Luis BQ
@tradecosts
Followers
1,984
Following
2,457
Media
679
Statuses
24,042
Trade/urban. Tweets about cities, infrastructure, and globalization. Assistant Professor at William & Mary. @umichEcon alumni
Joined August 2017
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
AU-1
• 392321 Tweets
#TopsxLolanexZeeNunew
• 112520 Tweets
#ユーフォ3期
• 103331 Tweets
VIVITE X LINGORM
• 87070 Tweets
#VivitexEveandBoyxLingOrm
• 85562 Tweets
えーちゃん
• 46792 Tweets
ML IN OSAKA
• 41983 Tweets
北九州記念
• 34633 Tweets
ラジオNIKKEI賞
• 33546 Tweets
差し入れ
• 27101 Tweets
アフター
• 17585 Tweets
#bbclaurak
• 17323 Tweets
夏越の大祓
• 14985 Tweets
全国金賞
• 10977 Tweets
オフトレイル
• 10299 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
My friend
@ifal78
reminded me of the poem The Blind Man and The Elephant:
"And so these men of Indostan, disputed loud and long,
each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!"
0
0
1
"you're an economist, so I want to ask you for advice regarding the stock market"
14
360
2K
@ProfessaJay
The most intense workout I did was a special hot yoga class. Several ladies in their 40s and 50s acted like nothing was happening. All the men and women in our 20s: we ended up on the floor, almost crying. We took so many breaks.
4
4
484
I know both R and Stata. I just read someone saying "code readability for R is very high", and I had a very very good laugh.
14
6
311
I’m now fully convinced we need to teach Macroeconomic History of Latin America in every undergraduate economics program 🙃
11
24
290
Assistant Professor website picture (left)
vs.
Assistant Professor during a covid semester (right)
4
25
264
I see
#EconTwitter
is talking about PhD applications and prelims (my least favorite topic).
I have only one thing to say: go to a program where faculty cares and acts accordingly. Get advisors who care and act accordingly. I was able to graduate because faculty cared about me.
2
21
244
When you struggle to decide how to cluster your standard errors
3
16
231
Why does diversity matter in econ? Imagine you’re a financial regulator in X country, all your economists come from wealthy households, and they don’t understand informal discrimination in credit markets or the details of payday loans.
How on earth will you regulate properly?
6
40
222
PhD students when they pass first year prelims on the second attempt
This palm tree fell over, refused to die, and curved right back up.
849
26K
221K
0
7
194
When I was a PhD student, I was scared of emailing people asking for data. Especially if they were senior economists. I never understood why. I found it easier to bother public officials. LOL
Now I send those emails with frequency, and if I get no answer I just move on.
7
10
188
Since we are talking about PhD admissions, I’d like to share this for Mexicans. In 2020 many Mexican PhD students created a webpage to provide some informal advice for Mexicans interested in PhD programs. We have a Twitter account too
@AplicarDesdeMx
3
43
140
I also bought this
@stata
mug and I feel I achieved a major goal that I had since I was 18 years old: being a nerd and a responsible adult at the same time 😂.
0
10
133
Live stream of an economics seminar
5
9
119
Econ Twitter is going to its original equilibrium: R vs Stata.
Nature is healing.
4
6
113
As a senior economist once told me:
“People don’t do X (save, go to school, take real analysis, etc) for two reasons: they can’t, or they don’t want to. Assuming the latter occurs all the time is because you missed details about the institutional context.”
I don’t care if it’s real analysis in particular. But one has to be deeply incurious not to take a proof-based math course before starting an econ PhD.
67
40
727
5
9
119
I had this professor in undergraduate, Dr. Jose Salazar. He had this way to answer a question about topics he knew nothing about with a blunt tone "I don't know the answer to that question". And he repeated it to make a point.
It took me ten years to learn why he did that.
2
5
105
Me preocupa mucho que el CIDE pueda sufrir recortes.
Por que? Porque si la formacion de abogados, economistas y politologos depende aun mas de universidades privadas en CDMX, la asimetria de informacion de los funcionarios publicos mexicanos en ciertos temas aumentara.
