dad, behavioral & neuroeconomist
Pasadena CA USA
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- Followers 16,203
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Semi-unpopular (and personal) opinion:
Essays are not predictive and are one of the strongest ways high SES and privilege infects admissions
The end of race-conscious admissions will create more race-conscious essays. The pressure to for high schoolers to market their race to colleges will flatten their writing into the narrative tropes of a chatbot, writes @matteo_wong: theatlantic.com/technology/a…
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“Of Princeton’s 5,300 undergraduates, approximately 930—or 17.5 percent—are recruited players”
An amazing stat. Almost 20% of Princeton is admitted by coaches for (mostly) nonspectator sports kids will quit playing when they graduate
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Your questions are too easily evaded. Ask Trump if he knows what mifepristone is, what it does, and what the FDA brouhaha is.
Any savage teen could suggest better questions
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one of the greatest lines from a PhD Thesis intro...
"To Professor _____ at ____. You once threw an eraser at me for incorrectly explaining Nash equilibrium. This made me curious how I could get paid to do the same"
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Strong agree. Cardi is knowledgeable about civics etc.
Hard for some people to grasp because of her accent, persona and look
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Incredible de facto social science experiment. Collective honking resets red light countdown to more time.
Will it reduce honking? I think so
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1/ Totally agree with this.
I think there is a strange prejudice in economics that studying sports, movies, game shows etc is not “serious”
The truth is that as Ignacio explains, they often provide unusual control and diagnosticity.
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I am increasingly convinced the *major* source of publication bias is journals (editor-referee combination), not scientists.
All serious scientists would love to publish all their work, even nulls.
Goes in the file drawer because authors anticipate rejection.
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👇the kids aren’t late, they are doing impromptu Independent Study courses.
BIO 101: Introduction to Ants is more important than
third semester of REC 213: The Same Old Park
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Omarosa does not seem to do anything. “No one in the comms department knew a random reporter was walking around the West Wing. This is why people think we’re a shit show.” thedailybeast.com/no-one-kno…
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“[experimental subject] was told she wouldn’t receive payment if she backed out”
(This is *precisely* the kind of deprivation of subject’ dignity and autonomy that IRB training is meant to prohibit.)
Then DA *calls her* 3-4 times a day.
An astonishing transgression
So, Ariely mistreated (arguably abused?) study participants and when one of them complained, he tried to pay her off to keep quiet? How is this not a bigger story? How the hell does he still have a career?
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immigrant clusters heal dying towns
“If you’re a poor immigrant from a low-income country like Honduras, or Somalia, or Haiti, or Laos, the chance to live in a 1st-world country like America and work in a relatively clean, safe factory for $14/hr is the chance of a lifetime”
If you think "dumping" a "flood" of immigrants on small towns is awful, please tell me your plan to save those places. Because I've been looking for alternatives for a decade, and immigrants are really the only thing that saves these towns from decline.
noahpinion.blog/p/how-will-y…
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Have always *loathed* the marshmallow test for this reason.
It’s a joint measure of desire for marshmallows (or other treats), pure patience and trust in the experimenter
SES could affect any of the 3 differently
Whenever I teach it @Caltech students quickly point this out
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This is outstanding.
“Michael Jordan played 15 years, won 6 championships.
That was nine years of failure?”
I love how his speculative examples of the sportswriter’s goals are
Take care of family
Provide a house for them
Take care of your parents
Immigrant greatness
There’s no denying Giannis came up short, but this response to “failure” was fascinating.
All parents should watch & show their kids.
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Kids, see what happens when you drop out of college before learning about politics, ethology, evolutionary dynamics, incentives, psychology, and history?
“I think we are moving to a world in which we all become cells in a single organism, where we can communicate automatically and can all work together seamlessly.” - Mark Zuckerberg
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Great analysis. Random punishment snuffs out innovation and creates "learned helplessness"
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1/2 Our brilliant colleague @KirbyKNielsen (AsstProf 2020) just got promoted to tenured Full Prof, 2y ahead of schedule. Here's a hint about why:
1. she writes *perfect* haikus describing papers. That is *not easy*
2. Three @AEAjournals AER papers in 2 years. Different topics.
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This is mean and unconstructive. The reviewer didn’t like your paper but this language is uncivil and unprofessional.
It has nothing to do with you, it’s a reviewer character flaw.
Journals should have an editorial layer reviewing the reviews for tone and clarity of comments
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@clairelemon is classic denialist. RTs data on modest support for higher marginal income tax rate, says “hard to believe” then says “happy to be proven otherwise”. Champion self-own
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Unpopular opinion?. Buttigieg is resume-driven candidate. Life spent ticking boxes. Why work for McKinsey? He says “To learn how money works” truth: build resume, donor Rolodex, tick “pro-business” box. He’s younger, gayer Dem Mitt Romney
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“in 2013 half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a % so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YT systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this “the Inversion.”
it's about a lot more than fake accounts but i'm more convinced each day that this @max_read piece will hold up as one of the definitive articles for understanding the modern internet nymag.com/intelligencer/2018…
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One of the great, rare thrills in academia is to be able to recruit a mid-career superstar for our next generation @Caltech . When I’ve told colleagues (who haven’t heard) that Charlie Sprenger is here now, typical reaction is Wow #BehavioralEconomics
caltech.edu/about/news/the-m…
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*perfect* quote from Betsy Stevenson about well-deserved Claudia Goldin Nobel prize in econ:
“The men before her studied work and rarely gave a thought to how the actual food got on the table, clothes on the backs and the children raised.”
wapo.st/3LXqJLp
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NEW in J Econ Lit, brilliant review of psychological game theory by Battigalli+Dufwenberg. Love opinionated parts.
Imo this is *the* right way to model social emotions…all that’s missing from empirics so far is direct emo measures
Ungated here u.arizona.edu/~martind1/Pape…
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from new AEA guidelines on inclusion etc.
I have been waiting to hear this for 40 years.
better late than never?
aeaweb.org/resources/best-pr…
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All of N Dakota has 16 ICU beds; 14 are full. Almost 1% of population got sick *last week*
“The risk level determines what coronavirus-related protocols are in place under the ND Smart Restart Plan. THE GUIDELINES ARE NOT ENFORCED”
Like a horror movie
bismarcktribune.com/news/loc…
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A very good point— younger Dems have never experienced a serious GOP, so they are clear-eyed about now. Also why having so many old Dems in power is a bad idea
Check out this exchange with Rep Frost on generational differences among Dems.
Younger Dems have processed major traumatic political events largely through social media.
And their conception of the GOP is not polluted by nostalgia for bipartisanship:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/…
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Huge pivotal moment for #econtwitter culture and practices. Do not know NBER folks well enough to guess what they’ll do, but would imagine they would have to create a very complicated reason to *not* open attendance, esp given push for inclusion
Please RT if you agree: This is a great opportunity to make the @nberpubs Summer Institute less clubby. Let's allow anyone to listen?
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Fun fact: when given extra testosterone (T), college men get the wrong answer (ball=$.10 in the original version) 15% more often
Theory: T creates overconfidence, disables “system 2“ proofreader
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.…
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Superb writing again from @The Economist. Akerlof lemons paper rejected from JPE bc “If this is correct, economics would be different.”
Akerlof's "The Market for Lemons" was rejected three times. Then he won a Nobel prize econ.st/2htvCL0
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“It is not intuitive to an undergraduate that an economics major is not sufficient preparation for an economics doctoral program”
R:e your reference at the end of the piece to socioeconomic diversity in the field - you should absolutely check out @annastansbury's work on this issue if you haven't already! Her recent paper in the JEP with Robert Schultz is fantastic - pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/….
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The oped is poorly informed garbage. Common conflation of behavioral economics and behavioral *science*
E.g. “Behavioral economics is at the center of the so-called replication crisis”. False
Author: “Leif Weatherby (@leifweatherby) is an associate professor of German at NYU”
This @nytopinion piece on Behavioral Economics failed to convince me BeFi is junk science, but I am lol biased (+ I don't spend time on replication issues).
Curious as to what the BeFi professionals think about this criticism -- is this a mostly critique of the academic aspects of the field, or does this raise real problematic issues for the underlying science?
@R_Thaler @CassSunstein @daviddunning6 @koenfucius @AnnieDuke @TimHarford @HiddenBrain @PTetlock @Kit_Yates_Maths @DanTGilbert @RobertJShiller @CFCamerer @becisions @AppliedBeSci @HarvardBIG @LSE_PBS @how_we_behave @behscientist @leifweatherby
A Few of the Ideas About How to Fix Human Behavior Rest on Some Pretty Shaky Science
nytimes.com/2023/11/30/opini…
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amazing: human-exhaled chemicals in movie theaters can predict scene features (injury, hiding, mystery) @SciReports
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1/ Australia gun buyback cut suicide 75%. Why?
