Justin Wolfers Profile picture
Jan 3, 2019 12 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Here’s a piece that David Romer and I just wrote for the latest CSWEP newsletter, which we think contains some useful insights for those seeking to make economics a more diverse place.

Begins on p.7, here: aeaweb.org/content/file?i…

Lemme expand a bit on what we found...
When we took over as editors of the Brookings Papers, we made a conscious decision to try to include more women economists on the program. You can think of this as something of an experiment, and so our note is our attempt to report on the results.
By one measure, we succeeded. The number of women who published in the @BrookingsEcon Papers more than doubled, to a share that somewhat exceeds the share of women in “top twenty” economics departments.
I know you love diff-in-diffs, so Everyone loves diffs-in-diffs, so the it’s worth comparing the share of women writing for #BPEA both before and after our experiment, and relative to comparable conference and journals.

A chart is worth a thousand words: Image
The most important thing that helped, I think, was just trying to be gender aware. Trying to avoid conscious discrimination under the presumption that implicit bias only afflicts the judgment of others is a recipe for gross gender imbalance.
Let’s be concrete. In our experience, the following practices helped:
- We gave ourselves quantitative guidelines
- We interpreted these as a floor, not a target
- We pushed each other to do better
- We broadened the set of fields we would publish
- We had institutional support
Other well-intentioned changes didn’t move the needle:
- Our more formally structured call for papers didn’t lead to a bunch more submissions from women
- Recruiting the top women in the profession simply supported work that was already going to get published
But the bigger picture is that we failed. The relevant question is whether *at the margin* the marginal female participant contributed more than the marginal man. In our judgment, the answer was a resounding yes. Image
“We had thought we were tilting the scale toward women; the reality is, we had simply put a thumb rather than a fist on the scale for men.”

That was a helluva lesson for us to learn. And we’re sure that it has implications for other efforts to improve gender equity.
We wish that we could report on our efforts to improve the underrepresentation of African-Americans and other marginalized voices. But the underrepresentation of some groups is so severe that in reality, we would be reporting anecdotes disguised as data.
What I learned: Even when you think you’re working as hard as you can to redress imbalances, it’s quite possible that you’re still not doing enough. [/fin]
Also, my friend Karen Pence (not that Karen Pence, the economist, Karen Pence...) has a wonderful article with Daniel Covitz, outlining the Fed’s efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

See p.4, here: aeaweb.org/content/file?i…

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More from @JustinWolfers

May 12
Important news from US-China trade talks:
1. The US will cut the rate at which it taxes Americans who buy stuff from China, to 30%
2. China will cut the rate at which it taxes Chinese folks who buy stuff from the US, to 10%.

It's another Ross and Rachel moment: A 90-day pause.
This is good news.

It means less inflationary pressure in both countries.

It means less disruption for business in both countries.
There are two ways to frame this news:
1. U.S. trade policy and our macroeconomic prospects are much better today than they were yesterday
2. U.S. trade policy and our macroeconomic prospects are much worse today than on Inauguration day

Both are true.
Read 8 tweets
May 9
It's a "deal," not a deal:
"This document serves to define the general terms for the EPD that set forth the shared desires of the US and the UK... Both the US and the UK recognize that this document does not constitute a legally binding agreement."

ustr.gov/sites/default/…Image
My favorite bit: The filename is:
"US UK EPD_050825_FINAL rev v2.pdf"
(don't know why they didn't include "_latestDJT")

That title might also yield a hint as to why the press conference started late.
Here's the "unprecedented access to UK market" that Lutnick promised:

"The UK and the US plan to work constructively in an effort to enhance agricultural market access. Further, both countries positively support future discussions to strengthen bilateral agricultural trade. " Image
Read 5 tweets
May 2
Phew.

Payrolls grew a relatively uninteresting (and positive!) +177k in April, and unemployment was unchanged at 4.2%.

This economy is still humming along.

NOTE: This is a reading largely from the pre-tariff period. Still very foggy about what lies ahead.
Revisions were somewhat worrying: March was revised down -43k to +185k. Feb down -15k to +102k.

Three month average payrolls growth -- a useful indicator of the underlying pace of job growth -- is a healthy +155k. That's a pretty great place to be at this point in the cycle.
Nominal wage growth was 0.2% this month, and are up 3.8% over the year. That's probably enough to keep inflation above the Fed's target (and that's before factoring in the effect of tariffs).

The period of disinflation may be over.
Read 8 tweets
Apr 30
Ugh. It's happening. The economy shrank in the first quarter, at an annual rate of -0.3%.

The good news: Consumption and investment remained strong. Think of this as a hard-to-interpret report due to -- **all of this**. Remember, this is the average of Q1, and the real concern is about Q2.Image
Look into the details, and the GDP report really isn't that bad. (We already know from the jobs data that the economy did okay in Q1.)

@jasonfurman suggested focusing on Real final sales to private domestic purchasers (basically C+I, the reliable parts of GDP) which grew +3.0% Image
The sharp rise in investment appears to be almost all due to pre-tariff front-running. Investment contributed 3.6%-pts to Q1 GDP growth.

Of that, inventory accumulation was 2.2%-pts.

And an additional 1.1% came from equipment investment (which is what the China tariffs hit).
Read 6 tweets
Apr 9
Biggest mistakes I'm seeing in early reporting:

1. Tariffmageddon isn't over: Lotsa tariffs to account for, but the average tariff rate is only down around one quarter.
2. He's not going to get big wins: Tariffs were low before this mess, and if Trump negotiates competently, they'll be low again. Basically no gain.

You've seen this movie before: It was NAFTA which got relabeled by Trump in 2020, but really barely changed.
3. The rationale for this policy keeps changing. Remember when it was all about bringing manufacturing home? (That was yesterday.) Now it's negotiating deals. Those are fundamentally in tension.

(I'm only going to build a factory in the US if tariffs are likely to persist.)
Read 5 tweets
Feb 17
One thing I've learned to do when I have questions about social security number holders who are age 100 or older is to look up the SSA Inspector General audit report, "Numberholders Age 100 or Older Who Did Not Have Death Information on the Numident."

oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads… x.com/elonmusk/statu…
It's a gripping read. It tells me, for instance, that 98 percent of these folks have received no payments. Image
Why are there dead people on (this one table of) the social security database? They died before the use of electronic death records. Image
Read 4 tweets

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