Best of #econtwitter - Week of October 25, 2020
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.
Paper summaries
Just put up a research note on using weather as an instrumental variable.
tldr: all IV weather papers represent exclusion restriction violations for all other IV weather papers. I find 137 possible exclusion restriction violations
^one of those things “everyone knows” but does nothing about. Pairs (un)happily with the paper discussed in last week’s newsletter on F-tests for weak IV
"How Much Can We Generalize From Impact Evaluations" is out at JEEA!
Here's a thread with the key takeaways.... 1/
JEEA @JEEA_News
So excited and fortunate to have my JMP published! I conducted a field experiment to test what happens when people are exposed to more conservative or liberal news on Facebook. Details below. (1/N, my first Twitter thread :)
AEA Journals @AEAjournals
We estimate the Phillips curve in the cross section. Huge advantage: Differences out shifting long-run expectations about inflation. Phillips curve looks 45 times steeper in the 80s using time-series variation, but only 1.8 time steeper using X-sectional variation 2/n
Vital paper that shows why Wikipedia achieves a moderate consensus on topics while Twitter & Facebook do not. Wikipedia does not filter what users see, so each article is exposed to different views. Then it subtly encourages extremists to leave, retaining moderate content & users
AFAIK, this is the only study on the productivity effects of full time work from home (with full geographic flexibility), with a rigorous causal identification strategy. Finds WFH increases productivity of patent examiners. Super relevant in the covid era as firms look to future.
Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury @prithwic
"How do economies perform under populist leaders?"
🔹"After 15 years, GDP per capita is more than 10% lower compared to a plausible non-populist counterfactual"
🔹"no decline in income inequality"
cepr.org/active/publica… by Manuel Funke, @MSchularick, and Christoph Trebesch
Noam Angrist @angrist_noam
In my forthcoming paper "Information Consumption and Asset Pricing" with Azi Ben-Rephael, Bruce Carlin, and @Zhi_Da, we show that firm- and macroeconomic announcements that convey systematic information generate a premium for stocks that experience information spillovers. (1/4)
Journal of Finance @JofFinance
(3/N) Our main point: micro-optimal is macro-stabilizing. By rebalancing to maintain age-appropriate asset allocations, Target Date Funds trade against excess returns in each asset class, stocks or bonds. We show a significant impact on equity funds flows and on stock *prices*
New paper out with Andrew Gill in Research in Higher Education:Semester Course Load and Student Performance. You can reduce time-to-degree by pushing more courses per term. But maybe students can't handle it and performance suffers? Not what we find!
This is a beautiful paper, with pretty pictures and crisp exposition. It's worth reading, and won't take you long.
Brief summary follows
1/7
AEA Journals @AEAjournals
Job market papers
Tell your students to tweet summary threads (and to write good papers!) and they’ll show up here :)
🚨🚨 Check out my JMP 🚨🚨
Have you noticed that there seem to be weird new varieties of everything now in supermarkets? My paper studies the effects of these "niche" products on consumer demand over time.
Highlights: 1/
static1.squarespace.com/static/5e5ac74…
The average passthrough of a 100bp monetary shock to general obligation muni yields is 22bp, but this effect is heterogeneous across U.S. states, due to illiquidity and risk differences.
This is pretty wild. The rich not only tend to own more of asset classes that have higher returns, but even within asset classes they typically get higher returns than other people down the income ladder. This is esp true of real estate and interest bearing assets
Jennifer Doleac @jenniferdoleac
^the author’s account here
Good discussion
It's practice job market talk season for grad students! A little known fact about job talks is they should be aimed at second year undergraduates, because that is how smart the average faculty member is when they are sitting in a comfortable chair with a phone in their pocket.
^thread, recommended — and not just for JMCs; and check out the discussion too
A thread on what we can learn about polarization of opinions from a simple behavioral network model.
Remember the DeGroot model? It says you decide what to think tomorrow by taking an average of what you and your friends think today.
Examples:
1/
Hi #EconTwitter, do you all have general tips for graduate students who are transitioning from full-time coursework to full-time research (such as rising 3rd years) in terms of maintaining workflow, scheduling, keeping our sanity intact during this transition phase etc.?
@leah_boustan @DouthatNYT So the evidence does not seem so mixed. I support immigration, but these points would suggests the economy shifted (maybe in long run) to a higher-wage, higher productivity equilibrium with more manufacturing, more productive agriculture, and less low value add mining.
Professional navel-gazing
Are macroeconomics and the rest of economics two separate disciplines?
The image of the Twitter networks may suggest so:
https://t.co/l6XPUch9nx
Here you go...
Highest %% of authors from Africa, Asia, South America.
Also highest diversity (Shannon index) by countries and institutions.
(data 2007-2017)
Richard Tol @RichardTol