Limiting access to guns makes each attempt more likely to fail... vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/au…
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Please apply! camerergroup.caltech.edu working on habit, salience, supernormalization, intersections of economics, psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning with large behavioral datasets
Caltech is doubling the number of students hosted in the WAVE Fellows program (thanks to support from several Institute research centers). WAVE aims to increase the participation of underrepresented students in #STEM doctoral studies.
caltech.edu/about/news/expan…
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My heart goes out to poor PhD students and jr faculty that will get roped into listening and nodding patiently during this *5 day visit*
ANNOUNCEMENT: I head next week to @UChicago for 5 days (Nov. 8-12) at the request of its storied Department of Economics to present our theory that all of economics is based on the wrong version of the differential calculus.
Importantly, this error afflicts Inflation & the CPI.
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It's not "questionable". It is unquestionably NOT a blind trust. MSM don't impose misleading false balance here. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blin…
Donald Trump's questionable 'blind trust' setup just got more questionable: wpo.st/ZYoD2
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A ray of local sunshine in these awful times: the talented #behavioraleconomics and experimental economics wizard Charlie Sprenger is joining us in HSS @Caltech
scholar.google.com/citations…
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journals.uchicago.edu/doi/ab… instant classic from Joel Sobel.
He carefully dissects how to define lying, deception, and damage.
It is rare to find such a profound surgical theorist mind combined with brilliantly clear writing
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Princeton w $25B endowment acting like a hand-to-mouth small business. Plenty of flexibility in law to raise % of spend from endowment. What is an endowment for?
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#behavioralscience Twitter. NBC has a show scheduled for fall “The Irrational” based on Prof Dan Ariely studies & life (IMDB lists him as a writer)
NBC says “The NBC drama is based on Dan Ariely’s novel Predictably Irrational”
Novel?
imdb.com/title/tt16288838/fu…
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great explainer
”If a buck sergeant is in uniform and wearing their Medal of Honor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will more than likely salute first”
The Medal of Honor is so revered that it's the only decoration specially emblazoned on headstones in Arlington National Cemetery.
The Medal of Honor is so revered that when an Active Duty recipient wears it in uniform, it is customary, though not technically required, for all officers, no matter their seniority, to initiate a salute.
If a buck sergeant is in uniform and wearing their Medal of Honor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will more than likely salute first.
The Medal of Honor is so revered that the children of recipients are guaranteed a nomination to any of the Service Academies. They still must compete for final admission, but the incredibly difficult nomination process is entirely waived for their application.
The Medal of Honor is so revered that recipients and their dependents are entitled to special military ID cards for particular privileges at commissaries and priority on military air travel.
The Medal of Honor is so revered that every state offers some degree of special license plate for drivers who are recipients.
The Medal of Honor is so revered that recipients receive an automatic special pension from the VA that's tacked on to any other pensions, retired or medical, they may have. Adjusted for cost-of-living regularly, it's currently $1671.16 per month.
The Medal of Honor is so revered that all living recipients are entitled to an invitation to every presidential inauguration and inaugural ball.
The Medal of Honor is so revered that a fragile, cowardly, insecure, and deeply narcissistic piece of shit like Donald Trump can't stand knowing he'll never receive a similar universal respect.
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Women will compete as frequently as men in head-to-head tournaments for vouchers for their kids' books #behavioraleconomics
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Nobel prize prediction this year: Paul Milgrom.
Ticks every box:
huge influence in game theory, contracting, math econ.
Guided very tricky design of US incentive auction, many more.
Economics at both its most scientific and useful.
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NEW @NatureHumBehav study of direct classroom replication of centralized buyer-seller trade ("invisible hand") and ultimatum games nature.com/articles/s41562-0…
@caltech release here caltech.edu/about/news/famou…
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MD from Sierra Leone (w Africa) was on NPR the other day mentioning how Paul Farmer was leading efforts in Massachusetts based on protocol he’d learned in Sierra Leone
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"establishment against white nationalism". Fixed it for you
With Priebus and Bannon, Donald Trump pits establishment against populism at the top of his White House team wapo.st/2g8DXb9
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Love this story, it is so @UChicago
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terrific meta-analysis of field experimental tests of the "contact hypothesis" in existing groups (working together in a group reduces prejudice), from @gjclochard. Mean effect size is d=.329 and varies across studies (as usual) and predicted covariates.