5
23
97
This AP has been cheered up by
@KhoaVuUmn
multiple times during the worst of COVID. Through messages and memes.
I am a workaholic, but I do strongly believe a valuable part of academia is the sense of community. And Khoa helps to build that in Economics.
3
0
98
When I started the PhD in Michigan in 2013, we were 7 Latinos in the program.
A decade later, there is more than 30! 💪🏽
4
3
95
If you work on Trade/Econ Geography/Urban, here is the list of online seminars.
1. Online Urban Economics (organized by
@ChrisSeveren
)
2. Quantitative Spatial Economics Junior Workshop
(organized by Balboni and
@fpeckert
)
3
31
96
Today, I received a call where my mom told me my uncle Octavio had an accident and died.
My uncle was a special man. For unique reasons. My uncle turn around his life around in his 40s after he had a kid. He loved his son so much, and out of love he completely changed.
23
0
84
Look guys, other people have more experience than me. But in two years, I had a little group of undergrad RAs (15 approximately). 2/3 minorities and women.
The diverse students won’t come to you, you have to go and find them. Their profiles will be different.
In 1970, just 1 in 5 U.S.-born PhD graduates in economics had a parent with a graduate degree. Now? Two-thirds of them do, according to a new analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
5
10
45
2
13
86
Call for papers: 6th Mid-Atlantic International Trade Workshop, April 28-29, 2023, at the University of Richmond.
Please submit your papers to present or be a discussant by January 22nd. We encourage submissions on international trade, urban and spatial economics.
2
37
86
I just finished my first semester as Assistant Professor (just gave the last final)
Yes, it was in person. Yes, there were very few cases because William & Mary students are amazing.
7
0
77
As a graduate student, I read my R code twice just to make a simple analysis. This often meant reading the equivalent of 300 pages of R code twice per week.
I still did not make it work 🙃
As a grad student, I read each assigned reading twice before each class discussion. This often meant reading a 300 page book twice, within a week. If you’re not prepared to do this and more, I wouldn’t pursue grad school, let alone academia.
564
130
2K
0
4
73
.
@MGF91
convinced me to do a thread about my Job Market Paper. Here it goes. My paper has one objective: to show that domestic trade costs shape comparative advantage. In plain words, to show that the roads of a country determine what type of goods a country exports.
2
17
69
Rejections in 1st round: all 10 applications.
Rejections in 2nd round: all 12 applications but one.
Acceptances: Michigan, (waitlisted and accepted the day after the April 15th deadline, not invited to preview day).
More fun: I applied to one top 10 school only 🙃
PhD rejections:
Harvard Econ
MIT
Berkeley
Michigan
Yale
Penn
Minnesota
NYU
MIT-Sloan
Northwestern
Princeton
Stanford
Booth
Acceptances:
Harvard BusEc
Columbia
Wisconsin
Waitlist:
UChicago (no funding)
24
18
304
4
1
61
When I was an undergrad I did not have money to travel to Europe, so I promised myself I'd go after grad school. It was an silly incentive to work during the tough times of the PhD.
Well, I am going to the EEA meetings in Rotterdam. So, the trip happened before I planned to.
5
0
61
An empirical economist when the results of the regression match their theoretical model
2
8
63
@ProfessaJay
all of us are seated at our desks, in office jobs, all day
that class was probably the second workout of their day
1
0
65
I woke up at 5 am in the morning, I sent a meme to
@KhoaVuUmn
assuming he was awake because of his kid.
Then instead of getting memes back, we ended up talking about econometrics and history, and I ended up reading a metrics paper.
His memes are a trap.
2
0
55
@DavidUbilava
GRE gives a shot to students who don’t come from US institutions with good networks. I perceive that people who tend to criticize it don’t understand the frustration of dealing with thelack of networks.
4
4
53
I always assign as a reading for my International Trade class the fantastic paper by
@D_A_Irwin
about ISI
"The Rise and Fall of Import Substitution Industrialization"
Given the recent times, I feel this is a must read for anyone taking a trade course.
