Matt Notowidigdo
@ProfNoto
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Labor Economics & Health Economics @ChicagoBooth AEJ-Policy co-editor @AEAJournals Research Associate @nberpubs
Chicago, IL
Joined July 2017
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My annual tradition continues -- my 10 favorite economics papers published in 2021, ordered alphabetically
[Meant to do this yesterday, but I had a paper rejected on New Year's Day -- Happy New Year! -- so I decided to deal with that instead]
Just under the wire again, but I continue my annual tradition -- my 10 favorite economics papers published in 2020, ordered alphabetically
[Was pretty tough this year; might have to do an "honorable mention" list in January...]
8
136
751
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816
Just under the wire again, but I continue my annual tradition -- my 10 favorite economics papers published in 2020, ordered alphabetically
[Was pretty tough this year; might have to do an "honorable mention" list in January...]
8
136
751
Advice from a famous economist: “Go to Silicon Valley and talk to tech execs there. It will give you a sense of how people often feel talking to economists. The arrogance and self-assuredness is simply astounding, and it’s a cathartic experience to see it from the other side”
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I'm moving to
@UChicago
next month to be a Professor of Economics at
@ChicagoBooth
@AgnesCallard
once wrote that
@UChicago
is "one of the most intellectually open places the world has ever known"
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Bernie Sanders & AOC have proposed capping credit card interest rates at 15%
For recent evidence on the effects of this kind of policy, we can turn to one of my favorite recent econ papers (by Ignacio Cuesta & Alberto Sepúlveda)
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have a plan to cap credit card interest rates at 15%
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KARTHIK SRINIVASAN is an applied microeconomist studying topics in media economics and political economy. His JMP studies the desire for attention in the context of social media using data from Reddit and TikTok
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Coming in just under the wire -- and keeping w/ my annual Twitter tradition -- here are my 10 favorite economics papers of 2019
[Same rules: 10 papers, published in 2019, ordered alphabetically]
As 2018 comes to a close, here's a list of my favorite Econ papers this year
First, my list from last year:
Same rules apply: 10 papers, published in 2018, ordered alphabetically...
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To clear up any possible confusion, mass deportations and taking away health insurance from millions of children are not effective ways to raise wages and grow the economy
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Economist approximations: "We take a first-order approximation and assume that this curve is a line"
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Professional news!
Dean of Arts & Sciences: "I have been informed that the Provost & President will recommend your promotion [to Professor] to the Board of Trustees"
Me:
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Last month I received a one-line referee report that I enjoyed passing on to the authors:
"This is a nice paper. You should be proud of it"
[This was after a major revision, so a full report was certainly not necessary; if I got this, I'd print it out & tape it to my monitor]
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Hello world, I’m writing to introduce the
@ChicagoBooth
Economics PhD program's Job Market Candidates!
Eric Budish and I are the faculty co-directors of the program, so please e-mail us with any questions
Here are our outstanding and inspiring students (in alphabetical order):
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Great quote from Justice Gorsuch: "If the gov't finds filling out forms a chore, it has good company. The world is awash in forms, and rarely do agencies afford individuals the same latitude in completing them that the gov't seeks for itself today."
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Told my zipline guide that I taught economics, and he asked “What’s the one thing I need to know in economics?”
I panicked and didn’t give an answer before I had to zip away to the next platform.
What should have I said?
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AEJ-Policy's "best paper award" this year goes to Julius Andersson's paper that studies the implementation of a carbon tax in Sweden and finds that the tax reduced CO2 emissions substantially
Congratulations to the winners of the 2022 AEJ Best Paper Awards! Check out the winning papers here:
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I want to start a Twitter thread!(*)
QUESTION: What is one of your favorite figures in economics? Please submit answers below!
(*)Inspired by dinner conversation last week with possible colleagues
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Back in 2010, four economists ran a fascinating randomized experiment that assigned workers in China to work from home
They found WFH raised productivity, increased work satisfaction, and reduced worker attrition [though promotion rate fell]
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Congrats to my colleague
@seema_econ
on her promotion to Full Professor!
In EconTwitterLand, Seema is most well-known for her research in development econ, environmental econ, and gender (see , , & )
My piece on
@arvindsubraman
's gender analysis in
#EconomicSurvey18
. Explains how the "sex ratio of last-born children" brings to light India's "unwanted girls" + what can be done.
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Happy Labor Day!
