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.

^“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:

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.lyTaxing Tobacco and E-Cigarettes at Same Rate Will Harm Young Users, New Study FindsA National Institutes of Health-funded study suggests the Tobacco Tax Equity Act of 2021 may not benefit public health, particularly in young e-cigarette users.

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…

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

^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

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

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…

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?

^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

Davis Kedrosky @dkedrosky

Did Britain sacrifice the Industrial Revolution to defeat Napoleon? A thread: 1/

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 —>

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

^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

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

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