Rick Hornbeck
@Rick__Hornbeck
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Economist, Economic Historian. Soccer Dad, Climber Dad.
Joined June 2020
Grad students with #econhistory ideas: I’ll send you feedback if you email me 1 page about the question, data (available or acquirable), research design, main concerns, and how you aim to address those. Multiple 1-pagers better. All encouraged, please spread word. #EconTwitter.
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For PhD students: if you interviewed with a school, but did not get a flyout, those closest to your research probably still think very highly of your work. Many unseen factors go into the job process, but people are excited that you're joining the profession.
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Mourning my Mom, who passed away last night from cancer. She was a labor lawyer with the government (NLRB) and union (NTEU), and she taught me to write. If you've ever thought something I did was well written, it's because of her.
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Me to 7-yr-old: "So, school is planning on being remote for 3rd grade and above next year.".7-yr-old: "Oh. if I'd been born a couple days later I'd be in school next year.".Me (thinking): One day there will be papers about the impacts of that on you, me, and mommy. .
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My advice to 1st year Econ PhDs: think about research ideas all the time (during class work, reading papers/books/news, RA work, everyday life moments). You’ll learn things in a more useful active way, and you may get good ideas (and learn to discard ideas). #EconTwitter.
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Hi Twitter. I needed to join because I'm not otherwise hearing things I need to hear (like #blackintheivory).
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Two roads diverged in my research project, and I -- I went down both, which mostly ended up in footnotes, appendices, or cut entirely.
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I’m looking for full-time research assistant candidates. Points for finding the total value of imports and exports for major US ports in 1860, 1870, and 1880. Bonus points for why I might want this, when divided by gdp per capita. Please pass on, application is online somewhere.
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I tried to thank my mom (a retired labor lawyer) on her birthday for helping to make me a clearer writer, and she roasted me saying my papers aren’t that clear! She always made me go through several rounds of revision on my high school papers. thanks, Mom ❤️.
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For anyone interested, here's my new uncomfortably self-centered #econhistory PhD course syllabus/readings: it has intentional clusters of papers, rather than trying to be comprehensive, and apologies for so many omissions (we'll talk about more).
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"To All the Ideas I've Loved Before" Putting together a summary for my PhD students of 30 research ideas I considered, explored some, and didn't pursue further. was an experience. All have issues, some are tempting, some have been written since, and some I did differently.
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One of my favorite parts of teaching is emailing to congratulate the students who did much better on the final than the midterm — I highly recommend it.
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Grad students seem to get more hesitant about this over time, so just a reminder that you can still send me economic history ideas for feedback.
Grad students with #econhistory ideas: I’ll send you feedback if you email me 1 page about the question, data (available or acquirable), research design, main concerns, and how you aim to address those. Multiple 1-pagers better. All encouraged, please spread word. #EconTwitter.
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My Mom’s obituary, published in the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune. One of the first women at UVA Law (in larger groups). My parents noted from E.B. White: “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.” Like Charlotte, my Mom was both.
Mourning my Mom, who passed away last night from cancer. She was a labor lawyer with the government (NLRB) and union (NTEU), and she taught me to write. If you've ever thought something I did was well written, it's because of her.
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Maybe the easiest solution to the national debt after coronavirus? Immigration.
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New paper of mine to share! Dust Bowl migrants were “negatively selected” and struggled economically, especially in California, but there were strikingly modest impacts of the Dust Bowl on average incomes in contrast to its enduring impacts on land.
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New paper below, with a paradigm shift in thinking about slavery and emancipation — that centrally considers the costs incurred by enslaved people — with implications for the country’s foundation and the possibilities for substantial economic gains when there is misallocation.
Emancipation generated aggregate economic gains worth the equivalent of a 4% to 35% increase in US aggregate productivity — 7 to 60 years of technological innovation, from @Rick__Hornbeck and @TrevonDLogan
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For any PhD students with economic history interests, especially those interviewing with business schools, here is my MBA syllabus if it is helpful for thinking about potential courses ("Business in Historical Perspective"):.
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Slavery was not only theft, it was inefficient theft and would have generated substantial losses even if enslaved people had received more in-kind than they produced. Slavery was a clear moral failure, but it was also a market failure.
New research that centers the cost of slavery on enslaved people reveals that emancipation led to the single greatest annual increase in aggregate economic surplus, by far, in American history. From @ChicagoBooth's @Rick__Hornbeck & @TrevonDLogan:.
