"Tariff engineering" is when a company tweaks a product to get a lower tariff rate. The Subaru BRAT of the 1980s got around the 25% "chicken tax" on US truck imports by adding jump seats in the back to qualify as passenger cars. Some more examples: 1/

Will the “Committee on Improvements to the Publications Process in Economics” improve things? The AEA, EEA, ES, and RES appointed seven respected leading economists to this committee. Well done - we need to improve the publication process. 1/n

Interested in issues of political conflict, market inefficiencies, and food crises? Want to study how these connect as part of your PhD work? I've got good news for you! Apply for this scholarship to work with me and Ashani Amarasinghe at Uni of Sydney Economics University of Sydney sydney.edu.au/scholarships/b…

Today we released the first papers from OpenResearch's Unconditional income Study, which gave 1k ppl $1k/mo for 3 yrs & had a N=2k control group This 🧵 is for RCT nerds: how did we measure the cash's fx? Learn about 96% response rates, blood draws, changing a state law & more..

I've posted a review article on deep learning for economists arxiv.org/pdf/2407.15339. The DL literature is vast, and I initially found it pretty daunting to find the parts of it that are most relevant to economic applications. I hope people will find this useful! #econtwitter

Today I wanted to do a 🧵 on an evergreen topic but one that lately I've had reason to reflect on: how to write a high-quality response to referees + editors (in economics). tl;dr: detailed + specific; diplomatic; careful cross-references to paper!

Using data from South Africa, this The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) paper shows that the unprecedented nationwide alcohol sales ban in July 2020 led to a 14% reduction in mortality in men. The Review of Economics and Statistics (REStat) v:👇 direct.mit.edu/rest/article/1… Free WP v:👇 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… More on paper:👇

Important thread.

Many of us can save a child’s life, if we rely on the best data. I think this is one of the most important facts about our world, and the topic of my new Our World in Data article: ourworldindata.org/many-us-can-sa…

🌿 AERE Scholar Spotlight: Weizhe Weng (@wwengw) 🌿 Weizhe's work focuses on environmental and natural resource economics, valuation of ecosystem services, and water policy. Website: fred.ifas.ufl.edu/about/director…

🚨 New paper in the Journal of Development Econ. Are migrants from poor countries relatively high or low productivity workers? What happens to migration as incomes rise? Mariapia Mendola and I note: These are closely related questions with a counterintutive answer (thread)

Just because a term appears many times in your paper doesn't mean you need to invent an initialism or acronym for it. Really. You can just write out the words every time. That's kinder to your reader in almost every case.

I think a lot about the '80s and the moral panics that characterized the time. It's no surprise that we've so recently fallen for this immigrants-are-eating-the-pets rumor, a lie often rooted in racism and fear. And one that only aids hate groups. nbcnews.com/tech/internet/…

Morgan Kelly's paper on "The Standard Errors of Persistence" (with T. Conley) is now forthcoming in the Journal of International Economics. The paper is relevant to this year's Nobel Prize in Economics on the importance of institutions for prosperity. 1/

THREAD (~50 tweets) My potted history of institutions in macro-development thinking, at the time of the AJR intervention. I had most of these thoughts earlier, but this week they have crystallised. I don't discuss AJR specifically, but I do have brief thoughts on their impact

Querer hacer un doctorado en una universidad top es una fuente de ilusión y frustración para muchos. Hoy escribí al respecto. Creo que es algo que nos ayuda a pensar cómo hacer las universidades en LatAm más competitivas. forbes.co/2024/10/22/act…

Yesterday I attended the session "Publishing in #Economics" at the #NEUDC2024 with Melissa Dell (JPE) Andrew Foster (JDE) Tavneet Suri (REStat) and Laura Schechter (JEBO) and I think everyone should benefit from the amazing insights and advice we received, here is my summary! 1/n

Just re-upping this: I currently have more mentors than mentees/students (can probably match another 10-11 students from LMICs who would like feedback on a research paper from a senior scholar.) Fill out the from here if interested! forms.gle/ekvvoEKBLYQMoN…

Our paper on distance learning in Nepal is now published in Journal of Development Economics! doi.org/10.1016/j.jdev…

Your slides should avoid having tons of extra junk on them, but the default Beamer themes make that hard. So I made my own .sty file that fixes all the standard issues and put it on my website for everyone to use: