whether gains in the value of publicly-traded stocks should be taxed: (1) each year, even if not sold, or (2) only upon sale. We find that participants overwhelmingly (75% to 25%) prefer taxing only at sale. 5/N
Jesse @JSchreger and I wrote a new review article for the forthcoming Handbook in International Economics on CIP deviations and their implications for global capital markets. Look forward to your comments! Updated dataset and Bloomberg tickers available sites.google.com/view/jschreger…
NBER @nberpubs
^thread of figures
My substack entry FYI is about this paper from the other day just in case that wasn’t clear. Great paper. Let me tell you briefly why I think you’ll like it too. causalinf.substack.com/p/deja-vu-and-…
Kirill Borusyak @borusyak
SUPER important RCT in Rohingya refugee camps showing that gainful employment confers psychosocial benefits over and above an equally well-paid direct cash transfer
(couldn't find authors on twitter, if you know where they are pls tag them below)
hbs.edu/ris/Publicatio…
Econ Thread: My paper on the strange experiment of playing card money in 17th-18th centuries Canada (image below) with Bryan Cutsinger and Mathieu Bédard was accepted in the European Review of Economic History #econhist #econtwitter
😬
Richard Hanania @RichardHanania
^“A new meta-analysis finds the lead-crime hypothesis to be overstated due to publication bias”
More: US public debt; coal plant location choice; trade and environment; tariffs and Chinese structural change; mothers’ part-time vs full-time choice; coal mine safety; post-Katrina school reform; trade shocks effect on Chinese high school enrollment; ethnographic atlas
Public goods
🚨 New OECD/AIAS ICTWSS database with info for 56 countries over 60 years on:
👉trade unions & employers’ associations
👉collective bargaining coverage & organisation
👉minimum wages setting mechanisms
👉wage co-ordination
👉social pacts
👉works councils
oecd.org/employment/ict…
Having trouble picking a color palette for your #Rstats visualization? Well here's a MEGA thread about all the ways you can choose a palette! 🧵[1/22]
Interesting discussions
I've seen lots of advice for grad students, but little to none for new mentors of graduate students, despite the fact that no one is ever trained to mentor. So, with a big nod to @WilHMoo, here are some ways I approach mentoring that I hope someone might find helpful. 🧵(1/7)
At your economics department, a paper (that faculty agree is good) published in Science would "count" for tenure purposes...
Great thread on how advocates are on course to successfully cripple large swathes of social science research by getting rid of access to anonymized census microdata in order to prevent a hypothetical reconstruction of non-sensitive data that has never been successfully done
Steven Ruggles @HistDem
Following CA's proposal to do away with tracking/streaming in its new math framework, I wanted to talk a bit about the weight of the evidence on tracking and who it benefits. The popular conception that tracking hurts the disadvantaged and helps the advantaged is _not_ true.
^see also: Jesse Rothstein thread on SATs
