Best of #econtwitter - Week of November 20, 2022

Welcome readers old and new to this week’s edition of Best of Econtwitter. Please submit suggestions — very much including your own work! — over email or on Twitter @just_economics.

Paper summaries

Ben Golub 🇺🇦 @ben_golub

Networks (real and virtual) let people keep up with news by learning from others. Most social learning theories don't model the world changing. Modeling it surprisingly makes rational learning rules simpler: people learn by putting (unchanging) weights on friends' opinions. 1/

The Review of Economic Studies @RevEconStudies

How does social learning work when the state changes over time? In the model of Dasaratha, @ben_golub and @nirhak1, Bayesian learning is linear, and good learning requires diverse friends. https://t.co/LQ6LaTM3l2 https://t.co/ZS6ZIrO9eH

R. Daniel Bressler @DannyBressler1

My new @nberpubs working paper with @GeoffHeal is out! VALUING EXCESS DEATHS CAUSED BY CLIMATE CHANGE nber.org/papers/w30648 We submitted a week ago, but it’s now especially relevant as EPA released the new US Social Cost of Carbon on Friday epa.gov/system/files/d… Thread 👇

Natalie Bau @BauNatalie

Excited to release this working paper with @AndrabiTahir, Jishnu Das, and @aikhwaja, which represents something like 10+ years of work (!) trying to understand variation in school quality in a low-income setting with (like many LICs) substantial school choice. A short thread...

NBER @nberpubs

Test-score-based measures of quality, or school value-added (SVA), in Pakistan exhibit high variation and indicate a range of effects from reallocating students. The market rewards high-SVA private schools, from Andrabi, @BauNatalie, Das, and @aikhwaja https://t.co/8hQWj8pDwi https://t.co/RqS1u0zSvc

Science of Science @MishaTeplitskiy

Yes, a lot easier! Novel papers much more likely to get accepted across journals, and ~doubling acceptance rates at @CellCellPress (Having many conventional journal combinations in paper very important too) 4/n

^observational 😶

Sam Zhang @_szhang

1/ Excited to share our new paper "Labor advantages drive the greater productivity of faculty at elite universities" in @ScienceAdvances with @hneutr @DanLarremore @aaronclauset: scim.ag/AV Why do faculty publication rates increase so much with prestige? Let’s go:🧵

^observational 😶; critique

Matthew A. Kraft @MatthewAKraft

📢 "Preferences, Inequities, & Incentives in the Substitute Teacher Labor Market"📢 Substitute coverage in large districts is highly inequitable along racial & socioeconomic lines. CPS aimed to reduce these inequities w/ differentiate pay. It worked. edworkingpapers.com/ai22-680 🧵

More: Familiarity Facilitates Adoption Evidence from Electric Vehicles; wage theft

Interesting discussions

Chris Blattman @cblatts

So many aspiring young social scientists applying for their first research assistant positions right now, I thought I'd regale you with my first RA job (and my third best field work story). 👇

Omer Moav @Omer_Moav

My ‘cereal and states’ paper (with Mayshar & @PascaliLuigi) came out in the JPE this year, so now I feel comfortable having a little rant about the editorial/refereeing process in our profession. 1/n

Omer Moav @Omer_Moav

The Origin of the State: Land Productivity or Appropriability? My JPE with @PascaliLuigi and Joram Mayshar. I consider this my most significant work in 25 years of research. https://t.co/e8L4cQr0n1

Josh Goodman @JoshuaSGoodman

Yesterday, after a good chat about academic econ careers, a recent college grad told me that #EconTwitter makes the path seem so negative. Twitter can surface/encourage tough stuff, but can we balance that with some positivity? What's one thing you've loved about academic econ?

Brian Albrecht @BrianCAlbrecht

In 1984, F.A. Hayek was asked who his favorite economist was. He named two. The first was Nobel Prize winner George Stigler. The second, sadly, never got the recognition he deserved. Here are 5 papers by the 🐐, Armen Alchian, and why you should read them today 🧵

Wojtek Kopczuk 🇵🇱🇺🇦 @wwwojtekk

How did MIT solve it? Was it the president? The nonprofit entity itself? The harmony of student, faculty and administrators body? Perhaps one of the buildings or the whole physical infrastructure combined?

Ben Golub 🇺🇦 @ben_golub

This one is actually a good excuse to highlight why eigenvector centrality is such a compelling notion. The idea is that the "cool" people (in whatever sense) are the ones who receive attention/respect, or in this case news, from other cool people. 1/

John List @Econ_4_Everyone

Just finished up the penalty tally for the JPE-Micro. Recall that if there is no decision within 45 days there is a $500 fine for the Editor. I thought the plan has working well until I just realized I am the worst offender--I am out $5000! Yikes, that hurts.

Nick HK @nickchk

Guess at how many observations you need to have 90% statistical power to detect an effect that increases a rate from 50% to 55% (not an inconsequential boost in many settings!). Assume perfect randomization, half treated/half control Answer in third post.

Joey Politano 🏳️‍🌈 @JosephPolitano

FINALLY a board game where I can role play as Jerome Powell