Jonathan Colmer
@JonathanColmer
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Assistant Prof. @UVA Econ | Co-Founder & Director of the @en_equality_lab | IZA & CESifo | Env Econ, Growth & Dev | Proud Husband & Dad x 2 | 🇬🇧 in 🇺🇸
Charlottesville, VA
Joined May 2019
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Pinned Tweet
Very excited about our new paper out in
@ScienceMagazine
! "Disparities in PM2.5 air pollution in the United States” with
@IanHHardman
,
@jayshimshack
, &
@john_voorheis
! While there have been substantial reductions in PM2.5, meaningful disparities persist.
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Akerlof's lemons paper is always used as an example of a paper that received a critical reception, being rejected by 3 top 5 journals before QJE accepted. Today I learnt that Nordhaus' first DICE paper was rejected by ALL Economics journals, before being accepted by Science.
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My job market paper, "Temperature, Labor Reallocation, and Industrial Production: Evidence from India" has just been conditionally accepted at
@AEAjournals
AEJ: Applied Economics! I'm over the moon!
#EconTwitter
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#EconTwitter
Beamer + OBS: I created a beamer template that includes a webcam window. You create a frame as usual but use \begin{frameOBS} instead of \begin{frame}. The zipped file can be found here,
@paulgp
@lukestein
@EmilyNix100
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On January 1st 2024, I will be ending my association with
@iza_bonn
. My previous association will not be invisible, instead it will appear as strikethrough text on public materials.
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#EconTwitter
Rejections suck, but can we give a big round of applause to
@RevEconStud
and the referees for turning around our paper with 3 very thoughtful, constructive, and positive reports in 3 weeks... That's right... 3 weeks... kudos
@EliasPapaioann2
you run a tight ship :)
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#EconTwitter
Coming up with ideas is very hard. Questions aren't ideas. Ideas are a question + a plan to answer the question. One of the things I do in my grad class is to get students to generate a new idea each week, summarized in 1-2 paragraphs.
As a grad student, transitioning from coursework to research is hard. IT IS HARD to come up with research ideas, especially when you haven’t had to do it before! It is a learned skill, and you are learning it now. Talk to faculty and let us help you. It’s our job.
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#EconTwitter
The JMP is finally published/in print/finito! Thanks to
@seema_econ
and all the referees for their help in getting the paper to its final resting place :)
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#EconTwitter
I am now officially using as my virtual office. It's working really well. No coordinating meetings. All my students have a link to my office. If they want to chat they can effectively come and "knock on my door" to see if I'm free.
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I'm seeing a lot of snarky economist tweeting about this paper. If you read the paper itself it's very well written, doesn't claim causality; however, the authors have collected an exceptional amount of data with rich controls. 1/N
Want to live longer? Try going to the opera. Researchers in Britain have found that people who reported going to a museum or concert even once a year lived longer than those who didn’t.
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In some positive professional news, I've just found out that I am one of the 2020
@UpjohnInstitute
Early Career Research Award recipients! Woop!
#EconTwitter
#ECRA2020
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#EconTwitter
Super excited that the
@en_equality_lab
has received a grant from the
@SloanFoundation
to explore the distributional effects of the clean energy transition on workers in the United States! We'll be posting a job ad for a 2-year pre-doc asap. Stay tuned!
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We just had a start of semester party. I was skeptical. It was awesome. We used , which was really cool. You walk around the room like an old school video game and find folks to chat with (as you get close Webcam and mic fades in). It's free for up to 50!
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This. I spend a lot of my time with grad students trying to convey that: 1) Our job is to spend our time trying to answer questions we don't know the answer to; 2) when we're doing it right we spend the majority of our time not knowing what we're doing.
In the past, I've had students call my problem sets "emotionally trying". (These are for 2nd-year PhD game theory.) This year I'm going to explain myself and set clearer expectations.
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#EconTwitter
Environmental Economics is a very white/male space. The
@en_equality_lab
is looking to learn from/work with a more diverse group of economists interested in environmental/labor/inequality topics. Who are your favorite non-white/male economists working in this space?
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#EconTwitter
One of the ways that I teach my grad students that writing is hard and that it doesn't come naturally to anyone is to share the first draft of my JMP and then the published version. If anyone wants to volunteer their first drafts & published versions please DM me.
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#EconTwitter
what are your favorite papers on the unintended consequences of regulation (environmental or otherwise)? Bonus points if the regulation ended up doing the opposite of what it set out to achieve.
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#EconTwitter
My paper "What is the meaning of (statistical) life? Benefit–cost analysis in the time of COVID-19" is now published in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy - .
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Woop Woop! 🎉🎉🎉
Oh hey, this paper was just accepted at REStat! 🎉
The *hugest* of thanks to my amazing coauthor
@JonathanColmer
.
"Access to Guns in the Heat of the Moment: More Restrictive Gun Laws Mitigate the Effect of Temperature on Violence"
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#EconTwitter
A Spatial Economics/Economic Geography modelling question for a grad student: Matlab vs. Julia vs. Other options? Are there resources for example code, e.g. for workhorse models, etc.
@TradeDiversion
@sharatganapati
@TrebAllen
@ReddingEcon
@HansbergRossi
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Economists at uber, why aren't Uber rates tied to gas prices? This would seem like a super easy and obvious thing to do and would serve drivers and customers better? What am I missing?
#EconTwitter
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#EconTwitter
it's the time of year when I'm updating my introduction to causal questions slides. Please send me your favorite examples of correlation is "not necessarily" causal. Extra marks for ones that aren't super crazy. Nuance always appreciated.
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#EconTwitter
please amplify:
@PorzioTommaso
,
@federi_ro
, and I are hiring a pre-doc to work with us on a macro-dev project on climate change, human capital, and aggregate welfare/productivity. Apply here,
@econ_ra
@predoc_org
@The_IGC
@nberpubs
@cepr_org
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Dear economists that don't/won't submit to Science, update your priors. It is a highly reputable journal, it doesn't take 4 years from submission to publication, and unlike the AER your dean knows what it is. Same holds for Nature and PNAS.
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#EconTwitter
Lots of discussion about pre-doc experience and whether its a "good thing". Instead of pontificating, reach out to your RAs and pre-docs to make sure that they're doing alright and make it clear that they can ask questions and make complaints if things aren't working
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For what it's worth I think it would be brilliant if
@GretaThunberg
did an Economics degree. We need more students like her and fewer students that just want rent-seeking jobs in banking
#environmentalecon
#economicsofclimatechange
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#Econtwitter
@john_voorheis
and I have a new working paper out! Using newly linked admin data containing more than 150 million parent-child links we document that reductions in prenatal particulate matter (PM) exposure have intergenerational effects!
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#EconTwitter
@econ_ra
:
@john_voorheis
and I are very excited to be hiring a 2-year full-time research specialist (pre-doc) to work with us at the Environmental Inequality Lab. The job description can be found here. Please share widely!
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Excited to have this paper with
@jenniferdoleac
accepted! The paper benefitted enormously from our reviewers and the guidnace of our super editor, Will Dobbie. Thank you all!
#EconTwitter
Study finds that more-prohibitive concealed-carry laws mitigate the increase in homicides on hot days. Just Accepted paper by Jonathan Colmer
@JonathanColmer
and Jennifer Doleac
@jenniferdolea
.
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I'm excited to announce the Environmental Inequality Lab! We'll be sharing more about new research partnerships and projects in the coming weeks and months. You can follow along at
@en_equality_lab
and
#EnvironmentalJustice
#EvidenceBasedPolicy
How does environmental quality affect economic opportunity, poverty, and inequality?
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@seema_econ
Balboni et al. (2021) is a contender (although papers are too different for there to be a best in my view). This is one of the best in my view.
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#EconTwitter
a clustering XKCD comic! We're one step closer to being able to teach "Introduction to Econometrics" using nothing but XKCD comics...
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It looks like there are going to be a lot of journal special issues on COVID-19. I have a lot of excess unicorn drawings if anyone wants some cover art.
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Dear Editors, I would also like R&Rs for Christmas. Yours festively, Jonathan
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#EconTwitter
Professional news: I'm going to be an Associate Editor of Fiscal Studies
@TheIFS
! Looking forward to working with a great team and receiving your submissions! Submit here
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Delighted to have been awarded the
@CESifoGroup
Distinguished Affiliate Award alongside Bruno Conte an amazing job market candidate at
@barcelonagse
! Big thanks to whoever nominated me :)
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#econtwitter
There have been lots of discussion about stress in grad school & tenure-track. There should be more off-ramps during graduate school and the tenure track. It should be more acceptable to decide that it isn't for you. We shouldn't fall for the sunk cost fallacy. 1/n
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Final exams are done and I'm on sabbatical! This time tomorrow I'll be on my way to Oxford where I'll be visiting
@OxfordEconDept
and Brasenose College. Just one transcontinental flight with a two and four-year old stands in the way! Adieu America. See you in June!
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#EconTwitter
I'm speaking to our undergraduates on "paths to graduate school in economics" next week. I want to talk about the undergraduate years as well as applications/pre-docs/masters "paths". Any thoughts/resources/stats would be gratefully appreciated.
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Our paper made it onto the Marginal Revolution so I feel as like I've officially made it. Do I put this as a separate category on my CV or as part of Honors & Awards? Thanks,
@tylercowen
, and to
@RDMetcalfe
who will be asked to tweet all of my papers going forward.
Do Carbon Offsets Offset Carbon?
A new super interesting paper suggests no.
Many Clean Development Mechanism projects are inframarginal and offsets end up increasing CO2 emissions!
By Calel,
@JonathanColmer
, Dechezleprêtre, & Glachant.
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@nytimes
While correlation doesn't imply causation. It's equally wrong to interpret a correlation as not causal. The challenge is that we don't know. Snarkily dismissing results as "correlational" is a bit silly... all causal relationships are also correlational 4/N.
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#EconTwitter
Delighted that this paper with Yonas Alem (
@econGU
@EfD_initiative
) is forthcoming at
@AJAE_AAEA
. It's been an adventure! We started this project 9 years ago! Thanks to
@marcfbellemare
and countless referees for helping us get this paper into shape!
🚨 Forthcoming in the AJAE 🚨 "Blame it on the Rain: Rainfall Variability, Consumption Smoothing, and Subjective Well-Being in Rural Ethiopia," by Alem and
@JonathanColmer
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#EconTwitter
We’re excited to be hiring a pre-doctoral research fellow in environmental economics starting summer/fall 2024! Apply here:
@econ_ra
@predoc_org
@AereOrg
@en_equality_lab
Please retweet/apply!
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#EconTwitter
what are your favorite papers on misallocation & development from the last couple of years (including any new working papers/JMPs)? Suggested papers on misallocation of inputs/talent across Firms/Farms/Jobs/Place/Sector are all welcome.
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Excited to be out at
@UCDavisEcon
today presenting new work on the contribution of air pollution to economic opportunity in the United States!
#EconTwitter
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#EconTwitter
How many top 5s is a one-minute segment on
@LastWeekTonight
equivalent to? 🤣(17:25)
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#EconTwitter
#COVID19
I've written a short piece on the value of statistical life. The social benefits of reducing mortality risk are likely understated. There are
large uncertainties over how much larger the social benefits could be. Comments welcome
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Me: "I don't understand why students never come to office hours!?"
Door to my corridor:
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My favorite sentence of the week, courtesy of
@marcfbellemare
:
"I am pleased to inform you that I have decided to accept your submission... for publication in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics"!
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Thanks
#AERE2022
for a great conference and for the field experience!
#flashflood
#TropicalStormAlex
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#EconTwitter
receiving constructive and very helpful referee reports within 3 weeks of submission, having submitted the week before Christmas is amazing even if it comes with a rejection. Bravo
@QJEHarvard
!
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#EconTwitter
Please find attached my submission to the Journal of Child Care Economics. I thank Grace Colmer (5) and Edith Colmer (2) for exceptional research assistance. All errors are my own.
#Top5
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#EconTwitter
@MirabelleMuuls
,
@mondpanther
, Ulrich Wagner, and I have a new working paper "Does Pricing Carbon Mitigate Climate Change? Firm-Level Evidence from the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. The answer: Yes! At least in this context.
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#EconTwitter
has anyone ever withdrawn a paper? I have a paper that's been sitting at a field journal for almost a year now and am wondering... sunk cost fallacy. There are plenty of outside options. I emailed the editor a couple of months ago and got no response
#goodjob
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#EconTwitter
I'm sure I'm slow to the uptake on this but I was introduced to coding/running python in Google Colab today and 🤯
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Tomorrow we fly home to the U.S. after a sabbatical that didn't quite turn out the way we planned. Thank you to
@OxfordEconDept
and
@BrasenoseNews
for being such wonderful hosts. I had a fantastic time. I hope to see you all again in the not too distant future!
#EconTwitter
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Dear economists that do submit to Science, Nature, and PNAS, unlike Nordhaus perhaps consider sending your paper there first rather than waiting until it's been rejected by ALL economic journals. Same arguments.
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Why am I an environmental economist that also works on development economics? Robert Solow puts this perfectly, "The only reason for thinking that sustainability is a problem is that you think some people are likely to be shortchanged, namely, in the future." 1/n
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#EconTwitter
@GiveDirectly
are mounting a COVID-Cash campaign. If you have a stable income and want to help those that don't, including the most vulnerable (e.g., the elderly, those that are undocumented, etc.) you can donate here
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#EconTwitter
my two cents on thinking about the intersection of climate change and inequality.
Just published on Economics Observatory: How does
#ClimateChange
shape inequality, poverty and economic opportunity? by
@JonathanColmer
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#EconTwitter
Grad students: you need to become an expert in your field before you start you can start your PhD. You can't answer the question "how is your work is going to change people's beliefs?" if you don't know what experts in your field believe.This is what 2nd year is for.
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#EconTwitter
Online teaching: OBS users, what are your recording/streaming set-ups? I'm using a mix of recording (video = 30fps, 1280x720, CRF=20, ultrafast, mp4; audio = 320 bitrate, lagged 180ms for audio/video sync) and streaming (OBS to Zoom using NDI). Any Alternatives?
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OBS Audio Tutorial: whether you use fancy slides and lightboards or not, it doesn't matter if your audio is bad. I use three audio filters in OBS (noise suppression, noise gate, and compressor) that has made it "radio quality". I'm using a cheap lapel mic nothing fancy.
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2 rejections so far this year so hoping my luck will change... the latest one stings: 1) it took a long time and most painfully was 2 R&Rs vs. 1 reject... I wish there were more environmental editors in the top 5 (not socially optimal, but it would be nice to catch a break).
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I just ran my first half-marathon. It took me 1 hour and 48 minutes (spread over 13 days...)
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#EconTwitter
I'm delighted that an early release of my paper "Rainfall Variability, Child Labor, and Human Capital Accumulation in Rural Ethiopia" is now available on the
@AJAE_AAEA
website. A short 🧵
Rainfall Variability, Child Labor, and Human Capital Accumulation in Rural Ethiopia by
@JonathanColmer
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@nytimes
I think this is a shame because the article itself is now unjustly being mocked for the coverage received. However, there is an irony to mocking a paper for the headline it receives when those mocking haven't read past the headline itself... 3/N
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First tropical storm of the season in Miami. Thigh deep in water and I'm 6ft 3! Off to the airport, which I hope is on higher ground!
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My goodness. How opportunistic can you get. I think we all understand that this is Sarsons et wtf. (2020) and should be cited accordingly.
This paper is about how women don’t get appropriate credit for their academic contributions. I am not joking.
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#EconTwitter
plz rt. On July 26th (straight after NBER EEE/DEV) Clare Balboni, Namrata Kala, and I are hosting a
@PEDL_CEPR
workshop on Climate & Environment at
@MITSloan
. Please share and submit your best firms and environment papers! More details here
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#EconTwitter
It's a Friday so what better time to engage in discussion about standard errors. Context: You follow individuals over time and space and the locations they live get shocked at random points in time. How does one cluster their standard errors? Some options:
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To the degree that anyone else finds this useful, here is a thread I wrote to a grad student asking for advice on getting started in applied micro research.
@ShogherOhanness
Focus on economics not estimators. Find a question that excites you and that you can argue should be of interest to academic economists. Hopefully, it should be of interest to policy makers and the public at large but the objective is to get a PhD. 1/N
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TOPIC SENTENCES! If you can't read and understand the introduction (all of) your paper using solely the first sentence of each paragraph, you're doing it wrong.
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#EconTwitter
we are delighted to be hiring a Senior Chaired position in Labor Economics at
@UVAEcon
! The position will involve teaching grad labor and PhD supervision. Please reach out if you know anyone looking to move. Please, RT!
More info here:
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A common misconception: 2nd year field courses make you an expert. Field courses introduce you to topics that are on the frontier. Your job is to identify areas of interest and then become obsessed with learning everything there is to know about that topic.
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Building off of our
@ScienceMagazine
paper, we're raising funds to build an interactive website that will provide similar information for every neighborhood in the U.S. alongside socio-economic data.
@EnvDefenseFund
let us know if you want to chat.
#DemocratizingInformation
Imagine if understanding your city’s air pollution was as simple as clicking a map. Our partnership with Google made that a reality in London.
