Justin Wolfers Profile picture
Aug 26, 2020 7 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Every econ instructor I know has been flat out all summer preparing for the new semester. With all that’s happened in the world, we’ve got a lot of work to do to update our classes to reflect our new covid reality.

So I thought I would see what I could do to help… #teachecon
So over the summer I’ve been working furiously to put together a slide deck that folks can use to their classes with covid examples, recent economic data and studies, and discussion questions.

Now, it's time to share it. You can download it all here: users.nber.org/~jwolfers/teac…
The covid crisis is the biggest thing that’s happened in our students’ lives, and if we want to make the case that economics is relevant, we need to show them that the frameworks we’re teaching speak directly to these issues.

Hopefully these slides will give you a head start.
I was struck by just how much economics has to say about just about every major development, news story, and policy issue that has arisen in these tumultuous times.

It's certainly given me a useful lens for understanding the world, and I hope it helps you and your students, too
The slides are organized by teaching topic, and they cover both micro and macro.

While they follow the organization of my (amazing!) new textbook in reality, they’ll be a useful complement to almost any Intro (or even Intermediate) course.
If any of this makes you curious about what it’s like to teach from that new textbook I was just mentioning, add your details to this google form, and if you’re a college instructor, we’ll get a (free!) review copy out to you ASAP. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI….
Most importantly, a huge thank you to @fordschool student Jonathan Rodriguez who gave up hours of his summer to work on developing these slides.

The rest of us have just one job: Download those slides, and drag and drop 'em into your course, and do a great job teaching.

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More from @JustinWolfers

Nov 4
This counter-response essentially says that any form of weighting in survey research is herding. If so, I love herding!

He's right about the motivation: All weighting is done to ensure that you don't get crazy results. But that's a feature of a good poll, not a bug!
After all: Is there a principled difference between weighting on age (to ensure that your sample includes youngs and olds) and weighting on past vote (to ensure you get folks from across the political spectrum)?
Both age and past vote are:
- Predetermined (before this poll)
- Non-manipulable
- Though self-reported
- And we have good population estimates to weight them to.

What principle would make one of these a legitimate survey design weight and the other "herding"?
Read 9 tweets
Nov 4
Lately @NateSilver has been arguing that pollsters are "herding" —tweaking or hiding their results to avoid publishing outliers.

I don't know any (reputable) pollsters who do this.

And I think the problem here is Nate making a simple math/stats error 🧵 Image
Let's explore binomial distributions and the standard errors of weighted samples.

TL, DR: Weighting across groups with different voting patterns should change how you calculate confidence intervals.

Fail to do so, and you'll falsely accuse pollsters of herding.
First, what @NateSilver538 does:

In a “vanilla” poll—a simple random sample—the standard error of an estimate of a candidate’s vote share, p, in a two horse race is √[p(1-p)/n].

This is the perspective that animates Nate's analysis of "herding". Image
Read 34 tweets
Oct 24
Focusing for a moment on the POLICIES at play.

Voters were asked whether they supported 100 different policies, but weren't told whether the policy was from Trump or Harris.

Nearly all of Harris' policies got majority support from the public, and... 🧵 Image
Far fewer of Trump's policy proposals garnered majority support, and almost none were broadly popular (say, >75% support). Image
Most undecided voters like most of Harris' policies (left graph).

Most undecided voters dislike most of Trumps policies (right graph). Image
Read 5 tweets
Oct 13
Senator, I think it's worth acknowledging that violent crime actually has falllen, and indeed it is lower today than it has been for decades. Image
This decline in violent crime is evident in not just the FBI reports, but also an independent survey by the BJS. Image
If you don't trust data from G-men, the decline in homicide rates the FBI reports is also evident in a count of death certificates in which coroners cute homicide as the cause of death. Image
Read 6 tweets
Oct 4
Wowza: HUGE jobs report.

September payrolls grew +254k, well above expectations.

August payrolls revised up +17k to +159k, and July revised up +55k to +144k.

Unemployment fell to 4.1%

This economic expansion that is motoring along.
Honestly, there's not much to say here other than that fears the job market had slowed turned out to be a statistical illusion due to incomplete data.

Over the past three months, payrolls is motoring along at +186k per month, on average, which is pretty much where you want it.
(The conspiracy theories on revisions to economic numbers confuse me, and I can't remember whether numbers getting revised up to look good is evidence of a conspiracy, or numbers later get revised down is evidence of an initial conspiracy that falls apart.)
Read 12 tweets
Oct 2
Senator, you're misleading folks again. I just read the CBO report you recommend. It actually says that an immigration surge boosts federal revenues quite dramatically, and has only a small effect on mandatory spending and interest.
Image
The CBO study @JDVance cites analyzes how immigration improves the *federal* budget.

Yet he pulls a misleading quote, talking about the effects of *state and local* budgets and ignoring the (likely larger) federal govt impacts.

Here's the CBO directly saying this isn't okay: Image
Of course, you might ask: How could @JDVance have known that this was a study of *federal* budgets, not of what's happening to *state and local* budgets?

Well, the title yields a vital clue. Image
Read 5 tweets

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