To celebrate, I spent some time earlier today digging into the latest version of this paper studying the contribution of mass unionization to the mid-century decline in inequality in the US [h/t
@jschmittwdc
]
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$180 billion to practically eliminate child poverty seems to me like a much better use of tax dollars than, say, the $265 billion spent last year subsidizing employer-provided health insurance (the single largest federal tax expenditure)
In 1959, 35% of those age 65 and over lived in poverty. Social Security has helped bring that number down to 8.9%. In her new analysis,
@kearney_melissa
asks: what if we gave the same benefits to the 14.4% of children living in poverty today?
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@london_econ
@anup_malani
@causalinf
@nytimes
@arpitrage
@KhoaVuUmn
That's basically right (though it was 7 chapters, not 8)
Source:
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Inspired by
@Noahpinion
, here are some of my own favorite economics papers from this year. I require that the papers were published in 2017, so with publication lags that means these papers have been marinating awhile. Alphabetical ordering follows
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Celebrating MLK Day by re-reading Almond/Chay/Greenstone on the effects of desegregation of Southern hospitals on racial gaps in infant mortality
Prof Greenstone taught me the importance of communicating w/ figures; here's their striking case study of MI:
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"Look What You Made Me Do: The Effect of Taylor Swift on Voting"
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If you are a PhD student doing a replication project for class, why not apply for this and become a co-author on a nice meta-replication paper? Everybody wins :-)
Join us for a meta-replication! Replicators are paid EUR 2,500 to conduct a robustness replication in development economics. Plus co-authorship on a meta-paper and lead authorship on replication report. Apply until Nov 26!
#econtwitter
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As 2018 comes to a close, here's a list of my favorite Econ papers this year
First, my list from last year:
Same rules apply: 10 papers, published in 2018, ordered alphabetically...
Inspired by
@Noahpinion
, here are some of my own favorite economics papers from this year. I require that the papers were published in 2017, so with publication lags that means these papers have been marinating awhile. Alphabetical ordering follows
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Happy 4th of July!
Obviously the findings are interesting, but I also learned a lot of applied econometrics from this paper
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Today I learned that the Nobel-winning Modigliani-Miller theorem came from ill-matched teaching assignments
[source: ]
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Chris Udry's pick: Jensen 2007 QJE paper showing that cell phones reduce price dispersion in the fisheries sector in Kerala, India (This is a very interesting paper!)
Other nominations?
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This 2006 AER paper "Why Beauty Matters" by Markus Mobius & Tanya Rosenblat was one of my favorite papers from grad school
This paper convinced me that economists have useful tools for understanding where discrimination is coming from
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Great quote from an old interview w/
@ProfEmilyOster
:
"The greatest moments are those when you see the result pop up in a graph – that moment you realize you know something no one else does and you get the pleasure of thinking about how to tell them"
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Fun with probability; wild! [
@jben0
&
@AdamSanjurjo
, forthcoming ECMA ]
I like that the paper has a companion FAQ:
Clearly my intuition about probability is lacking, since all my ideas for this result are dismissed in Sec. 3 of FAQ
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Amazon's Prime Day should be chosen from the set of dates that are prime numbers when expressed as YYYYMMDD
This year they could have chosen 2018-07-31, for example. Next year could be 2019-07-19
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In grad school I ran a "programming for economists" mini-course for students in the "gap" b/w Fall & Spring semesters
I focused on STATA & Perl, and I roped in Melissa Dell (ArcGIS) & Paul Schrimpf (Matlab/C)
Lecture slides and exercises are here:
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Very exciting news!
Back in 2007 I organized the MIT labor lunch, and I can tell you it was pretty intimidating when **first-year** student Melissa Dell came in and presented this paper on the persistent effects of the forced mining labor system in Peru
Melissa Dell, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, is the recipient of the 2018 Elaine Bennett Research Prize. Click here for the full announcement:
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Truman Bewley abruptly switched from mathematical economics to conducting interviews with business executives, labor leaders, and professional recruiters
The result: His magnum opus, "Why Wages Don't Fall During a Recession?"
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Mom: How come when I search your name on Google it gives me a list of female economists as a "related search"?
Me: That doesn't sound right.
[Later]
Me (to myself): What the...
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On a more serious note, a short 🧵 about desk rejections
I desk reject around 40-50% of the papers I handle at AEJ-Policy (i.e., reject a paper w/o consulting referees), and I always try to describe the thinking that led to my decision
It's usually 1 of 3 reasons...
What I expected: The referees and I find your paper "unbelievable, super cool, outrageous, and amazing \ phenomenal, fantastic, so incredible, woo-hoo"
What I got instead: Desk rejection
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Super excited to announce that
@KiraboJackson
will be joining AEJ-Policy as a co-editor later this year.
He primarily works in education economics & labor economics, so he will help maintain the journal's strengths in these areas.
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My sense is that the Economics academic job market has been pretty tough this year (based on what we are seeing at Northwestern, and what I'm hearing from my friends and co-authors at other universities)
Some thoughts on this \begin{thread}
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Alright, let’s do this!
QUESTION: “What is the difference between AEJ-Policy and AEJ-Applied?”
Warning, WARNING(!), yawn-inducing inside baseball thread to follow... 1/
@John_N_Friedman
If I get to 1,000 followers, I'm going to tweet my thoughts on "What is the difference between AEJ-Policy and AEJ-Applied?" I get asked that a lot.
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Just went to an Assistant Prof's website to download the latest version of his paper after he told me he just got an R&R [woo-hoo!] but I couldn't find his paper anywhere
Assistant Profs, don't do this! Keep your website & CV up-to-date
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Back in June 2014, Amy Finkelstein and I started talking w/
@BeneDataTrust
about running a randomized experiment
Almost 5 years later, our paper has been accepted for publication!
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Hi correlation, meet causation:
@Austan_Goolsbee
wrote a nice summary of the Gentzkow and Shapiro QJE paper for Slate:
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@pablohutch
I send these papers to students when they ask me "how to write a paper"
Chay-Greenstone JPE
Einav-Finkelstein-Cullen QJE
Gentzkow-Shapiro QEJ
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Now *this* is a cool use of machine learning!
How well can we predict demographic characteristics from media consumption, time use & social attitudes, and how has this changed over time?
Maybe we aren't "coming apart" as much (or as fast) as we thought
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Paper submitted!
Jon Guryan (friend/mentor/co-author) gave me advice in grad school to “celebrate every step of the process”, which he meant celebrating submission, first decision, re-submission, second re-submission, conditional acceptance, acceptance, publication
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Reference-dependent preferences and the polar vortex:
[Stay safe Midwesterners!]
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Congrats JPE (nice website)
But why is an Econ Dept that just received $125 million asking libraries to pitch in to fund the JPE? Why not rename it the “Kenneth C Griffin Journal of Political Economy” and become the first top journal to be fully open access?
Lead by example!
The JPE is proud to be marking 125 years! Our celebratory website is now live.
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ATTN applied micro-economists -- lottery alert!
City of Chicago will use lottery to determine order of applicants who receive state approval for new
#cannabis
dispensaries to be considered by Zoning Bd of Appeals. Important in determining who gets to open where in city’s 7 cannabis zones.
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“Some fields are horribly competitive. Because statistics doesn’t have huge prizes or a lot of publicity, people are pretty good to each other” -Bradley Efron (Stanford Statistics Prof.)
Fascinating 2003 interview with Mr. Bootstrap himself (er, Dr. Bootstrap, that is)
“A Conversation with Bradley Efron”
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Wise words from
@KerwinKCharles
: "Any scholar beginning a research project doesn't know where it will go. And part of why I love being a scholar is the uncertainty."
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My 100th tweet!!
I like my job and I’m excited about my research these days, but I think that academic jobs can feel a little lonely and solitary sometimes
So far, Twitter has been bad for productivity but good for life satisfaction
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(Setting: Northwestern Econ job talk)
This made me smile--
Burt Weisbrod: "I'm sorry, I didn't meant to interrupt you mid-sentence"
@saskatchewin
: "Wow, this is such a polite department"
It's true! We sometimes ask tough questions, but we aren't rude 😀
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It's official! I will be taking my first-ever sabbatical this Fall at the Becker Friedman Institute (
@BeckerFriedman
) at the University of Chicago
You know it's official because I got this cool hat
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This figure testing for existence of the Higgs boson looks surprisingly similar to the work by Raj Chetty and co-authors studying earnings responses to income taxes in Denmark
Maybe Economics really is a science!
(References: and )
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As the government shutdown drags on, here are two fascinating household finance papers studying how individuals dealt w/ the 2013 government shutdown:
Baker & Yannelis RED 2017:
Gelman et al. JPubE 2018:
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@Undercoverhist
I don't think that should be an unpopular opinion! Here is what I was taught in grad school (taken from David Autor's lecture notes )
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Huge congrats to Marianne!! 🎉
To celebrate, a short 🧵 w/ my favorite "hidden gems" papers of hers...
Congratulations to Marianne Bertrand, Inclusive Economy Lab's Pritzker Director, on her election to the National Academy of Sciences for contributions to applied microeconomics.
#NAS158
@theNASciences
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OLIVIA BORDEAU works at the intersection of urban economics and international trade, and her Job Market Paper (JMP) studies the determinants and consequences of commuting infrastructure in Santiago, Chile
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This is great to see! AEJs have been doing this, and I have already accepted papers at AEJ-Policy that came directly from AER-Insights
I expect we will all be writing more 6,000-word papers as more journals follow AER-Insights ["solve for the equilibrium"
@tylercowen
would say]
New at the EJ! You can now also submit short papers, in the same format as AER-Insights (<6,000 words, 5 exhibits). Submissions should be self-contained and are expected to be of the same standard as regular submissions.
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2) Gojko Barjamovic, Thomas Chaney, Kerem Coşar, Ali Hortaçsu QJE paper using a structural trade model to look for lost ancient cities
Last 2 yrs I've listed 10 papers w/o ranking them, but this year I'm going to say this was my favorite paper of the year
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I just got an e-mail from Michael Best (
@myklebest
), who is an Assistant Prof at
@Columbia
(and who works in development & public economics), and the e-mail was signed
Best,
Michael
And, well, that's pretty much made my day today
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I have been working w/
@UChiPovertyLab
analyzing variation in "positive test rates" across ZIP codes in Chicago & northeast IL
Key findings:
1. Some areas have *extremely* high positive test rates (>30-40%)
2. Strongest community-level predictors are %uninsured & %undocumented
NEW: Research from
@UChiPovertyLab
finds that northeast
#Illinois
communities with high shares of residents who are
#uninsured
or
#undocumented
are most likely to be in need of expanded
#COVID19
testing.
@UChicago
@HarrisPolicy
@UChicagoUrban
#Chicago
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u' - marginal utility
u'' - related to risk aversion
u''' - related to precautionary saving (prudence)
u'''' - ??
I heard once that
@mileskimball
had intuition for the roles of 4th & higher-order derivatives of u() -- would love to be able to break that out at an Econ party
The derivatives of the Position vector with respect to time have interesting names:
Velocity (v) = change in Position
Acceleration (a) = change in Velocity
Jerk (j) = change in Acceleration
Snap (s) = change in Jerk
Crackle (c) = change in Snap
Pop (p) = change in Crackle
🧐
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1K
3K
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The
@ChicagoFed
has multiple job openings for PhD economists at the junior & senior levels
They hire in a very broad range of fields -- including macro, applied micro, and finance
JOE ad:
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@NinjaEconomics
There once was an Interviewee
Walking up to floor twenty-three.
She got to the door;
Her heart hit the floor —
She’d gone to the wrong DoubleTree.
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What I expected: The referees and I find your paper "unbelievable, super cool, outrageous, and amazing \ phenomenal, fantastic, so incredible, woo-hoo"
What I got instead: Desk rejection
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I'm excited to announce the
@BeckerFriedman
conference on "Gender and the Labor Market" on March 8-9
Organizers:
@AlesVoena
& me
Keynote:
@PikaGoldin
[Many thanks to Cara Cook at
@BeckerFriedman
for helping to put this together]
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@bocar_a
@haralduhlig
@JustinWolfers
@and_joy_
I am sorry you experienced this, and I apologize as a past (and future) member of the
@UChicago
economics community
I was at
@UChicago
2010-14, and I was not paying enough attention. I apologize for that, as well
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AEJ-Policy news!
First, I'm excited to welcome Naomi Feldman (
@NaomiFeldman11
) as co-editor. She is an expert in public economics, and a lot of her recent research has been in behavioral public finance, studying topics like tax salience & taxpayer confusion
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3) This paper uses Korean-Norwegian adoptees who were effectively randomly assigned to families of different wealth levels to estimate the causal effect of parental wealth on the wealth of the adopted children
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My last promotion -- to tenured Associate Prof -- was bittersweet b/c it meant changing jobs (and while I liked my old job, I liked having tenure more)
This time, it's just good feelings full stop
I'm celebrating by changing my Twitter photo & ⛳️ w/ my brother this Friday
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Unsolicited advice to Assistant Profs: don't be shy around your senior colleagues!
