Best of #econtwitter - Week of September 13, 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).

^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

^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

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.frFed Communication on Financial Stability Concerns and Monetary Policy Decisions: Revelations from SpeechesThis paper studies the informational content of publicly given speeches of FOMC members with a focus on financial stability, from 1997 to 2018. We document that presidents of Federal Reserve Banks spoke more than Board members around and after the financial crisis, and exhibit more variation in the …

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…

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.orgImproving data access democratizes and diversifies scienceData access is critical to empirical research, but past work on open access is largely restricted to the life sciences and has not directly analyzed the impact of data access restrictions. We analyze the impact of improved data access on the quantity, quality, and diversity of scientific research. W…

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…

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

^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

Cristiano Cantore @c_cantore

Our paper on the response of the #LaborShare to #MonetaryPolicy shocks is now out on @JEEA_News. Here is a thread to summarise the paper and reflect its publication journey. 👇1/n

JEEA @JEEA_News

Forthcoming article by @c_cantore Filippo Ferroni and Miguel León-Ledesma “The Missing Link: Monetary Policy and The Labor Share” @JEEA_News the Journal of @EEANews @OUPEconomics https://t.co/7D4e34FL9j

Announcements

Journal of Public Economics @JPubEcon

We're excited to announce the creation of a new Short Paper submission option at the Journal of Public Economics! AERI rules apply, submissions are now open! See details here:

journals.elsevier.comJournal of Public EconomicsIn response to the worldwide spread of COVID-19, and the dramatic public policy response, in April 2020 the Journal of Public Economics issued a...

Good discussions and replies

Jan Kabátek @JanKabatek

Here's a bunch of @Stata tips for handling large datasets (millions of observations). I wish I knew them when I was starting with admin data analysis...

Andrew Lilley @andrewlilley_au

Some good news for JMCs on #EconTwitter. On a quick scrape of the AEA's job listings, the private sector seems to be holding at 90% of last year's listings at this point in time, and nonUS academic jobs are at ~65%. (Bad news is that US academic jobs at ~35% as bad as expected).

^…I don’t know if this is good news

Arnaud Dyevre @ArnaudDyevre

With friends at LSE, I recently had a reading group session in memory of Emmanuel Farhi. I discussed some of his influential papers on production networks with David Baqaee. I thought I'd summarise this discussion here for people interested in this beautiful line of work 👇

Ramya @ramyaar9

I’m crowdsourcing to create a list of PhD-level courses and office hours that are open to students around the world. Consolidating this data would help a number of prospective and current students. #EconTwitter

Eva Vivalt @evavivalt

First day officially at the University of Toronto! I'd like to try something new to help provide advice and mentoring (and also manage requests). "Open office hours": An hour where anyone anywhere in the world can sign up for a twenty minute slot to chat about research.