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All econ/business/policy schools should check out Ruveyda Nur Gozen, from UIC, who's written a great paper showing increased patenting by women as their marital property rights increase. One of the best JMPs in innovation and/or economic history in recent years.
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To grad students in particular: try to enjoy thinking about ideas and pursuing them. Also: you do research, you are not your research. This chart may help put in context things people deal with, though I feel like it makes me anxious looking at it. #EconTwitter.
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Try dipping leftover pizza crusts in Nutella for dessert. This may be my main contribution to aggregate productivity for the day (and maybe forever).
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In 1927, levees were destroyed to protect New Orleans by flooding poor Black-populated areas — with initial promises of financial compensation, which was never paid.
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Economic historians: “I know a spot, but I need 4 years to get the data on it.” #econhistory.
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Now open access: "Dust Bowl Migrants: Environmental Refugees and Economic Adaptation".
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Presenting tomorrow (7/7) at 11am CST my paper with Martin Rotemberg on railroads and US growth. NBER live stream link TBD (see below). TL;DR Much larger economic gains when something directs activity to inefficiently-small places. With great problems come great possibilities.
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I’m working on lumber mills in the 19th century, during a transition from water power to steam power. How do the mills start production? They log in.
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To PhD students giving job talks: you are presenting your paper, but it's fine if there are concerns with your paper -- be ready to talk about it with broad perspective. Also, whether you get the job (or "flyout") need not reflect how it went and particular people's impressions.
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First words this morning from 5-yr-old: “Your head is a steering wheel!”.“For what?”.“For your body!”.Me thinking that’s deep. then 5-yr-old climbs on me and turns my head like a steering wheel.
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Child code breaking: 4-yr-old asked to listen to the ants. she meant the Beatles. #childcode.
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An "idea" is when you have connected items from 3 pots. Pot 1: questions of importance and interest to you. Pot 2: data you could reasonably acquire. Pot 3: empirical methods / research designs. You can iterate rather than pick one item precisely before thinking of other pots.
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I was glad to read this in a student’s dissertation, and certainly what I would aspire to
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One of my favorite economic history job market papers, ever, check it out (and interview him)! What happens to workers and their children following de-skilling technological change? How do people adapt, or not? History has answers.
WILLIAM COCKRIEL works at the intersection of economic history & labor economics, and his JMP studies how workers & their families adapt to technological change in the labor market, focusing on shoemakers affected by the introduction of the McKay Stitcher
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Normalize shorter recommendation letters! (Though maybe not that short.).
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So, was economics invented or discovered? I say discovered. People have discovered ways in which society operates (and invented some tools along the way to assist in that discovery). And it’s an ongoing process of discovery.
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Infrastructure has much larger economic benefits when it encourages economic activity that is otherwise below efficient levels. New revised version of my paper on US railroads with Martin Rotemberg:
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This feels like watching the second innings of a cricket match. .
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Grad student tip: it also seems like a useful exercise to take a paper you've read, maybe in a subject and style you would like to emulate, and create this 1-page document for that paper. Note, though, that papers ideally seem simple at the end but generally are not at first.
Grad students with #econhistory ideas: I’ll send you feedback if you email me 1 page about the question, data (available or acquirable), research design, main concerns, and how you aim to address those. Multiple 1-pagers better. All encouraged, please spread word. #EconTwitter.
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There’s no-Nutella days, Nutella-with-a-knife days, and Nutella-with-a-spoon days.
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Be like my 8-yr-old: “I’m going to have an ice cream sundae because I deserve it.”.
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“Here’s your vitamin D pill.”.“Why?”.“Because in this house we equate expected marginal benefit and marginal cost.”.
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Someone told me in grad school that only a few people can write simple papers and they already have jobs at Harvard. I’m not sure if that was good advice or bad advice. but my advice is to answer an interesting question as well as you can (and as simply as you can do it well).
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I was warned about twitter trolls. .
Soccer is boring send tweet.
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Here's to 2021 being much better than 2020. I'm really excited about some new work, which is the culmination of much effort but we didn't give up:.
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7-yr-old: I'm going to invest the chocolate in my lunch.Me: ?.7-yr-old: Yesterday I gave it to you and you gave me 3 chocolates later.
