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DIFFERENCE IN DIFFERENCE FOR HEALTH ECONOMICS POW 2/?

10/25/2019

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Paper of the week (POW) this week goes to "Designing Difference in Difference Studies: Best Practices for Public Health Policy Research" by Coady Wing and coauthors published in the Annual Review of Public Health. 

​
It contains a lot of useful reminders on best practices for empirical strategies that rely on difference-in-difference estimators.

Very helpful! Used it this morning in exploring some preliminary results. 

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RANDOMIZED CONTROL TRIALS IN PROTESTS?! POW 1/?

10/19/2019

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"Persistent Political Engagement: Social Interactions and the Dynamics of Protest Movements " by Leonardo Brusztyn and numerous coauthors came up while doing some research this week, and is certainly now the paper of the week (POW).

A copy of the abstract, the thrilling bits of which are in bold: 

"We test whether participation in one protest within a political movement increases subsequent protest attendance, and why. To identify an effect of protest participation, we randomly, indirectly incentivize Hong Kong university students into participation in an antiauthoritarian protest. To identify the effects of social interactions, we randomize the intensity of this treatment across major-cohort cells. We find that experimentally-induced protest participation is significantly associated with protest attendance one year later, though political beliefs and preferences are unaffected. Persistent political engagement is greatest among individuals in the cells with highest treatment intensity, suggesting that social interactions sustained persistent political engagement."

A working paper version that is publicly available through Google may be found below.
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10 best ECONOMICS PODCASTS

10/13/2019

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My 30 mile drive to work leaves me with ample time to listen to audiobooks and podcasts.

So why not just compile a list of great economics, finance, and business podcasts!

(in no particular order)

General Economics
  1. Freakonomics Radio with Steve Dubner and Steve Levitt
  2. Capitalisn't by Luigi Zingales and Kate Waldock.
  3. Planet Money by NPR
  4. London School of Economics Public Lectures & Events
  5. EconTalk with Russ Roberts (tends to dwell on philosophy)
  6. Economics Amplified by the Becker Friedman Institute

Trade and Macro
  1. Trade Talks with Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown
  2. Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Behavioral Economics
  1. Behavioral Grooves
  2. The Brainy Business
​​
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TRAVELING FOR SUNY BUSINESS - shared governance

10/12/2019

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I have the honor of being "Faculty Senator" for Farmingdale State College, which means that I represent Farmingdale at the "University Faculty Senate" (UFS). UFS is the legal channel through which the faculty influences system-wide SUNY policy. It meets once per semester to vote on resolutions and get policy updates from administrators.

The UFS trips are always a joy for numerous reasons:
  1. The colleagues that attend are fantastic people. They are like-minded in their desire to make SUNY as great as it can be in about all dimensions: accessibility, quality, diversity, etc.
  2. The networking opportunity is fantastic, you will always meet someone new. This Plenary I met the Chancellor, the chair of the Board of Trustees, and a mission-oriented CDO from College at Brockport who I think has many tools to help some challenges facing our campus. 
  3. The travel - Meetings are upstate more frequently than not. I am totally fine with this because I currently love  just about anything upstate New York. UFS travel, so far, has allowed me to visit Syracuse, Saratoga Springs, Cooperstown, and most recently Albany.

Pics below of the incredible SUNY System Administration building .
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A more centered view from the front shows there are flags for each campus decorating the plaza.
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So naturally, I had to find where our flag is. It turns out we are right near the entrance!
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It's also exquisite at night:
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What a building!
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seNDING MY STUDENTS TO University of Chicago Law school FOR A DAY

10/10/2019

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I have to travel to Albany today as Farmingdale State College's "Faculty Senator". It's a big honor and a very enjoyable aspect of my job. 

My "Game Theory for Business" students (ECO 372) will be "attending law school" for the day, as I will not be there to challenge them.

By "attending law school", I mean that they will be watching a lecture from the University of Chicago School of Law on the problem we have been studying for the past 2 weeks: supply chain holdup.

The video is embedded below, but can also be accessed at this link.
Many interesting examples come up in the video. We have been studying a particular example of an upstream firm holding up a downstream firm (e.g. the GM -vs- Fisher debacle of the 1920s).

What I like about this video is that it includes examples of an upstream firm, like a natural gas or oil supplier/refiner, being held up by a downstream firm, like whoever owns the pipelines to transport these resources.

The contract solution presented in those industries is the take-or-pay contract: the downstream firm has the obligation to pay the upstream in accordance with the terms of the contract, independent of whether they actually take delivery of the resource.

This commits the downstream firm to not hold up the upstream firm - it has to pay the agreed to amount whether or not it takes delivery. 

To let my students indulge in exploring this aspect of business, I developed the homework problem below, which is a part of my "OER" development of this course.
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ECONOMETRICS IN ACTION: HARVARD DISCRIMINATION CASE - PART 2/? WHO LET THE ECONOMISTS IN?

10/8/2019

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So the first tasty bits of economists starting to become more apparent in the Harvard case appears on page 50. 

It gets spicy QUICK.

LINK TO PAGE 50 
So the case is an argument about the appropriate econometric specification.

Or if you're a fan of the lingo in the profession, it's an argument about the preferred​ specification.

Why do different sides have different preferred specifications?

Well that's on account of greater philosophical concerns regarding econometrics and identification. Suffice it to say that, in practice, results can change wildly depending on the controls used in a specification. Which controls are "good" and which controls are "bad" is clearly a point of contention in this particular case. And in just about any empirical research, at the frontier there is an argument about the appropriate specification to use.

I need to read the case more thoroughly and read the expert witness report by David Card before I comment on the preferred specifications, but it seems to be as to whether or not to condition on personal rating and status in particular advantaged groups like athletes, legacies, children of faculty, etc.



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EDITING a journal

10/7/2019

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In 2017 I was elected Editor for the New York State Economics Association. (NYSEA)

Why?

I did this because it represented a tremendous opportunity, and being elected also felt like an honor, despite the fact that I believe I ran uncontested.

It's hard to say no to things as a junior faculty member. The nature of junior faculty life is also such that you get ample time to scheme, and this can lead you down all sorts of rabbit holes.

The previous Editor, Bill O'Dea @ Oneonta, provided big shoes to fill.

That said, there were numerous opportunities to improve the visibility of the journal.

So far, I have done the following:
  1. Get the journal listed on EconLit, the indexing service of the American Economic Association
  2. Get the journal back on Cabell's Whitelist (paywall, sorry!)
  3. Make the journal entirely open access via CC-BY-NC-ND licensing. (I'm a big fan of open educational resources)

The Fall 2019 issue of the New York Economic Review​ is available by clicking here!
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Econometrics in action: harvard Discrimination case - Part 1/?

10/3/2019

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Click here for a link to the expert witness report filed on behalf of Harvard by David Card (labor economist)

Click here for a link to the Judge's Opinion hosted on my Google Drive.


It's always refreshing to see that tools you teaching to students are regularly used in their daily lives.

Perhaps the best and most recent example of applications of econometrics is in the case filed against Harvard for discrimination against Asian-American students.

Any empirical economist is going to have a mega complex regarding his quantitative skillset, by which he means his prowess in econometric analysis. It is our comparative advantage over fields like sociology or other liberal arts. Anything they say you can't measure, you probably can, and we probably are arguing over it at this very moment.

Econometrics has the wonderful ability to quantify just about any social science phenomena one is interested in, so naturally this lends to understanding whether, statistically, there is evidence of segregation.

I plan to write more on this soon, but my favorite passage so far is on p. 34

"Mr. Hansen's models could lead a casual observer to conclude that race plays a
significantly larger role in Harvard s admissions process than it actually does...
 The models
incorporate far fewer variables than those prepared by the parties economic experts for this
litigation and omit many variables that are important to the admissions process. Compare [PX12
at 33 ] , with [ PD38 at 26 ]. Even Mr. Hansen's most complete model almost certainly suffers
from considerable omitted variable bias in light of the likely correlation between race and
important variables that Mr. Hansen did not include. Most notably, his models contain no
controls for socioeconomic and family circumstances that correlate with race and also affect
admissions decisions. See [PX12 at 33] . Given these deficiencies in the models, they are
entitled to little weight for the purpose of determining whether Harvard discriminates against
Asian American applicants, particularly given the availability of the experts far more
comprehensive models and the testimony offered by fact witnesses in this case. See Oct 19 Tr.
19: 19– 20:8...
 Hansen's models do suggest, consistent with other evidence, that Asian
Americans applicants excel in academic metrics; that tips for legacies and recruited athletes
result in more white students being admitted; that a projection of Harvard' s class based only on
the profile ratings, academic metrics, and athlete and legacy statuses is incomplete and results in
a projected class that is vastly less racially diverse than the one Harvard achieves; and that ,
absent any consideration of race,Harvard s classes would have drastically fewer African
American and Hispanic students."
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Early october MUSIC VIBES

10/2/2019

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Joji and Post on repeat this fall. 
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    This blog is a therapeutic outlet for me to write about life on the tenure track in economics. 

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