drive.google.com/file/d/1pFu…
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Found someone who ignores sunk costs! $150 per concert ticket, $500 for a suite, but won’t see the concert because it requires a $40 test
#BehavioralEconomics
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D Kahneman is savage (on investing confidence)
"one exec I dined with...told me, with a trace of defensiveness, “I have done v well for the firm, and no one can take that away from me.” I thought, privately: Well, I took it away from you this morning."
nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magaz…
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new JPE: Micro, our distillation of many #behavioraleconomics regularities from 21 measures —> 6 components
@PietroOrtoleva @chapman_econ @snowberg
YouGov representative US sample
Special thx to tireless editor @Econ_4_Everyone
journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10…
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NEW @oyebolaoo Outstanding research is a big win for the contact hypothesis: Striking, broadly positive results from Nigerian youth service inter-ethnic contact, increases both national and ethnic pride and other measures
World Bank report is ungated
documents.worldbank.org/en/p…
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Great news:
“We encourage authors not to think of a typical Econometrica/QE/TE paper as a 30-40pp paper, but rather aim for 20-30pp. We will encourage reviewers to be restrained in their requests for additional analyses and results that increase length.” econometricsociety.org/publi…
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A conservative judge ( Posner's) devastating take on why voter ID laws are evil fw.to/sQ1x35h
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“If you are going to actually *be the President* you should be prepared to take questions from reporters...” your goalpost moving is showing MSM. Do better
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TWO spelling errors in one tweet, both medical terms. Is this person really an MD?
Asymptomatic, comorbidities [+ he does have comorbidities—obesity, recent mini-stroke, plus age]
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Starting it this year! Surveys, experimental design, admin data, etc. A course in how to *produce* data
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Here are 2 state of the art papers on dimension reduction of #behavioraleconomics psych variables. First is heavily on judgment bias, second (ours w @snowberg et al) on preferences. nber.org/system/files/workin… pietroortoleva.com/papers/Ec…
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Poor titling and curse of knowledge in econ. I have no idea what "local projections" are. No interest in reading a paper that has an uninformative title and doesnt define LP in the abstract.
Forthcoming in the JEL: "Local Projections" by Òscar Jordà and Alan M. Taylor. aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.12…
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Favorite part: COS Kelly asked Trump “how much the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff earns. Trump guessed $5 million”. (Actual=$200k) Has no idea of the details of government service (and financial sacrifice by many)
NEW w/@damianpaletta: Trump has begun telling advisers that the deficit needs to be cut, but he continues to want pricey programs -- and has largely avoided the issue for two years. "The people want their money," he told Sen. Corker over golf last year. washingtonpost.com/politics/…
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Beautiful example of spillover effects.
When schools offer free meals for everyone, local families reduce grocery spending. Large chains respond by dropping prices, amplifying benefits to the broader community, from @jessiehandbury and Sarah Moshary nber.org/papers/w29384
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Cool #behavioraleconomics salience result: NBA team T who acquired players overweight how those players performed when playing against T
sciencedirect.com/science/ar…!
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1/ Econ Nobel predictions: @RThaler, fingerprints on all areas of #behavioraleconomics + colossal impact of Nudge
bloomberg.com/amp/view/artic…
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Disagree. Econ is by far the most closed of fields I know well (psych, neuro, anthro, CS, bio). Fact that game theory, behavioral, market design are called "insurrections" vs "innovations" is informative
Al Roth's conclusion @ #ASSA2018: the open culture of academic economics is what enabled his career: intellectual immigrants and insurrections are allowed.
Let's treasure and preserve it
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Coase : “you can’t put a little measure into someone’s brain and read off utility...”
We basically did
aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.12…
(Lots of other decision neuroscience too, eg @knutson_brain brain-behavior prediction)
Ronald Coase and Gary Becker debate whether it makes sense to assume people are rational utility-maximizers—splendid little video: buff.ly/2m008ER HT @davdittrich
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Big paper.
Sad it takes 7 yrs to publish such a strong paper.
In gen science would have gotten to high-impact publication in 6-9 *months* max
Thrilled to see this article with @jacobsgoldin finally in print! (first draft was in 2013). The paper proposes a simple framework for learning preferences from choices when choices are subject to a framing effect. Here's a short summary:
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Footnote 2 says half of NBER members come from 12 faculties, and half from 5 PhD programs. Greater concentration based on *earlier* selection and achievements (PhD vs faculty position) seems odd.
