Best of #econtwitter - Week of September 12, 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

Nathaniel Hendren @nhendren82

My new working paper out today with @djh1202 shows how adverse selection has unraveled private markets for financial alternatives to student debt that would reduce the risk of investing in college. scholar.harvard.edu/files/hendren/… Thread summary below: (1/n)

^gif. More in “education-related gifs”:

Sade Bonilla @edpolicywonk

Our exploratory #RDD results show this course, using anti-racist curricula and pedagogy, sustained gains throughout HS in attendance and credits earned & additional evidence of an increase in college matriculation using @NSClearinghouse data

Michael F. Pesko @mikepesko

We estimate continuous-treatment DD models to find that #ecig taxes reduce ecig use & raise #cigarette use. Doubling existing #ecig taxes would reduce youth use by 12% but raise current #cigarette use by 8%, with particularly large increases for regular #cigarette users. 7/13

Andy Garin @andy_garin

The data make clear that IC work has a distinct high-end and low-end. Here’s the distribution of work within earnings groups: 4/9

^IC = independent contractors

Hans Henrik Sievertsen @hhsievertsen

Hi #Econtwitter! happy to share a revised version of ⬇️ with @CmfValente & @Maheshcpuri To recap: >400 000 children die from blood infections every year 😢 - 2 RCTs: chlorhexidine can prevent this for 0.23USD/dose 👍 - 3 subsequent RCTs: no effect 😕 ➡️slow/no roll-out 1/10

Hans Henrik Sievertsen @hhsievertsen

I am happy to share new work with @CmfValente and Mahesh Puri Every year more than 400 000 children die from neonatal sepsis. Even though early RCTs of chlorhexidine cord care (CHX) suggest that this could be prevented for only US$0.23 per dose, adoption has been slow... https://t.co/iXclY1XqKy

Lionel Page @page_eco

Fascinating evolution of stated preferences for a partner during the 20th century: personality criteria progressively replaced economic criteria. Data from matrimonial ads in 🇫🇷. ht @j_vechbany cambridge.org/core/journals/…

^trends in agreeableness?

Matt Clancy @mattsclancy

When the USSR collapsed, some subfields of non-Soviet mathematics got a surprise infusion of new ideas. Agrawal, Goldfarb, and Teodoris show that as the burden of knowledge grew in these subfields, mathematicians specialized relatively more and formed bigger teams! 1/3

Jonathan Heathcote @Jonheathcote

New/old paper with Hitoshi Tsujiyama now forthcoming. Paper tackles an old question – the shape of the optimal income tax schedule. Should marginal rates be flat (Friedman / Mirrlees), U-shaped in income (Diamond / Saez) or increasing (actual tax code)? 1/

Desmond Ang @ProfDesmondAng

How does police violence affect public cooperation w/ law enforcement? In a new WP w/ @PankaBencsik @jmb112485 @EDerenoncourt, we find large declines in crime-reporting after the murder of George Floyd. Across 8 cities, 911 calls per gunshot drop by 50% & total calls by 25%. 1/5

Dave Holtz @daveholtz

🚨 New research just published in @NatureHumBehav: We analyzed the collaboration patterns of 61k+ @Microsoft employees to estimate the causal effects of firm-wide remote work (RW). nature.com/articles/s4156… 1/

nature.comThe effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers - Nature Human BehaviourUsing a large dataset of workers’ technology use from before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Yang et al. find that firm-wide remote work caused the collaboration networks of information workers to become more static and siloed and communication to shift to more asynchronous media.

^comment

Claudio Ferraz @claudferraz

1/4 What happens when there are limits imposed on the amount of money that politicians can spend on their campaigns? In this paper forthcoming in @AEAjournals aeaweb.org/articles?id=10… we examine the effects on political entry, selection, and behavior of local politicians in Brasil

aeaweb.orgMoney and Politics: The Effects of Campaign Spending Limits on Political Entry and Competition(Forthcoming Article) - This paper studies the effects of campaign spending limits on the political entry, selection, and behavior of local politicians in Brazil. We analyze a reform that limits campaign spending for mayoral elections. The limits were implemented with a discontinuity that we exploit…

More: education-job loss association; Vietnamese development; decomposition of income gains; Korean development; broadband reduces poverty; fairness views

Public goods

ky @kylefbutts

🚨 Beamer Slides Template 🚨 My attempt at making beautiful beamer slides easy. h/t to @paulgp's beamer tips for a lot of inspiration. pdf preview: raw.githubusercontent.com/kylebutts/temp… source code: github.com/kylebutts/temp… Details...

Interesting discussions

John Cawley @cawley_john

As of 2021-09-05, the # of job openings on JOE for full-time academic jobs in the US is up 102.8% compared to same time in 2020 (!) and is even up 20.8% compared to this time in 2019 (which was pre-COVID). #EconTwitter #EconJobMarket 2/6

Fatih Guvenen @fatihguvenen

Happy Labor Day! Some food for thought about *lifetime* employment rate. A mini thread: 12.6% of US men work < 1/2 of prime-age years (25-55) "Working" = Earnings > $2K in a year. A very low bar. If "working" = $10K: 19.5% of men work <1/2 #econtwitter (1/n)

Celeste Carruthers @ckcarruthers

Big news from Economics of Education Review - expedited, no-revision review track is now live and ready for submissions.

Ben Golub @ben_golub

What are our best submissions to the scientific hall of fame of "we figured out how this real thing works" Proposals: (i) prices; (ii) adverse selection e.g., why markets with private information don't work so well; (iii) mixed Nash in penalty kicks others?

CaltechEconTheory @CaltechEconThry

@ben_golub Econ is not math. It's part of the social sciences! In science there are (perhaps rarely) mysteries that are resolved, and then we (more or less) know. E.g., how tides work. Or what is beta radiation. Or the double helix structure of DNA. What are such examples in econ?