Best of #econtwitter - Week of November 15, 2020 (2/2)

Welcome readers old and new to this week’s edition of the Best of Econtwitter. Thanks to those sharing suggestions, over email or on Twitter @just_economics.

This is part two of two for this week’s newsletter, due to the unusually high quantity of good tweets this week. Part one is here.

Paper summaries

Ulf Zölitz @uZoelitz

"Peer Personality and Academic Achievement" is now available ahead of print at @JPolEcon journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jpe/0/ja Our paper highlights that the personality of your college peers has a causal impact on human capital.

Ben Golub @ben_golub

In this issue of Econometrica: "Targeting Interventions in Networks" We take an old question: "Whose incentives matter most for aggregate outcomes in a network game?" and give some new answers and a new approach. w/ A. Galeotti @LBS and S. Goyal @CambridgeINET 🧵

Anna Stansbury @annastansbury

Tenreyro & McLeay argue that the apparently weak Phillips Curve could actually be consistent with a strong underlying Phillips Curve. Optimal response from monetary policymakers - who respond to demand shocks - would mean we wouldn't observe the underlying PC relationship ex post

^thread summarizing a couple macro papers

Simon Jäger @simon_jaeger

How does an unequal distribution of land shape development? In work with @CharlyBartels and Natalie Obergruber, we investigate this question studying historical inheritance rules for land across Germany. economics.mit.edu/files/20830

Ugo Gentilini @Ugentilini

What happens 10 years after giving #cashtransfers + assets programs in #India? ⬆️ consumption (1 SD) ⬆️ food security (0.1 SD) ⬆️ income (0.3 SD) ⬆️ health (0.2 SD) Why? Programs help people get jobs and have an economic return of 336% Banerjee et al

nber.orgLong-term Effects of the Targeting the Ultra Poor ProgramFounded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

Catherine Maclean @JCMecon

1/11 📢New @nberpubs working paper📢 @jmallatt79 @KosaliSimon @christopherruhm & I review economic studies on the #opioid crisis in the US nber.org/papers/w28067?…

nber.orgReview of Economic Studies on the Opioid CrisisFounded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

Hannah Ritchie @_HannahRitchie

Results from a new randomised control trial on GM eggplant in Bangladesh: → 51% increase in yields → 37.5% reduction in pesticide use → 128% increase in net revenues for farmers → reduction in farmers reporting symptoms of pesticide poisoning onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aj…

Job market papers

Shmuel san @san_muly

How helpful are socially connected parents for young workers’ who are entering the labor market? In my #JMP, I use administrative data from Israel to find out. Website: sites.google.com/view/mulysan #EconTwitter #EconJobMarket A thread 1/9

David R. Agrawal @DavidRAgrawal

🚨🚨Consider my student, Kenneth Tester, who is on the job market. He is presenting @NatlTax today. He is doing interesting work at the intersection of public finance, urban economics, and labor economics. #EconTwitter #taxtwitter His website: kennethtester.com Thread👇

Margaret Bock @margaretbock_

My JMP links the construction of the ADHS to mortality outcomes in the region. Specifically, I examine changes in mortality rates where improved travel times could directly impact survivability over the course of the 50 years of construction. (7/15)

Maxi Guennewig @MaxiGNWG

2/ In my JMP, I discuss private, centralised digital currencies (PCDC). These currencies are issued and operationally managed by firms or groups of firms that produce consumption goods. I highlight the consequences for monetary policy in a theoretical framework.

Michela Tincani @MichelaTincani

College education in the OECD is characterized by high rates of dropout and of major switching. Is the system good at letting students learn about match-quality through experimentation, or bad at matching students to the programs they are most likely to graduate from? 1/

Public goods

Panka Bencsik @PankaBencsik

Just sent out an update to everyone on #EconBrew (the list of economists happy to grab coffee with visitors to their city post-pandemic). Will also add quietly how happy I am of a major milestone the initiative reached: There are now 150(!!) economists on the list! 🗺️

Ralph Lütticke @RalphLuet

Thanks to @glviolante I had the pleasure to share my knowledge about perturbation solutions of heterogenous agent models with PhD students at Princeton. I have uploaded my lecture slides on GitHub. These provide a good introduction to our method and codes.

github.comralphluet/KS_Perturbation_vs_MITThis code solves the Krusell-Smith model in two ways: Perturbation and MIT shock. More details on the model and the solution approach can be found in the paper: Christian Bayer, Ralph Luetticke (20...

Jonathan Portes @jdportes

For anyone interested in inequality (over time and between countries), fascinating charts and discussion here from @PIIE piie.com/microsites/how…

Jason Lyall @jaylyall_red5

For Divided Armies, we built a new dataset, Project Mars, that sought to incorporate these excluded belligerents and wars. A team of 134 coders worked for nearly 7 years to add 124 new belligerents & dozens of wars not included in the Correlates of War for 1800-2011. 3/10

Interesting threads/discussions

Jason Furman @jasonfurman

I did a talk in the excellent @MarkusEconomist Academy series yesterday on “Do Debt and Deficits Matter Anymore.” You can watch the video, see the slides, or read this longish thread for a summary. youtube.com/watch?v=SwZnLV…

dropbox.com20201119 Princeton Debt.pdfShared with Dropbox

Michael Ewens @startupecon

I tell students that you are often better off “embracing the endogeneity” than trying to address it poorly. Understanding confounds, signing resulting bias and then clearly presenting the economic story to the reader can be quite convincing...and we still learn something. https://t.co/KYIUdVFRGv

Jacob Montgomery @Jacob_Montg

I would love for this to become a standard way to argue about confounding. The tendency to reach for totally implausible causal designs (IV or RDD) is so much worse than just putting bounds on for readers to decide for themselves. https://t.co/ErO7sbwwZE

Elisabeth Leduc @leduc_elisabeth

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to take part in the @AEACSWEP mentoring workshop for female and non-binary PhD students. Great advice and insights were shared by mentors, panellists, and organizers. Here are my 10 key take-aways for those who could not join:

Paul Romer @paulmromer

I am a big believer in talking to people from other disciplines. To illustrate, I’ll tell a story about a brief coinversation with @CT_Bergstrom that was literally one of the of high points of my entire career. 1/N

Devin Pope @Devin_G_Pope

Everyone should scroll through this NYT article for the graphics alone. Question for academics: At what point should the QJE allow authors to submit a dynamic scatter plot? Good graphics can help editors/referees/readers understand a paper's message.

nytimes.comStates That Imposed Few Restrictions Now Have the Worst OutbreaksUsing an index that tracks policy responses to the pandemic, The Times analyzed outbreaks in each state relative to the state’s most recent containment measures.