🧵1/ Some thoughts on the current state of applied microeconomics.
Causal inference has become the dominant paradigm for what many applied microeconomists focus upon and, I think, what many think applied microeconomics is (at least in labor, public, health, crime, education etc.
2/ & causal inference is enormously important for understanding the effects of many policies or other “treatments”, after the fact.
But it is often much less useful for understanding how to make good policy, in advance.
Dec 25, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
1/ I recently put out a thread on a particularly egregious practice – early exploding offers – that some (presumably a small # of) econ departments engage in during job market season. Below are some thoughts about good practices/ethical behavior by job market candidates.
2/ It’s aimed at but is not limited to rookies. I’m sure others will disagree with some of my points. So please chime in.
A point some candidates may not fully realize is that this is a two-way matching process with risks on both sides.
Dec 24, 2021 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
1/ There have been some threads out about economics departments giving tenure-track offers that “explode” even before the main ASSA meeting interviews. Some thoughts on that.
1. This has been going on for a long-time but it may have gotten worse in recent years.
2/ 2.In my view, this is unethical behavior. I would not want to be at any department or school that does this. Of course, that assumes having the choice to avoid such places. New PhD’s may not have that choice, or not know what their options are.
Mar 25, 2020 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
1/11 There has been quite a bit of Twitter discussion of the broader health effects of the current crisis, much of which refers to my work on the health effects of macroeconomic conditions. This stream provides some thoughts on that. #EconTwitter#epitwitter#COVID20192/ First & foremost, the honest answer is that we don’t know what will happen. The current severe economic downturn is caused by a health shock, which has not been the case in over 100 years. For instance, the “Great Recession” largely occurred due to a financial shock.
Mar 24, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
1/8. I’ve been following the number of US & international corona virus cases & provide some observations of recent trends, that maybe of interest. Note that a relatively high number of deaths as a % of confirmed cases (PERCENT) likely indicates a combination of poor
2/ quality of care & low rates of testing (see:
Well known stuff. Internationally, Italy is a disaster: 6820 deaths & highest PERCENT (9.9%) indicating the 69,176 reported cases far understated the total. Iran is next: 1934 deaths, PERCENT = 7.8%.
Mar 22, 2020 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
1/12 I’m guessing many of you, like me, are obsessing over the statistics on the COVID-19 (looking at the maps & charts many times per day). Here are some thoughts on how to interpret them.
#econtwitter, #epitwitter, #coronavirus2/ I’m not an epidemiologist but have considerable experience conducting statistical analyses, including of mortality rates
We currently have two main statistics available to us: 1) # of known cases (24,378 in the US as I write this) & 2) # of deaths (340 in the US currently).
