Best of #econtwitter - Week of October 17, 2021 [1/2]
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.
This is part one of two, this week. Part two is here.
Paper summary threads
I've been waiting for someone to write this paper: (new econ Nobel!) David Card, @rothstein_jesse and Moises Yi use admin data to better estimate big productivity gains from moving to higher-wage metros. But housing costs more than offset average gains :( www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2021/CE…
Economics papers with first authors earlier in the alphabet tend to be of lower quality because these authors receive more credit and have an incentive to overcollaborate.
Keyvan Vakili @keyvanv
New Chart just dropped
QJE @QJEHarvard
Across Western democracies, the education divide slowly reversed from higher education voters favoring parties on the ideological right in the 1960s to favoring parties on the ideological left by 2020, easing but not reversing the income divide
academic.oup.com/qje/advance-ar…
^comment (as always, links are not endorsements)
The psychosocial effects of the Flint water crisis appear to have been far bigger than the lead effects, at least in some short term data. nber.org/papers/w29341#…
How do distortions in land markets impact agricultural productivity in India?
- rental activity has significant positive effects on agri productivity
- more efficient land reallocation can increase productivity by 50% in highly distorted states
nber.org/system/files/w…
🚨🚨NEW PAPER ALERT🚨🚨
@PNASNews just published the first-ever quasi-experimental evaluation of a stable scheduling law, authored by the #dreamteam @Shift_HKS.
Curious about the results? (1/12)
Spotify publishes the coolest research!
Facts from this paper: ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWS…
1) Everyone listens to music released in their adolescent years.
Also from nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opi… we know that the peak influence age for women is 13 and men 14.
Interesting discussions
There has been a recent debate on Twitter on the notion of “utility” in economics. I’ll try to give some perspective to help understand the disagreements. 🧵
Itai Sher @itaisher
If it’s hard for grad students to transition from coursework to idea generation, what can we do about it?
One idea: faculty could hand students a starter project.
That is, a well-formed open question that can likely be answered via standard methods.🧵
Some people need ideas, some people need more structured advice. But either way starter projects sound good.
Regarding "ideas": 1/n
Shengwu Li @ShengwuLi
Evergreen advice for JMCs’ websites!
Jennifer Doleac @jenniferdoleac
'Tis the season for grad school recommendation letters. I decided to update my advice post on the topic:
chrisblattman.com/letters/
A few tips in brief:
Once, in an applied econometrics seminar at Brown, @ProfEmilyOster handed the whole class a 40-page NBER working paper, set a 10min timer, and quizzed us on it in front of the class when the timer was up. I think I learned more useful skills in those 10min than in entire classes!
Seems like a great day for an IV thread!
Here's a simulated case inspired by Angrist, Imbens & Rubin (1996) showing how our new automatic causal bounding approach can alert users when a key assumption (e.g. "no defiers") is violated. 🧵
Jonathan Mummolo @jonmummolo
Where did the faculty (right) of the top 96 USNWR-ranked economics departments get their PhDs (middle) and Bachelor's (left)?
Would it somehow degrade the whole enterprise to give us a a plain-English summary as part of papers like this (from the authors - not a secondhand interpretation by a journalist, however useful that might be)? It seems like it would be a useful exercise for all concerned. 10/n
Ok so here’s one of my top 2 favorite job talk stories.
(the other one involves the male member making an unscheduled appearance- I’ll spare you that one)
It was about 15 years ago…
Ezra Zuckerman Sivan @ewzucker