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Work-in-progress with Martin Rotemberg on railroads, market integration, and aggregate productivity growth in the United States.
@Rick__Hornbeck does a revisit of the Fogel work and Donaldson work - he finds a massive effects of railways #econhist #EconTwitter #EHA2020
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Honestly I’d been thinking tax fraud, but money laundering is making a strong case. .
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Clarifications: the goal is finding ideas that "could" become your PhD job market paper and be published in “general interest” econ journals – you can do it! You may be pre-PhD. but that’s the scale/scope expected. Junior faculty can also reach out. Question-Data-Approach.
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The negativity on #EconTwitter is out of control.
Type III error is pickles. You didn’t create a new food - you ruined a cucumber.
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Hi all, this is getting distributed around again (thanks!) and I wanted to emphasize this offer still stands and people can reach out to me with early-stage research ideas (see below). I've gotten back to everyone within a week or two.
Grad students with #econhistory ideas: I’ll send you feedback if you email me 1 page about the question, data (available or acquirable), research design, main concerns, and how you aim to address those. Multiple 1-pagers better. All encouraged, please spread word. #EconTwitter.
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Kids are a really effective mechanism for raising the marginal utility of income.
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Annual reminder 👇.
For PhD students: if you interviewed with a school, but did not get a flyout, those closest to your research probably still think very highly of your work. Many unseen factors go into the job process, but people are excited that you're joining the profession.
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Just a reminder that this is still going on! I think I’ve gotten back to everyone (within a week or two) and don’t be shy! #econhistory #econtwitter.
Grad students with #econhistory ideas: I’ll send you feedback if you email me 1 page about the question, data (available or acquirable), research design, main concerns, and how you aim to address those. Multiple 1-pagers better. All encouraged, please spread word. #EconTwitter.
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So tragic. Many missed opportunities to appreciate those in our lives, personal and academic (and both), and my hope is they know.
Yesterday, I lost a mentor and a beloved friend. I woke up to news that I've lost a limb without knowing it. Emmanuel Farhi was the closest to super-human I've known. If you have someone special in your life, let them know before you lose the chance. 🕯️🕯️
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Kids with grandparents means *I* eat a bowl of ice cream for lunch.
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I’m teaching about US institutions next week. I was teaching about stock market crashes last March. People need some historical perspective, MBAs included.
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If white people think understanding how skin tones appear in children's books is an "antebellum ethic," it's because they draw on an antebellum perspective in thinking about skin tones.
University researchers used AI to catalog characters’ skin color, bringing an antebellum ethic of race consciousness to American children’s literature, writes @MeghanGurdon via @WSJOpinion.
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My grandkids one day. .
Years Of Listening To Grandpa Talk About Dust Bowl Pays Dividends In Instagram Post Honoring His Death
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Sleeping next to a 4-yr-old is practicing for if you are ever attacked by a bear.
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Very interesting to think about the value of investments in weather forecasting, and how it depends on what decisions can adjust in response to better information.
Economic history of weather forecasting! US-centered by fantastically interesting post to about development of storm tracking and warning systems from 1860s.
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Great paper.
Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics: "Labor Supply and Directed Technical Change: Evidence from the Termination of the Bracero Program in 1964" by Shmuel San.
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Attention crosswalk twitter!.
New working paper alert (with @patesta and @LiyangZhou6)! Introducing new area- AND population-based crosswalks for harmonizing boundaries of U.S. counties (i) to congressional districts and (ii) across U.S. Census years. Paper: (1/7).
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Celebrating with some home-cooked gulab jamun as Trump falls way behind the RRR with just the tail left. (Non-cricket fans: if you want all this slow burn anxiety in game form, check out cricket!).
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Gin and tonics taste like colonialism, but then I guess it’s not surprising they taste good because India makes British things better: cricket, tea. though tea shouldn’t even be British, and all the kids in India have more ownership over cricket.
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@amitabhchandra2 Yes, thank you, the magnitudes are completely off for this not to be an overwhelming win for biotech innovation. It also seems crazy that the US govt did not buy 350m doses of each viable vaccine candidate for delivery ASAP.
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This could be used for the basis of a very cool paper if the relevant data are acquirable.
In 1914, a 29 yo engineer with the Ministry of Agriculture put an end to centuries of village feuding over water rights in rural Japan by inventing the Circular Water Diverter, "Entobunsui". A no-tech unmanned automatic cistern that fairly divided set amounts of irrigation water.
