How many people go to church weekly?

Surveys say it's about 1 in 5 Americans.

Cell phone tracker data say it's actually closer to 1 in 20 Americans.

Fascinating new working paper!

nber.org/papers/w32334






Week to week variation in religious attendance according to cell phone tracking data.

Can you guess what happens when you give kids food stamps?

...
...
...
...

They...

⚫live longer,
⚫invest more in human capital,
⚫are more economically self-sufficient,
⚫live in better neighborhoods,
⚫are less likely to be incarcerated.

academic.oup.com/restud/advance… "Food Stamps’ transfer of resources to families is a highly cost-effective investment in young children."

Source: "Is the Social Safety Net a Long-Term Investment? Large-Scale Evidence from the Food Stamps Program"

restud.com/is-the-social-…

Running a study where you use names to signal race?

Be careful! Names signal more than just race alone.

But (!), fret not; we have pre-tested 600+ names for perceptions of race/class/citizenship.

Paper: nature.com/articles/s4159…

Data: github.com/jaeyk/validate… by @cdcrabtree, @JaeJaeykim2, @smgaddis, myself, Guage, and Marx.

My latest working paper with @hjghassell.

Punchline: we show that despite prior research claims to the contrary, mass shootings have little effect on electoral outcomes in the U.S.

A short thread 1/n

dropbox.com/s/kanzrjmdzf0y… We have two goals in our new paper:

1.) explore the question of whether mass shootings affect election outcomes in the United States

2.) Provide an overview/application of recent advances in the diff-in-diffs space. 2/n

dropbox.com/s/kanzrjmdzf0y…

Anyone else feel like social scientists actually know far less than we think we know? I was thinking about this in the context of all of the failures to replicate many findings in social science fields in recent years.

And how before those replication failures occurred, we were so very certain that we knew something about the world.

This is your periodic reminder that the graduation regalia for PhDs in Finland is a top hat and a sword. "The Doctor's Sword is a symbol for the scientist's fight for what he or she, in rigorous research, has found to be good, right and true."

PhDs who leave the academy are *definitively* not failures. But, all too often, the academy fails them. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...

If PhD programs are, truly, going to prepare students for non-academic jobs, they should, at minimum, stop sending signals—overtly or covertly—that non-academic jobs are inferior.

Americans are less likely to respond to emails from African Americans.

My new research with @rayblock1, @cdcrabtree, @QuinMonson just dropped at PNAS (@PNASNews).

Here's what we did, what we found, and why it matters. 1/n

pnas.org/content/118/52… We have ample evidence that African Americans face violent and overt forms of discrimination.

Need I say more?

2/n

Look at the gender breakdown of who speaks in popular films! If it's too hard to see, here's the takeaway: men dominate spoken work in popular films.

the spread of COVID-19 visualized It's impossible to look at this and not think, "we had this thing beat in the Spring of 2021..."

My latest (with @KalMunis, Bradshaw, Rabinowitz, and Ialongo) is out today at Prevention Science.

Using a RCT, we show that high quality childhood education programs increase voter turnout in adulthood *a lot*.

link.springer.com/article/10.100… This new article conceptually replicates/extends my previously published 2017 article at the @apsrjournal that shows that helping kids develop their "noncognitive" skills has long term payoffs in terms of increasing adult voter turnout.

cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Can you guess what happens when an adult entertainment establishment opens in a neighborhood?

Sex crimes decline by 13% as a direct result.

Why?

"Potential sex offenders frequent [adult entertainment] establishments rather than committing [sex] crimes"

academic.oup.com/ej/advance-art… "The Effect of Adult Entertainment Establishments on Sex Crime: Evidence from New York City"

academic.oup.com/ej/advance-art…

Does raising the minimum wage reduce the number of low-wage jobs?

No.

"We also find no evidence of disemployment when we consider higher levels of minimum wages."

academic.oup.com/qje/article/13… Minimum wage increases reduce crime.

nber.org/papers/w25116

"No one could have seen this coming." "No one could have seen this coming."