Best of #econtwitter - Week of November 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.
Paper summary threads
Hugely excited to announce the publication of our article in @QJEHarvard!🤩 This paper is the outcome of a massive data collection effort that we started with @cmtneztt and @PikettyLeMonde in 2017.
A few takeaways on the evolution of political divides in Western democracies 👇
the half-life of innovation: remarkable chart by @ProfSongMa shows how quickly tech becomes obsolete
https://t.co/csSb7g8cD5
full paper: nber.org/papers/w29504
🚨🚨🚨New WP🚨🚨🚨
"The incidence of affirmative action: Evidence from quotas in private schools in India" -- by @singhabhi and me.
Full working paper: mauricio-romero.com/pdfs/papers/CG…
🧵:
Why do people buy virtual land? Read our new working paper on the price determinants of land parcels in the #metaverse. This is joint work with @golmit_crypto and Peter Kugler!
Link to the working paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
1/4
Our paper on "Identification with External Instruments in Structural VARs" (w/ @_SiLviA_mA ) has been accepted at JME
The editor, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, and the referees helped immensely in improving the paper and we could not be more grateful
More: factor pricing debate; inflation narratives
Job market papers
Excited to share my JMP, “New Evidence on the Effect of Technology on Employment and Skill Demand.”
*Main result*: Technologies led to increases in employment and no change in skill composition.
economics.mit.edu/files/22239
#EconTwitter #EconJobMarket 🧵
🚨🚨 NEW PAPER ALERT 🚨🚨
My incredible coauthor @PankaBencsik recently posted her job market paper! If you are interested in the trade-offs between harsh criminal sanctions and addiction treatment in the context of the opioid crisis, then join me in this thread:
1/n
Interesting JMP by Jiajie Xu finds that Opportunity Zones did attract new private investment; but crowded out local non-tradable entrepreneurs.
jiajiexu.com
Hi #EconTwitter. One of my best friends, @seba_hill is on the Job Market this year. He's not very active here, so I want to promote his work.
Here's a striking picture of his JMP, "The Fed and the Secular Decline in Interest Rates"
Public goods
🚨 Historical Data Library 🚨
Thrilled to share the newest Investor Amnesia resource... a free data library with 100+ datasets going back to the 1700s.
Data on stock returns, dividends, bond yields, corp. financials, economic indicators, and MUCH more!
investoramnesia.com/historical-dat…
Interesting discussions
Many grad students told me they're waiting till Thanksgiving or after to get in the Dec 1st deadlines. Don't. Get in your apps now. I must have talked to people from two dozen schools at SEA whose departments entirely jumped the market and are already doing interviews/flyouts.
^provoked some discussion on market structure:
@florianederer tbh, I feel kind of ambivalent about this. It's not obvious to me that a centralized / coordinated system benefits every one. I suspect a system organized by the demand side largely benefits the demand side
In my postdoc, I talked to people in many other fields, including humanities and hard sciences. I have yet to meet someone who thinks that their academic market “works well”.
When I describe the centralized econ market, the reaction is typically disbelief and envy.
John Horton @johnjhorton
^see also here, here, here, here, also
What's something you wished you'd known as a social science PhD working in industry?
I've seen a lot of questions recently about what faculty can do to coach their #PhD students on #nonac/#altac careers. Can we start a thread of things you wish you'd known?
What advice would you give to someone in the first or second year of their PhD? Asking on behalf of 11 friends.
@itaisher Econ needs a second "credibility revolution" where we actually start taking normative questions seriously when making policy recommendations.
@TradeDiversion "the" casual effect of X on Y is even worse. On what internal margin? With what external validity? Of what parameter, of the many that could potentially analogize to X/Y? The idea that modern empirical methods find "the casual effect" has been dreadful for the field
This may have seemed like a joke, but seriously: it's absolutely wild that, under rather weak conditions, *all* appropriately scaled sample means
(a) converge(!)
(b) to the *same* type of distribution(!!)
(c) which happens to be *especially* nice(!!!)
How did we get so lucky?
Peter Hull @instrumenthull
^provoked a surprising amount of discussion?