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Some of our calculations find that emancipation generated aggregate economic gains more than double the substantial cost of the US Civil War (drawing on Civil War cost calculations by Claudia Goldin and Frank Lewis, 1975).
New research challenges the enduring view that slavery was "economically productive." @ChicagoBooth's @Rick__Hornbeck & @TrevonDLogan show that the value extracted by enslavers was substantially less than the costs imposed upon the people they enslaved.
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Cider donuts are trash — have a real donut and some hot apple cider. (Is this how twitter works?).
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Fogel in 1993 (Nobel): “The marketplace could not have ended slavery, because slavery was an efficient and profitable system.” But: enslavers did not have to internalize costs on enslaved people (e.g., with a Pigouvian tax). Unlikely parallel between slavery and carbon emissions.
In their new working paper, "One Giant Leap: Emancipation and Aggregate Economic Gains," @ChicagoBooth's @Rick__Hornbeck & @TrevonDLogan challenge the longheld notion that slavery was economically productive by incorporating the immense costs imposed upon enslaved people.
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Soccer parent level unlocked: prefer watching highlights of your kid’s old games to watching new highlights of professional games. (Yes, that implies I videotaped his games Zidane-style and then made highlight videos. nominally for “grandparents”).
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There’s a great HBS case on the whaling industry that involves incentives contracts, agglomeration economies, and other things. MBA programs: hire economic historians. New MBA class and great research!.
How did old timey whalers catch an animal that can hold its breath for an hour.
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Rolling into the ski slope parking lot in my Honda Civic in a snowstorm
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Overheard question to my 9-yr-old:.“Do you like mac and cheese?”.“It’s one of the best options at my home, but one of the least good options at my grandparents”.Harsh.
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I don’t know where all the p-value 0.049 discussion is coming from on #EconTwitter. I don’t think exact p-values and stars are that much of a thing now.
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@MilenaAlmagro One of my best decisions was paying a PhD student to replicate my JMP and improve the code/comments — go for it!.
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Now this election is like a rain delay. .
This feels like watching the second innings of a cricket match. .
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Lease the elephant. Property rights are a bundle of rights, which can be separately restricted or used. — UChicago Class of ‘04.— QJE 2010.— A reason to read classical works.
2024 uchicago college essay question.
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Laws of Parent Dynamics: a child asleep will stay asleep, unless it’s the weekend.
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Application open for the Chicago Causal Inference Student Conference in March 2024: great chance for PhD students (including JM candidates) to present research in empirical micro and applied econometrics. Deadline Nov 30.
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History is amazing (and knowing it will make you safer this winter).
Fun pandemic history fact for NY apartment dwellers frustrated by aggressive radiator heat in the winter. The era when steam heat in buildings was new/popular overlapped w/Spanish Flu pandemic, when authorities told everyone to leave their windows open for ventilation. So. 1/4.
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Is it fine to pour honey into your kid’s mouth before a soccer game? Maple syrup? I think it’s fine. .
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Great thoughts for getting more from seminars/conferences. In grad school, especially, I’d think about the questions people ask and the analogous question for my projects. Every talk by others was then also feedback on my own work. Admittedly self-absorbed, but productive.
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One month later, after he's been stinging my hands:
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Also the current economy:
Our economy is the ultimate team sport. It’s not about how productive your best player is. but how each player makes the other even better.
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This is going to become unfortunately increasingly important in the next century. We know more about who moves in response to temporary environmental events, but there are different responses to permanent environmental collapse.
Who will be the next #climate migrants? Chicago Booth’s Richard Hornbeck looks to Dust Bowl-era data in the US to help us understand an expected massive movement of people.
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Where in the country should indoor dining be open and schools closed? Nowhere.
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There are not videos from back when it all began.
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There’s a lot of great time together in the park behind this strike!
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Kids create vague rules to win their games. and I just discovered political economy.
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Me when Zoom is slowly converting my lecture video for viewing:
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Today's Supreme Court decision is a landmark for human rights, but there needs to be widespread news coverage and public outrage at these terrorist attacks.
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Bought an iPad for our 4-yr-old after school closed and, frankly, I feel like I should be withholding payroll taxes and sending Apple a W2 for all the childcare. .
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