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I had a great time talking with
@ClemVaneff
about the work
@john_voorheis
and I have been doing! We're particularly excited about this work at the moment as we've just received an R&R at JPE Micro :) Onwards!
[NEW EPISODE] 💨 “How Air Pollution Creates Economic Inequality” In this episode,
@JonathanColmer
explores the intergenerational effects of environmental pollution on economic opportunity…
#econ
#pollution
#inequality
#persistence
@UVA
@en_equality_lab
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One of the silver linings that I will long remember from this situation was that my Dad,
@GeoffColmer
, got to see me give a seminar today.
#EconTwitter
if you get the opportunity, take it!
#AllGrownUp
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#EconTwitter
For those looking for an introduction to how auction theory and market design can be used to address environmental issues in the real world, I would thoroughly recommend this excellent piece by
@t8el
in the
@OxrepJournal
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#EconTwitter
We're incredibly excited to be getting the Environmental Impacts Frame off the ground. Lots of projects coming down the pipeline, three of which will be presented at
@AereOrg
this summer. Stay tuned!
I have another working paper out today, in the NBER working paper series:
This paper introduces a prototype of the infrastructure we're building at Census combining confidential microdata with geospatial data on environmental hazards
(siren emoji)
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Very much looking forward to this. Working paper coming soon!
#EconTwitter
External Seminar Next Week! The Grandkids Aren’t Alright: The Intergenerational Effects of Pollution Exposure, by
@JonathanColmer
(
@UVA
), 4th November 2020, 14:00 UK Time via Zoom.
➡️Registration by email a.i.beltranhernandez
@bham
.ac.uk
#VivaEconomics
@en_equality_lab
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It makes for very interesting reading and poses an interesting hypothesis. What I do struggle with, and where I've seen more thoughtful comments, is with respect to the
@nytimes
article, which is incredibly heavy in its use of causal language and headline hyperbole. 2/N
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@nytimes
I don't know the answer to these questions, but I know our mental energy is better spent thinking about them rather than jumping on the usual "it's only a correlation" bandwagon and critiquing papers based on populist headlines. End of grumpy thread. N/N
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Really looking forward to this tomorrow! I'll be presenting "Air Pollution and Economic Opportunity in the United States". It's a new project, joint with
@john_voorheis
and Brennan Williams, that I'm really excited about. Tune in for more details :)
#EconTwitter
Get ready for NBER Economic Mobility Conference Live Streaming TOMORROW. It is a GREAT lineup! And, if you can't make it in real time, the video will be up for a few days after.
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Trying to calculate nearest distances between spatial point and spatial line data for a few million points and about 100,000 lines. ArcGIS just said "no". Any suggestions?
#econtwitter
#GIStwitter
#rstats
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In case you missed it you can find a recording of
@john_voorheis
and my 5-minute egg timer talk at the NBER EEE meeting at . "The Grandkids Aren't Alright: The Intergenerational Effects of Pollution Exposure". Working Paper coming soon!
#EconTwitter
#NBERSI
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Professional News: Sabbatical Housing sorted. I'm going to be a visiting prof in the econ department at
@UniofOxford
(Jan-June 2020). Excited to spend time with
@camjhep
,
@t8el
,
@mcmahonecon
, the folks at
@Oxford_CSAE
,
@INETOxford
, and everyone else!
#econtwitter
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We are just beginning to get a deeper understanding of the breadth of the issue as measurement improves.
@john_voorheis
& I have new work using IRS & Census data coming soon. Precision helps a lot. Our findings are unnerving to say the least
#staytuned
#pollutionbad
#reallybad
This is a big policy failure: the research I've seen says that the human and economic costs of air pollution are huge, even ignoring climate change 3/
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What the hell! Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur Genius Award winner doesn't get tenure, despite department, school, and provost support, because the "board of trustees" thinks the work is too political. I hope she gets many other tenured offers and gets away from the UNC system asap!
After conservative criticism, UNC backs down from offering acclaimed journalist
@nhannahjones
a tenured position
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#EconTwitter
"Why are Pollution Damages Lower in Developed Countries? Insights from High-Income, High-Particulate Matter Hong Kong" is now published in the
@JHealthEcon
!
🚨 New CEP Discussion Paper: "Why are Pollution Damages Lower in Developed Countries? Insights from High-Income, High-Particulate Matter Hong Kong" joint with
@jayshimshack
, Siying Liu, and Dajun Lin! 1/8
#EconTwitter
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