Best of #econtwitter - Week of September 19, 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
John Loeser@loeserjohn
4/N temporary unconditional cash is very effective! impacts on HH consumption suggest these transfers pay for themselves in just 3 years. these impacts are remarkably stable across contexts (high external validity)
12:31 PM · Sep 14, 2021
1 Repost · 13 Likes
John Loeser@loeserjohn
5/N great! so can we get larger impacts with larger transfers? yes! but, these impacts are less cost effective → larger aggregate consumption impacts by providing smaller transfers to more households
12:31 PM · Sep 14, 2021
7 Likes
TB Storrs 😷@TBirdStorrs
In 1969, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) destroyed the records of its racially exclusionary🏡mortgage insurance from the middle third of the 20th Century.
We resurrect them.
nber.org/papers/w29244?…
NEW EVIDENCE ON REDLINING BY FEDERAL HOUSING PROGRAMS IN THE 1930s🧵
5:09 AM · Sep 13, 2021
266 Reposts · 756 Likes
Emily Nix@EmilyNix100
🚨New WP w/ Martti Kaila & @krista_ri_🚨 We show job loss causes much more damage for those from less wealthy backgrounds, w/ big implications for intergen mobility. Figure shows double unemployment post job loss for adult children born to bottom 20% relative to top 20% [1/9]
1:44 PM · Sep 13, 2021
58 Reposts · 184 Likes
Neale Mahoney@nealemahoney
🚨New Working Paper🚨
The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization
with @alyceadamsPhD, @ray_kluender, @JinglinWang4, @francisawong, @wesyin
NBER WP: nber.org/papers/w29227
Ungated version: stanford.io/2YSl8QX
Begin 🧵
stanford.io
5:54 PM · Sep 13, 2021
24 Reposts · 68 Likes
Jonathan Hall@jonathanhall2
My paper with the excellent Ian Fillmore, “Technological Change and Obsolete Skills: Evidence from Men’s Professional Tennis,” was just published in Labour Economics. It is a really fun paper (even R2 said so!) that I am excited to tell you about. 1/8
doi.org
Redirecting
3:46 PM · Sep 14, 2021
83 Reposts · 395 Likes
Alex Imas@alexoimas
Such an important paper!
We have documented many belief/learning biases, e.g. confirmation bias, overreaction, etc
-How do biases affect learning in long run?
-When is standard model "robust" to a bias?
-What happens when ppl w/ diff biases interact? 1/3
Econometrica @ecmaEditors
How does learning depend on peoples’ models of information and others' prefs/beliefs? Presents general framework for predicting how people learn when they have different models + biases. Characterizes long-run beliefs & whether they perpetually disagree https://t.co/jl9651Njs9 https://t.co/eLDX3bpOaC
5:02 PM · Sep 15, 2021
23 Reposts · 130 Likes
More: survey on media and social capital; child maltreatment effects; perceptions of racial gaps; partisanship and life expectancy; followup on police calls and Floyd; program evaluation guidelines; Indian canals; women in tech self-reported skills; Polish secret police; sales tax breadth; fat tails and nowcasting
Public goods
Matteo Maggiori@m_maggiori
Interested in international macroeconomics and finance? Find online the materials from the Stanford Initiative: videos, slides, data, and code.
stanford.io/3lKp3X5
Intended to be a starter kit for PhD students interested in large-scale empirical work in the field. 1/n
2:39 PM · Sep 15, 2021
355 Reposts · 1.33K Likes
Interesting discussions
Brad Spahn@BradSpahn
I just finished a 2 year stint at FB Core Data Science. Making the switch to industry left me with an appreciation for how academia often doesn't get the best out of people and mostly didn't got the best out of me. Here are some thoughts... 1/n
5:19 PM · Sep 16, 2021
35 Reposts · 366 Likes
John Horton@johnjhorton
I once asked workers on MTurk to guess the hourly wage for a whole bunch of BLS occupations. People were pretty good for relatively low-wage occupations, but generally they way underestimated the returns to being a manager of some kind
12:43 AM · Sep 16, 2021
55 Reposts · 454 Likes
Koen Deconinck@DeconinckKoen
My first reaction to this chart was: there's no way this is accurate. And it isn't! Food is not, in fact, "more expensive than almost anytime in the past 60 years".
Lisa Abramowicz @lisaabramowicz1
Global food prices were up 33% in August from a year earlier. Food is now more expensive than almost anytime in the past six decades: UN data. https://t.co/7wPRatieES https://t.co/cml9Hlo3LL
6:35 PM · Sep 15, 2021
162 Reposts · 617 Likes
Paul Romer@paulmromer
Re announcement today from World Bank
Perhaps it is more clear now why I encouraged the new World Bank President back in 2019 to outsource its entire research function.
"Diplomacy and science cannot both thrive under the same roof."
paulromer.net
FT Op-Ed: Recommendations for World Bank
8:22 PM · Sep 16, 2021
109 Reposts · 378 Likes
^more, more, joke, see media for more details / other side of the story
Asaf Manela@AsafManela
Profiling your code
Just talking to a coauthor about profiling code and realized this may not be known to many researchers who code a lot but don’t have much software background.
So here is a short thread on a tool that can speed up heavy computations by orders of magnitude.
9:51 PM · Sep 17, 2021
59 Reposts · 257 Likes
Toni Whited@toniwhited
Advice for students interviewing at the FMA and AFA meetings.
1. Do not drone on and on. The first thing you learn in a public speaking class is that your audience is not listening. So you have to stop and do a tiny recap every so often, so the non-listeners can catch up.
1/n
2:54 AM · Sep 18, 2021
48 Reposts · 184 Likes
John Horton@johnjhorton
Finally unpacking my boxes in Cambridge & found this, which was previously pinned at my desk. Maybe it was not staring at this document each morning - rather than the pandemic - that negatively affected my productivity
3:03 PM · Sep 13, 2021
4 Reposts · 115 Likes
Pseudoerasmus@pseudoerasmus
The new Dune film depicts an initially latifundist economy trapped in a low-output equilibrium due to the inverse relationship in farm sizes. But following a revolutionary land reform, technological change unexpectedly increases the minimum efficient scale of farms. All is futile
2:12 PM · Sep 14, 2021
24 Reposts · 174 Likes