Best of #econtwitter - Week of September 13, 2020

Sep 14, 2020

Welcome readers old and new to this week’s edition of the Best of Econtwitter. Recommendations always welcome over email or on Twitter @just_economics.

New papers

Mark Koyama@MarkKoyama

We revisit the classic argument that fractured geography was responsible for why Europe has been politically fragmented for most of its history in comparison to other parts of Eurasia, particularly (but not exclusively China).

3:59 PM · Sep 7, 2020

1 Repost · 8 Likes

^thread; amazing video of the simulation they run here

Pierre Azoulay@pierre_azoulay

Here is the key figure in the paper. Immigrant and Native-Born Entrepreneurship: Firm Size Distributions using all start-up firms in the US census data (2005-2010), for US-born and immigrant-founded firms. 1/2

Ian Hathaway @IanHathaway

"The findings suggest that immigrants act more as "job creators" than "job takers" and that non-U.S. born founders play outsized roles in U.S. high-growth entrepreneurship." @pierre_azoulay @bfjo @jdanielkim https://t.co/G8V0cty7k4 https://t.co/HgNtSR0Wtf

2:30 PM · Sep 7, 2020

11 Reposts · 31 Likes

^a thread from another coauthor here

Hanno Lustig@HannoLustig

1/New WP: Governments face a trade-off between insuring taxpayers and bond investors. To keep the government debt risk-free, the (warning: finance lingo) beta of the government’s tax revenue has to be lower than the beta of spending. @SVNieuwerburgh @MindyXiaolan

1:40 AM · Sep 8, 2020

16 Reposts · 52 Likes

Klodiana Istrefi@KlodianaIstrefi

FOMC speeches reveal that a higher communication on financial stability concerns relates to a more accomodative monetary policy. #FOMC #FederalReserve New WP joint with @SestieriG and Florens Odendhal

publications.banque-france.fr

Fed Communication on Financial Stability Concerns and Monetary Policy Decisions: Revelations from Speeches

2:22 PM · Sep 7, 2020

16 Reposts · 33 Likes

Nicolas Ajzenman@Nicolas_Ajz

"Immigration, Crime and Crime (Mis)Perceptions" - New WP with @pdomingr and R. Undurraga In a nutshell Immigration: 1) Did NOT cause crime 2) Triggered crime-related concerns 3) Triggered crime-preventive behavior (installing alarms, etc) link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

7:06 PM · Sep 8, 2020

102 Reposts · 282 Likes

Abhishek Nagaraj 🗺️@abhishekn

🚨🚨 New paper alert 🚨🚨 Very excited about new paper with @SayWhatYouFound title: Improving data access democratizes and diversifies science forthcoming in @PNASNews with @esther_shears & @MathijsdeVaan (@BerkeleyHaas) link: pnas.org/content/early/… Thread 👇

pnas.org

Improving data access democratizes and diversifies science

11:27 PM · Sep 9, 2020

54 Reposts · 112 Likes

Caleb Watney@calebwatney

A really interesting new paper from @JamesBessen et al. on trends in industry disruption over time. Contra the traditional narrative that displacement has been on the decline since the 70s, it finds that ~2000 was the inflection point. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

3:43 PM · Sep 11, 2020

15 Reposts · 26 Likes

Other paper summaries

Alan Fernihough@DiffusePrioR

“Understanding Persistence” by Morgan Kelly re-examines the historical persistence literature in economics from a spatial statistics perspective. I think the results are MASSIVELY important for social science more broadly so here is a thread on the matter (1/13) #EconTwitter

10:49 AM · Sep 9, 2020

143 Reposts · 394 Likes

^David Hilbert once claimed that the importance of a scientific work can be measured by the number of older works it makes obsolete; by this criterion, Kelly’s paper is up there

Matt Notowidigdo@ProfNoto

The paper has a lot of really nice figures showing the changing patterns of selection into unionization over many decades; e.g., figure below shows selection into unionization by education conditional on race. In recent years, education no longer predicts unionization status