I made this mistake for several years; I wouldn't talk to them because I thought they’d think my ideas were dumb 1/
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My bottom-line: Based on this paper and related work that also finds adverse effects of interest rate caps, I'm not enthusiastic about this proposed policy
I think my political party can do better than a blunt policy instrument of "capping credit card interest rates"
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I met
@danutzamorar
at Yale last week, and I learned about her work studying the TA ratings of foreign-born & native-born TAs
Kind of a depressing result, but that's research sometimes
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I got some good professional news, and I’m celebrating this morning by taking a break & watching David Autor’s Ely Lecture:
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When I had my decision b/w
@ChicagoBooth
&
@Kennedy_School
on job market,
@rodrikdani
told me "Flip a coin!"
The key, he said, is convincing yourself that the coin toss is "for real", but still using your feelings while coin is in the air & after it lands to make your decision
@causalinf
@haroldpollack
Thing is, the coin toss is actually information. If it comes up tails and person is relieved -or if it comes up heads and they’re filled with dread - then they have learned that they don’t want to change. Their reaction to the result is informative, which improves the decision.
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Guinness should be the official beer of Randomized Controlled Trials
(Picture taken 6 minutes after the end of my seminar at
@ucddublin
yesterday)
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Took the AEA "climate survey" . It made me regret the times in the past when I did not "speak up" when someone said something inappropriate. I try hard to support *all* people in the profession, but I can do better
The AEA is sponsoring a survey on the professional climate in economics. Current and former members from the last nine years will receive the survey. Other economists wishing to participate can learn more at
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My first paper in the New England Journal of Medicine!
It is a short paper on "medical bankruptcy", which is a topic that I have been researching since I was a grad student more than 10 yrs ago
The findings are summarized here:
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1)
@oagersnap
,
@AmalieJensen_
, & Henrik Kleven study whether immigration responds to the generosity of a country's welfare benefits
[First time an AER-Insights paper has made my list; hope to see more in future years -- short(er) economics papers FTW!]
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5)
@OlleFolke
&
@johannarickne
study how job promotions affect the probability of divorce & find large increases for women, but not for men
They find a similar pattern of results for candidates who win mayoral elections & for promotions to CEO
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Super enjoyable & informative interview w/ the incomparable David Card [from 2010, but I hadn't read it before]
Favorite line: "Most projects are at their peak in the third hour of the discussion with your co-author, because it’s only going to be downhill from there [laughs]"
This week’s interview from The Art and Practice of Economics Research is with David Card (
@UCBerkeley
,
@berkeleyecon
)
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@davidautor
Berkeley Econ prof told me once that "If genius was the most important input, we'd just hire people from upstairs"
(I think this refers to the fact that the Math dept is directly above the Econ dept at Berkeley)
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2 reactions:
1. This kind of research makes me excited to be an economist
2. Good research can take *so* much time: Pallais started working on this when we were grad students; she made Full Professor 2 years ago & probably still another year or so before this paper is published
A new randomized evaluation by
@metrics52
,
@davidautor
, and Amanda Pallais suggests that the providing students with large scholarship can increase college graduation rates, especially among nonwhite, low-income, and first-generation students.
Read more:
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4) Paul Eliason,
@benjaminheebsh
,
@ryanmcdevitt
, & James Roberts study how the acquisition of independent dialysis facilities by larger chains affects patient treatment decisions and health outcomes
[I'll give a favorite again this year; this is it]
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An excuse to share my research!
My lottery paper finds no evidence that unearned income causes people to change occupations, switch industries, or move into self-employment
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9) Fascinating paper showing that the higher divorce rates of families with daughters is largely explained by the higher divorce rates specifically during the years when the daughters are teenagers
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I had an idea the other day for a recurring Twitter series on "under-appreciated economists"
Maybe w/ sabbatical in full swing I'll find time for this, but in any case
@KatrineLoken
was at the top of the list I made
Read her work & apply for her postdoc!
Work with me on economics of crime! Apply for postdoc by nov 10!!
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Neat graph, which also highlights something most labor economists know (but I think is under-appreciated outside of economics) -- for a wide range of jobs, income tends to peak in your 40s or early 50s
[This fact has not been popular with my friends as they enter their 40s]
Income inequality is not mainly about where people start, it is about where they can go in their career.
At the bottom, low income jobs have:
- Little to no income progression
- Little opportunity to be promoted or learn new skills
👉Data & graphs (US):
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OK, I've "read" the PDFs in Harvard discrimination case (though this is using the elastic meaning of "read" provided by McAfee: ; I think I got the basic ideas, though)
As promised, a thread w/ my thoughts...
FWIW, high school me certainly *perceived* (perhaps incorrectly!) that there was discrimination against Asians in admissions, and as a result I did not check "Asian" in my Harvard and MIT apps (I only checked "White")
[Will tweet more thoughts in a few days when I'm back in US]
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