Best of #econtwitter - Week of September 5, 2021
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.
Paper summary threads
Jason Abaluck@Jabaluck
With dozens of researchers at Yale, Stanford, Berkeley and IPA and several other organizations, we ran a cluster randomized trial involving almost 350,000 people and 600 villages in Bangladesh to assess the impact of community masking on COVID.
12:00 PM · Sep 1, 2021
3K Reposts · 8.16K Likes
^“arguably the most important single piece of epidemiological research of the entire pandemic”, done by economists; more, more, more, …
Kyle Myers@KRoyMyers
🚨New WP🚨How Important is Editorial Gatekeeping? Evidence from Top Biomedical Journals, with @JoshuaLKrieger & @arieldora
tl;dr: It's not very important (in this case)
paper: tny.sh/editors
thread:
2:11 PM · Sep 2, 2021
6 Reposts · 26 Likes
Michael F. Pesko@mikepesko
🚨New working paper🚨estimating the effect of #ecig taxes on teens authored with @JCMecon, @Courtemanche_CJ, @AboukRahi, @sammsafford, @AFriedmanPhD Dhaval Dave, Joe Sabia, and Bo Feng. #EconTwitter🧵
Paper: cheps.sdsu.edu/docs/e-cig-tax…
Press Release: bit.ly/38rm9B1
1/13
bit.ly
Taxing Tobacco and E-Cigarettes at Same Rate Will Harm Young Users, New Study Finds
5:09 PM · Aug 31, 2021
52 Reposts · 75 Likes
Yphtach Lelkes@ylelkes
across countries, #metoo increased reporting of sex assault and harassment by 10%. In at least the US, it also increased arrests for sexual assault. Effects were long lasting @RoeeLevyZ @mattsson_martin papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
3:39 PM · Aug 31, 2021
78 Reposts · 204 Likes
Joachim Voth@joachim_voth
1/ Did failing banks pave Hitler's path to power? Now forthcoming in the Journal of Finance @JofFinance -- "Financial crises and political radicalization" [with S. Doerr, S. Gissler, and J. Luis Peydro @persistdebt]. portal.cepr.org/discussion-pap… #EconTwitter #econhist
portal.cepr.org
| Centre for Economic Policy Research
2:20 PM · Aug 31, 2021
47 Reposts · 175 Likes
^thread continues. Related: the effect of Father Coughlin on Democratic vote share
Garance Genicot@GGenicot
My paper Tolerance and Compromise in Social Networks
is forthcoming in JPE !
georgetown.app.box.com/s/ric3609aw7qn…
[SLIDES georgetown.app.box.com/s/d31lui2n3457… ]
[THREAD] 🧵
1/6
6:59 PM · Sep 1, 2021
34 Reposts · 230 Likes
Gauti Eggertsson@GautiEggertsson
I have just completed this paper with my grad-student Cosimo Petracchi. How do you make sense of the famous controversy between “Keynes” and the “Classics/Monetarist”? I have been thinking about this topic for a long time. 1/7
NBER @nberpubs
Resolving the old controversy between Keynes and the classics/monetarists, from Gauti B. Eggertsson and Cosimo Petracchi https://t.co/iC6PNYmaRD https://t.co/kN4cx3xGYl
4:01 PM · Aug 30, 2021
45 Reposts · 262 Likes
Jonathan Mijs@JonathanMijs
Prepared for the meritocracy?
What values parents hope to to instill in their children, 1986 - 2018. Down goes "autonomy" and up goes "hard work."
Great @Soc_Forum paper by Duane Alwin and Paula Tufiș onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/so…
4:54 PM · Sep 2, 2021
25 Reposts · 84 Likes
More: “Most claimed statistical findings in XS return predictability are likely true”; hold up problems; physical capital in research; algorithmic price-setting theory
Interesting discussions
Peter Ganong@p_ganong
Macroeconomists are far more engaged with micro evidence now than when I was in grad school. (This is awesome!)
My question for #econtwitter is "Why?"
* Computational advance?
* Need/desire to connect to the credibility revolution?
* Specific failing of the rep agent framework?
12:35 PM · Aug 31, 2021
25 Reposts · 157 Likes
^many long, good replies
Lukasz Rachel@LukaszRachel
Wonderful excerpts and analysis in this short thread on the mysterious relationship between (permanent) income and saving 👇
Ben Moll @ben_moll
I finally read this & thought the following was interesting: exercises quite similar to this ("saving rates rise with income, hence inequality increases aggregate saving") were a prime motivation for Friedman to develop the permanent income hypothesis in the 1950s.
1/ https://t.co/9N1CNjYRAj https://t.co/29nLbJqGZD
2:09 PM · Sep 1, 2021
1 Repost · 10 Likes
Davis Kedrosky@dkedrosky
Did Britain sacrifice the Industrial Revolution to defeat Napoleon? A thread: 1/
5:15 PM · Aug 31, 2021
69 Reposts · 297 Likes
Michael Clemens@m_clem
Ten years ago I published a paper called "Trillion Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk".
I want younger scholars fighting for their ideas to know how that paper was received then, and now —>
11:00 AM · Sep 3, 2021
307 Reposts · 1.29K Likes
Gautam Rao@raogautam
I suspect: if you are unhappy in econ PhD and don't overall enjoy the research process, you will probably also be unhappy as faculty in an R1. The job is fundamentally the same. Crucial to figure out your prefs and reoptimize during PhD. Lots of great non-academic jobs out there!
Gautam Rao @raogautam
Grad school was one of the best times of my life. I couldn't believe I got paid a stipend to investigate whatever I found most interesting in the world. Great teachers, advisors, peers, friends, city, life. Your mileage (and personal circumstances) may vary, of course. https://t.co/GvBBKJHLQX
12:14 PM · Sep 3, 2021
19 Reposts · 221 Likes
^lots of replies, eg:
Shengwu Li@ShengwuLi
Some features that make econ PhDs tough are features of the job, not unique to grad school.
Infrequent guidance, fuzzy goals, high-risk projects, noisy feedback.
Faculty haven’t learned a trick to avoid these features — they’ve learned to live with them.
Gautam Rao @raogautam
I suspect: if you are unhappy in econ PhD and don't overall enjoy the research process, you will probably also be unhappy as faculty in an R1. The job is fundamentally the same. Crucial to figure out your prefs and reoptimize during PhD. Lots of great non-academic jobs out there! https://t.co/xhiy2DDKkT
1:19 PM · Sep 3, 2021
2 Reposts · 64 Likes
C. Kirabo Jackson@KiraboJackson
I can't stress enough how important it is to "create a knowledge gap" when writing an introduction to a paper. I see so many papers that don't give this crucial "selling point" enough attention.
Ash Paul @pash22
How to write a paper https://t.co/PC0O1hc04J
3:37 PM · Sep 5, 2021
46 Reposts · 281 Likes
Ben Golub@ben_golub
. @CaltechEconThry asked what are some econ questions that were open and got resolved. While we agree that's not the main way econ operates, I tried to put together a small list in this thread of work that answered open q's... I wonder if I missed any big ones!
Ben Golub @ben_golub
@CaltechEconThry What's a correct proof of Maskin's Theorem on Nash implementation?
Various BIC <=> EPIC implications and equivalences
folk theorems with correlated private information
what is a dynamic generalization of static Myersonian mechanism design
5:08 PM · Sep 6, 2021
7 Reposts · 33 Likes