3
11
55
@ProfessaJay
in my YMCA, there is an old dude from Philly every day at 7-8 pm who lifts more weights than all the kids in their 20s. It's insane.
1
0
54
I just "attended" the online wedding of a very close friend. The physical wedding could not be celebrated, but they exchange rings at their homes and broadcasted it via IG.
I guess these are the little things that make the world better in the middle of rough times.
1
3
45
My dissertation chapters will be the last time I code in Matlab, I swear to God.
I thought R was bad, but at least it’s fast.
2
0
51
Was my last day of vacation ruined by someone treating me with bias in a restaurant? Yes. 😒
Has this happened to me before? Yeah 🤷🏾♂️
Did an Uruguayan couple who own a different restaurant restored the equilibrium by having the best food and the most amazing alfajores? Yes. 😊
7
0
49
Got the first shot of the covid vaccine!
And I guess I can feel more calm given that I teach in person (I chose it because I trusted the university plan and the students, it kept my spirits up, and I cannot express how much I dislike teaching via Zoom).
4
0
47
Mexican food is absolutely atrocious, though. The chillis are there to hide the taste of poor quality ingredients, not enhance the flavour.
3K
168
3K
2
5
48
Yesterday, I visited the University of Richmond Economics Department and presented for the first time in person after 2 years in a department seminar. I loved the visit and I enjoyed every minute of it. The feedback was AMAZING. Thanks
@MelissaK_Moore
@TomZylkin
@martilletti
.
1
1
45
3 weeks ago I was thinking about optimal transfers to informal workers in Mexico.
The problem wasn't the estimation of the optimal amount, financing or the size of the program.
The biggest issue is how to implement it optimally. The biggest issue was the administrative part.
0
4
42
Diversity in econ is not about fairness only for groups that are underrepresented. The impacts go beyond research ideas. The entire field influences policy at the local and global level. And the econ policy makers might be making errors due to lack of diversity themselves.
1
7
44
So, my first week of tenure track at William & Mary has a fantastic start: a presentation of my paper about roads as a determinant of comparative advantage (using Colombia as context), in the seminar of a Colombian institution I admire a lot
@ecofineafit
El miércoles 12 de agosto, a las 5:00 p.m., nos acompañará en
#SeminariosEcoFin
@luisbq_
, de
@UMich
, quien expondrá el paper "How infrastructure shapes comparative advantage".
🗓️ Agéndate: y conéctate:
0
2
9
2
5
44
In 1970, just 1 in 5 U.S.-born PhD graduates in economics had a parent with a graduate degree. Now? Two-thirds of them do, according to a new analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
5
10
45
My girlfriend and I could only do outdoor activities during the vacation, and she convinced me to drive a pink scooter.
I was the envy of the town.
2
0
40
My PhD classmates challenged me. They said I cannot make a sauce so spicy that nobody can eat it.
I just bought 4 types of peppers. They have not realized they messed up with the wrong Mexican.
0
0
39
A senior trade economist once told us during grad school "you are going to have a lot of rough days, but you gotta keep going thinking about the good days".
And today because of the amazing team with
@enriquedlrosa
and
@billywoom
, is a very good day. Thanks to the
@ScotEconSoc
!
Our work on the colonial origins on today’s urban segregation in Mexico with
@billywoom
and
@luisbq_
has been awarded by the
@ScotEconSoc
program committee as the for the runner up Sir Alec Cairncross Prize for the best paper by a young economist presented at
#SES2022
21
24
149
8
1
43
Fascinating JMP by Mariama Sow on how road infrastructure can change national identity and ethnic attachment
2
8
44
Im gonna defend my profession here.
When I was an undergraduate in a private university, the professors who never made us feel bad to friends and I because we came from working class were the econ, math and physic professors.
Had several negative experiences from other fields.
One little known fact about the World Bank is that every year it runs an internal charity drive, where staff are incentivized to give to a select list of non-profits
The part of the Bank that is the most dominated by economists always has one of the lowest contribution rates
14
15
112
2
1
41
A Presidential candidate in Latin America just said that the market for vaccines is the same as the market for canned tuna.
