Best of #econtwitter - Week of October 24, 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

Alexander Berger @albrgr

Oof conference.nber.org/conf_papers/f1…

October 22nd 2021

197 Retweets892 Likes

Paul Novosad @paulnovosad

Jacob Moscona's BREAD paper is fascinating. On why agricultural research knowledge doesn't get transferred to poorer countries. Will try to keep up in a thread. Livestream: Development Economics / BREAD Meetingyoutube.com

October 22nd 2021

23 Retweets100 Likes

^more from BREAD: adaptation to temperature/drought changes in Brazil

Diego Restuccia @DiegoRestuccia

Thrilled to have this paper on Geography and Agricultural Productivity with Tasso Adamopoulos forthcoming in the Review of Economic Studies. Low-quality land endowment is not the main source of low agricultural productivity in poor countries. A thread. 1/11

The Review of Economic Studies @RevEconStud

Geography and Agricultural Productivity: Cross-Country Evidence from Micro Plot-Level Data   https://t.co/otTQgOxbro   Tasso Adamopoulos, York University and Diego Restuccia, University of Toronto and NBER   #economics https://t.co/2QCB1kzYvS

October 22nd 2021

63 Retweets270 Likes

Danial Lashkari @DanialLashkari

We build a proxy for different aspects of job quality for each US occupation using representative survey data We estimate effect of parent income on likelihood of choosing each US occupation (controlling for education, etc) The two are highly correlated across occupations 2/n

October 24th 2021

3 Likes

Scott Sumner @ScottSumnerTMI

A 30 tweet thread discussing my new Mercatus working paper on the Princeton School of macro, which revolutionized monetary theory, providing a framework for our understanding of stabilization policy in the ultra-low interest rate 21st century.

October 19th 2021

92 Retweets281 Likes

More: publication bias in prejudice reduction experiments; UST valuations; why cement is expensive in Africa; low interest rates and market structure; comparing different estimates of top incomes; time-varying prices and electricity consumption; social capital and monetary policy shocks; classifying network mechanisms; MeToo triple diff; agriculture misallocation and land reform; reallocation and partner violence

Public goods

Drew Johnston @drew_m_johnston

I'm excited to announce the release of the zip code Social Connectedness Index! It captures the rate of Facebook friendships between zip codes. This data set allows for much more granular uses than before. A 🧵 of examples:

October 19th 2021

139 Retweets575 Likes

Andy Ferrara @Andreas_Ferrara

New working paper alert (with @patesta and @LiyangZhou6)! Introducing new area- AND population-based crosswalks for harmonizing boundaries of U.S. counties (i) to congressional districts and (ii) across U.S. Census years. Paper: warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/econom… (1/7)

October 20th 2021

26 Retweets101 Likes

⑆Luke Stein⑈ @lukestein

I get some rando Stata questions in my DMs, and unless I have an answer right at hand, tell folks to sign up for Asjad’s good Discord👇 Check it out if you’re looking for friendly advice in a chat-style forum

Asjad Naqvi @AsjadNaqvi

Dear all, a reminder that if you have Stata questions, especially regarding stuff covered in the Stata Guide, then post them on the Discord server where several people can respond: https://t.co/aU8558nnRb I get questions in the mail regularly and its hard to keep track!

October 24th 2021

1 Retweet5 Likes

Interesting discussions

John Horton @johnjhorton

I think people (esp. older academics) don’t appreciate how valuable it is as an academic to have an independent distribution channel for your work. Nearly 20k followers means anything he writes will get some attention. That’s huge.

Khoa Vu @KhoaVuUmn

Hi Martin @MartinRavallion , I believe your tweet came with good intention like any advice from a good adviser. You have a large influence on my work and passion for dev econ, so I'm writing this response with all of the respect I have.

October 18th 2021

7 Retweets186 Likes

^see also

Jason Abaluck @Jabaluck

A major difference between econ and epi is that econ is more authoritarian while epi is more democratic. This has positive and negative consequences @EpiEllie

Dr Ellie Murray, ScD @EpiEllie

Econtwitter friends, here’s something I respect about your field & would like to learn to emulate: At least from my outsider perspective, new methodological advances (or at least awareness of problems in old methods) seem to propagate through econ so fast! How do you do it?!

October 20th 2021

28 Retweets138 Likes

Kaspar Wüthrich @wuthrich_k

happy to see Econometrica being very explicit about their expectations. these are great guidelines that hopefully will improve the review process.

Garance Genicot @GGenicot

Wanted to share a great set of guidelines to referees adopted by Econometrica and QE: https://t.co/F0N813nTIV

October 21st 2021

3 Retweets8 Likes

Dr. Jessica Schleider @JSchleiderPhD

Here is a 🧵 of terms related to money/funding in academia that no one explained to me until I was applying for faculty jobs (or after I'd started), that I pretended to understand until then, and that would’ve been very helpful to learn earlier than I did. 1/a whole bunch

October 22nd 2021

1,319 Retweets4,687 Likes

^also: AP salaries by department for one university

Arpit Gupta @arpitrage

Really cool resource here — income returns information by major and school; downloadable. Here, for example, are estimated earnings for some "tech" majors vs. liberal arts at age 35. cc @AnthonyLeeZhang

Shoshana Weissmann, Sloth Committee Chair 🦥 @senatorshoshana

NEW: @PrestonCooper93 @FREOPP's paper is FINALLY out!!! 1) Some degrees are worth millions, others have no net financial value https://t.co/5pVpN6OXXT 2) We Calculated Return On Investment For 30,000 Bachelor’s Degrees https://t.co/QeVWa3H0rm

October 22nd 2021

4 Retweets22 Likes

Shengwu Li @ShengwuLi

On reading the ‘classics’: in my own work, I have often come up with a seemingly new idea, only to discover that it is an old idea that resisted formalization. 🧵

October 23rd 2021

39 Retweets271 Likes

^a lot of discussion on this topic this week, most of it bad, stay safe out there — comment, comment

Twitter Engineering @TwitterEng

You may have heard about this year's Economics Nobel Prize winners - David Card, Josh Angrist (@metrics52) & Guido Imbens. Their publicly available work has helped us solve tough problems @Twitter, and we're excited to celebrate by sharing how their findings have inspired us.

October 18th 2021

746 Retweets2,549 Likes

scott cunningham @causalinf

Just thinking about Princeton. One thing people maybe don’t appreciate is that while the three winners are now at MIT, Berkeley and Stanford, the award quite frankly is an award to Princeton and it’s post 1970s empirical labor group.

October 14th 2021

11 Retweets109 Likes

^ICYMI: special edition of the newsletter on the Nobel last week