Imagine if half of NBA players came from 5 high schools and half from 12 colleges
Check out our new working paper: In an experiment with journal editors, we show that papers whose authors are from top institutions get a positive boost when evaluated non-blind rather than blind. This is especially true for papers of male authors. drive.google.com/file/d/14uv…
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Correct. Average folks don’t realize how rare high-achieving STEM is for US citizens compared to Europe, Asia, S America
It’s despicable and monstrously stupid. We should be tripling and quadrupling these visas. Even if less from China, more from India and Pakistan, etc. These are future job creators and inventors of life saving drugs we are expelling.
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Dinosaurs worry that meteors are cheapening their ecosystem
Academy members worry that Netflix is cheapening the Oscars. bit.ly/2yxzszu
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“However, our analysis suggests that despite being the cheapest of the samples, MTurk offers a false economy. While almost 50% more expensive, Prolific observations offers substantially greater infer- ential power by reducing noise.”
Useful careful analysis. No more MTurk?
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Ouch. Ramadan fasting isn’t “general enough” but MTurk subjects are? This grounds for rejection is completely wrongheaded. Often a “special case” (= 1.8B people!) is very diagnostic scientifically
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Truly embarrassing. A science that can’t adjudicate error correction is in bad shape
Comments and responses in economics are so unsatisfying.
Comment: When coding errors are fixed, results disappear completely.
Authors' response: We have corrected the errors, all our results are unchanged.
AEJ: Resolved!
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Actually it is perfectly rational #behavioraleconomics
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Important paper. How they got there*: Jessica and Michael are married (financial economist & memory scientist). Jessica kept proposing intuitive models until Michael heard one and said Yes, that’s how memory works.
Ideal interdisciplinary synthesis
*as told by MK
A new QJE paper applies a theory of human memory to financial decisions: past events can influence present beliefs, even when they are not relevant. Therefore, investors are affected by early life experience, financial crises, and fear. #memoryandfinance academic.oup.com/qje/advance…
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Big news for @caltech Social Sciences: the brilliant new economic theory (and antitrust!) PhD Peter Caradonna is joining us as Asst Prof in the fall. A huge talent.
petercaradonna.com
Peter’s not on Twitter but *is* here math.stackexchange.com/users…
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“The original effect is psychologically implausible” is a courageous thing for a young scholar to write
I totally agree with her by the way, based on her maximum positive control.
Recalling being dirty —> more cleansing prime d=.51
(Orig) Hearing about networking effect d=.98
I don't think that @ZoeZiani has gotten enough credit for this beautiful attempted replication of Casciaro, Gino & Kouchaki, 2014
In retrospect, I'm very struck by the prescience she shows in her final paragraph
psyarxiv.com/ys9dh
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👏👏👏👏 Q: how do we ensure jr ECRs get their share of attention?
Idea: have pairs of talks, where senior researcher is paired with jr researcher. Like how musical groups with market power choose an opening act they want their audience to see. *many* bands broke out this way
Proposal for colloquia/Brown bag talks during a pandemic:
Everyone records a 45min talk & puts it on Youtube. Departments can check them out & select those they like.
Then they show it during their colloquium hour & invite speakers to do Q&A.
No travel, no cost, no risk.
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Consume (college) vs produce (PhD) is THE Big Pivot.
Like enjoying cooking school vs opening a restaurant
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RIP to a fount of wisdom, an amazing person
“We thought the probability was 0.2,” Treisman told the Philadelphia Inquirer after Dr. Kahneman’s [Nobel] award was announced.
washingtonpost.com/obituarie…
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Isn’t the space constraint endogenous? Why not expand space to publish more papers *or* fix space turn to format used in many sciences where the gist of paper is say 7000 words, and details many readers are not interested (I conjecture) in go into online Methods Appendix
2nd - I was not prepared for how high the bar is at AEJ: Applied. Our space constraint and the quality of submissions means I am rejecting some truly excellent papers. 5/x
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Great example of where a small attention tax (use pager not text) reduces wasteful comms
good NPR episode about a hospital that tried to replace pagers with encrypted text messaging and failed
basically the encrypted texts meant the friction was so low to get a consult that people started bombarding the on-call residents and they essentially stopped responding to the texts
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huge congratulations to brilliant psychologist @elkeweber for election to National Academy of Sciences.
Now please weaponize behavioral science to save the planet from climate change. Thanks in advance!
nasonline.org/news-and-multi…
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Rational expectations pioneer John Muth in 1984: "really incredible" so little attention paid to cognitive limits #behavioraleconomics
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