🙃
5
3
38
Hay infraestructura que hace más eficiente a los mercados. Carreteras reducen costos de comercio, provisión de electricidad genera desarrollo, aeropuertos incrementan el turismo.
Esto ha sido documentado por economistas en los últimos 10 años. Con datos y modelos económicos.
Ni para explicarle el crowd-out effect de la inversión pública y cómo desplaza a la inversión privada.
Ni para explicarle eficacia y eficiencia del gasto.
Tanta deliberación para terminar haciendo planas.
6
28
118
1
12
39
If you have comments you can always send a polite email with suggestions.
But around this time most of job market candidates are having a pretty rough time.
Please have some empathy.
This should go without saying but
PLEASE DO NOT PUBLICLY TRASH A PHD STUDENT'S JOB MARKET PAPER WITHOUT READING IT FIRST!
Wow. People. Please.
12
45
656
1
2
37
1
12
35
What is Latin Seasoning? Is it Mexican? Colombian? Puerto Rican? Salvadorean?
6
2
34
I paid my grad school debt today and the first thing I am buying is a bigger screen to make sure I can work with overleaf comfortably😂.
1
0
35
@IvanWerning
This applies to a lot of Latin Americans.
"Why motivated you to major in Econ/get a PhD".
"I want to understand why the last crisis that messed up my community occurred".
4
1
33
Today, we have the 6th Mid-Atlantic Trade Workshop at the University of Richmond.
We start with three sessions: urban, trade/development, and macro-trade.
@martilletti
and I are excited to welcome the workshop committee, participants, and discussants to Richmond, VA!
2
7
36
I just move to a new city in covid times. I barely know anyone, so I eat wherever I want on weekends.
I decided to try every-single-taco place in the Virginia peninsula. I will report my findings from time to time.
So far good TexMex food, haven't found authentic Mexican food.
6
0
34
When I was 17 my mom told me not to study medicine, because I would spend my 20s in a library.
Well, I do not have to explain the rest of the story. 🙃
1
1
28
I grew up in a car culture (two family members sell cars for a living), among working class highly influenced by American culture, and I still don’t get why people who don’t work on agriculture or construction buy large pick up trucks, even though mileage is always an issue.
5
1
35
Each time I see a super aggressive interaction between two economists, I only think about a famous phrase in Latin America:
"Courtesy does not make you less brave or courageous"
(Lo cortés no quita lo valiente)
1
0
30
I found out recently that my students call me “LBQ”.
I am considering writing in the emails, homeworks and exams “Dr. LBQ” for the Spring. There are two benefits:
a) the name is short and easy to remember
b) it sounds like a DJ name
Comments are welcome 😂
1
0
28
This is a thread on our new working paper on the persistence of colonial segregation in Mexican cities for centuries.
An interesting (and pessimistic finding): a historical segregation policy can impact ethno-racial groups different than the originally targeted by the policy.
1
11
30
My favorite thing about this thing called being an Assistant Professor is that I can buy a coffee without feeling guilt. And research. And teaching.
But honestly, mostly the guilt-free purchases of coffee.
3
0
30
Young economists don’t learn to control their research ideas until they have a job market paper.
Baby elephants don't learn to control their trunks until they’re about a year old.
3K
30K
226K
0
2
28
I went to the local pharmacy and I heard an Argentinian accent.
Every time a Latin American moves to my neighborhood, Virginia feels more like home.
1
0
31
I have seen tweets, books, and newspaper pieces making statements "old trade economists did not recognize the distributional consequences of trade liberalization".
All of us have to teach Hecksher Ohlin and Specific Factors Model. I really don't understand these comments.
5
5
26
Is it normal to crash after finishing the semester? Or is it just me?
6
0
29
I just realized both
@causalinf
and
@IvanWerning
are back to Twitter.
Welcome back. We missed your mindfulness and politeness when interacting with others (you set an example for others :) ).
1
0
27
There are these weird blocks that PhD students, and junior faculty, have: presenting, writing a model, emailing people, networking, doing applied micro analysis, coding, or even teaching.
