Best of #econtwitter - Week of October 16, 2022 [3/4]
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.
This is part three of four.
Interesting discussions
J🎃hn Cawley@cawley_john
From our AEA committee on the job market, great news for job candidates: it seems that the demand for PhD economists has fully rebounded to pre-COVID levels.
Summary w/ graphs follows... 1/6
#EconTwitter #EconJobMarket
@AEAInformation
@JOE_listings
@AEACSWEP
6:56 PM · Oct 12, 2022
65 Reposts · 288 Likes
Amber Peterman@a_peterman
OK—I’ll bite.
While I agree with some of the points made in this thread—I disagree w/ the overall statement:
“It's hard to conclude that cash transfers have a solid evidence base”
There is certainly more than one way to read the evidence—so here’s my take:
1/n
Heath Henderson @hendersonhl22
Unpopular opinion: The evidence for cash transfers really isn't as strong as many people believe.
Here's a thread explaining why I think this, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries. 1/n
2:41 PM · Oct 10, 2022
78 Reposts · 281 Likes
Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak@mushfiq_econ
Should you do a "pre-doc" (RA job) after undergrad, or should you apply directly for an Econ Ph.D. program after graduating?
I get this question regularly from advisees, students, undergrad RAs, so I'll share my thoughts here, esp. for 🌍,🌏 students with less access to advice.
8:42 PM · Oct 14, 2022
76 Reposts · 336 Likes
Johannes Haushofer@jhaushofer
When I moved to Sweden I had to take 2 semesters of pedagogy classes before they promoted me to full professor. My initial reaction was annoyance until it dawned on me how absurd it is to *not* require that. Now I’m a fan and feel like my teaching improved!
Jaclyn A. Siegel, PhD @jacasiegel
I’ve worked in academia for eight years, and it still shocks and horrifies me that most university professors have virtually zero training in teaching/pedagogy.
7:02 AM · Oct 11, 2022
23 Reposts · 453 Likes
Ben Golub 🇺🇦@ben_golub
Something that's been lurking in the background of the Law of Iterated Expectations War:
A big breakthrough of 20th c. probability theory was to DEFINE conditional expectation (and conditional probability) as something satisfying a certain property, much stronger than the LIE.
12:07 AM · Oct 13, 2022
89 Reposts · 508 Likes
^if your reaction is, ‘what LIE war’, congratulations you have been focused on work instead of on twitter
Peter Hull@instrumenthull
Listen: you're interested in the average height in the US. This has to be a weighted average of the average height among men and the average height among non-men. That's it. That's the law.
5:01 PM · Oct 13, 2022
2 Reposts · 155 Likes
Chris Blattman@cblatts
A+ applicant screening
Rick Hornbeck @Rick__Hornbeck
I’m looking for full-time research assistant candidates. Points for finding the total value of imports and exports for major US ports in 1860, 1870, and 1880. Bonus points for why I might want this, when divided by gdp per capita. Please pass on, application is online somewhere.
10:07 PM · Oct 11, 2022
4 Reposts · 33 Likes
Jessica Leight@leightjessica
Hot take for #EconTwitter: economics should have more talks structured around a whole research agenda, not a single paper. Recently gave such a talk at Harvard SPH (thanks @maggiemcconnell for invite!) focusing on my IPV work and it was incredibly useful (to me);
1:49 PM · Oct 12, 2022
13 Reposts · 198 Likes
José Luis Ricón Fernández de la Puente@ArtirKel
I find the citation style that uses numbers throughout the text (Like [57] aka IEEE style) extremely cursed, it forces me to go back and forth to the citations to see what the paper might be. In contrast, I can remember pairs of names and years (Like Ocampo 2016)
4:15 PM · Oct 13, 2022
25 Likes
^looking at you, computer scientists
Neel Nanda@NeelNanda5
I think A Mathematical Framework for Transformer Circuits is the most awesome paper I've been involved in, but it's very long and dense, so I think a lot of people struggle with it. As an experiment, you can watch me read through the paper and give takes!
youtube.com
A Walkthrough of A Mathematical Framework for Transformer Circuits
4:49 AM · Oct 14, 2022
66 Reposts · 503 Likes
^included as an interesting approach to online paper presentation
Brian Albrecht@BrianCAlbrecht
I fell in love with economics in the heyday of the "Econ Blogosphere." It was a fantastic time to discover econ.
In many ways, we are in a renaissance for econ learners.
Here are some of the great econ writers you should be following, plus which article to start with 🧵
11:52 AM · Oct 14, 2022
252 Reposts · 1.57K Likes
^#12 on the list is especially recommended
Vincent Traag@vtraag
Several studies on gender bias in science appeared recently. One study found that “men had about 14,000 more lifetime citations than women” and another that “women were 15 times more likely to be accepted into NAS”. science.org/content/articl…
They cannot both be gender biases.🧵
science.org
Women researchers are cited less than men. Here’s why—and what can be done about it
10:45 PM · Oct 15, 2022
99 Reposts · 361 Likes
Peter Siminski (he/him)@SiminskiPeter
The @arc_gov_au is failing a generation of early career applied economists. Three figures from public data show how bad it is. There's been a steady decline in Fellowships for Econ since 2016, driven by DECRAs. (1402 = Applied Econ) [1/6]
2:52 AM · Oct 16, 2022
19 Reposts · 65 Likes