I feel that maybe telling PhD students that those blocks eventually go away might help.
1
0
29
One of the cool things about AEA-ASSA is that you can have many associations with high quality talks, and meet old friends and advisors. I felt I learned a lot, the quality of the conference is noticeable.
But I also think the conference needs a change.
1
4
27
When I finish a trade model, and then I find a typo in one of the subscripts.
4
1
25
“De amor no se vive” tiene un equivalente en política pública “De discursos bonitos no se gobierna ni se administra”.
2
4
28
And it took me 15 years to understand that sometimes, I might want to do the same thing. Or tell friends that it is ok to say it.
0
0
27
A co-author and I have been going through a huge roller coaster for two months to get admin data for a paper on trade and human capital.
Yesterday, after bad news, I was literally ranting about how we should abandon the idea.
The data arrived today. LOL
1
0
24
An Econ Christmas running
#AEA5k
with
@martilletti
(my stomach still felt the buñuelos and natillas from yesterday during Tun 😂)
2
1
25
A student just told me he found me on Twitter and from now on ya solo voy a tuitear en español.
1
0
26
Tomorrow I present around 3:00 pm at the Virtual Meeting of the Urban Economics Association
#uea2020
my work on how the the road infrastructure of a nation determines its comparative advantage.
Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Program for
@UrbanEconomics
2020 Virtual Meeting on October 15-17 is now available at
Join 340 confirmed attendees presenting 288 papers.
1
34
80
1
4
27
Suppose all your econ team came from rich urban hhs, and now you have to design federal transfers to poor urban counties. And those counties have informal institutions that would make the efficient spending of public funds challenging.
No one in your team will see the problem.
3
1
24
Everyone in Econ Twitter knows that this job should be for
@KhoaVuUmn
We are looking for a new Social Media Assistant, to begin this summer!
This role is appropriate for a Twitter savvy graduate student interested in environmental and resource economics. Full job description is attached.
Apply here by May 7:
0
18
45
3
1
24
#EconTwitter
says wins need to be celebrated so:
I organized a session “The Economic History of Cities” and it got accepted into the MEA Annual Meetings. Tate Twinam,
@SebEllingsen
, Ryan Gallagher and I will be in the session.
This is the first one I organize, so I’m very happy
4
2
26
I am going to Minneapolis in two weeks for the MEA Annual Meetings and I already promised
@KhoaVuUmn
I will sing all the Encanto songs during lunch with him.
2
0
25
A Mexican friend and I went to grad school to do IO.
He ended up taking the Macro field classes, I ended up taking the Trade/International Finance field classes later in the program.
Paths are non-linear.
@emre_ozdenoren
Definitely not. But some know for sure that they don't want to research topics in macro, e.g.
2
0
5
2
1
26
@NathanBurkeEcon
Please ignore that person. Don't let him get into your skin. I know the feeling. It is pure anger. It throws you off badly.
It ain't worth your time.
0
0
23
Even in the end of the semester, there are sweet moments. A student got a great research internship, my coauthors are presenting their work, another student got a research opportunity, and I have heard kind words about my work. I feel it is important to treasure those moments.
3
0
23
Someone just called me "professor" in an email for the first time ever in my life. On my second day of work.
I don't feel the superpowers yet. Still waiting.
1
1
25
I worked for this professor as TA for five years. I know those slides by memory 😂
The video is hilarious.
“one time in college a professor spent 90 minutes talking about an example scenario that involved beef and i thought nothing of it until several weeks later when i found out that my classmate had made a minute long compilation of all 125 times he said "beef" in one lecture”
- M
4
39
385
1
0
25
The person who died got the placebo. The headline is misleading.
AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine trial Brazil volunteer dies, trial to continue
84
107
191
1
5
22
Part 1. Code runs for days 😮💨
Part 2. IT requires you to restart the computer 😧
…
6
1
26
Got injured and could not run for a few days. Decided to get a gym membership and do other exercises (weights).
It always shocks me the differences in productivity in a week with no exercise vs. a week with exercise. It's like I am a completely different person.
8
0
24