1/6 I've somehow made it 1 year through my pre-doc position without getting fired. To celebrate, I'll share a little write-up I made for those just starting. Recent grads and #EconTwitter might find it helpful. This is based on my specific experience. drive.google.com/open?id=16e…

Hear the exact moment Manhattan lost its mind

FROM NOW ON ADDRESS ME AS CHAMP! 🧡💙

Legalized sports gambling reduces household food sufficiency by 2.1 percent among working-age adults without a college degree, from Xiaohui Guo, Lizhong Peng, and Chad Meyerhoefer nber.org/papers/w35305

"You're allowed to think about the worst case scenario, but you gotta do something about it"

Wow, I didn't expect our paper on iPhones and fertility to generate this much buzz—thanks for all the feedback! Rather than scattershot replies, here's a compilation of thoughts and new robustness checks. 🧵1/15

When you multiply every number together, the result is zero.

It’s (at least partly) the phones, y'all. New NBER WP this morning with Zeke Hooper: we estimate the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in US births from 2007–2011. #econtwitter🧵 nber.org/papers/w35310

Cleaning out my grad school desk. #BandsMakeHerDance

Knicks fans are insane 😭😭😭 “My Mayor is Muslim, my bagel is Jewish, my Christian’s Dior… Knicks in 4!!!”

I'm so sad about this. When I started learning how to do social science in 2014, I learned so much from reading Raul's blog and following his Twitter. He represented the best of social science education and led as an example to pay it forward. I hope his family finds peace.

A few months ago, a high profile paper in Science claimed to find that researchers' ideology produced biased results in favour of immigration. A reanalysis of the data finds that result came from a coding error, which once corrected, shows no effect. Will people who shared that original finding update their views? osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/4…

I believe we now have evidence of FIFA's World Cup ticketing shell game: FIFA is colluding with third-party resale platforms for its own supply management. Look at this SeatGeek map (secondary market!) for Saudi Arabia vs Cape Verde. The circled areas are not random single resale tickets, but large, contiguous blocks of seats: entire rows and swaths in sections 101/102, 112/113, 119/120, 134–137, 139, ... The blue circles appeared weeks ago, then the purple blocks suddenly showed up a day or two ago, and the red blocks seem to have appeared recently too. That's not what ordinary fan or even commercial scalper resale looks like who resell pairs, fours, and scattered seats. Instead, this looks like inventory being dumped in bulk onto secondary markets, at prices below FIFA's official site. Why doesn't FIFA just lower prices on its own site Probably because official price cuts could trigger refund demands, chargebacks, or consumer-protection headaches from fans who already bought at much higher prices. Instead FIFA keeps official prices high, avoids openly admitting the market-clearing price is lower, and moves unsold inventory through third-party resale platforms instead.

No this is a widespread belief but isn't generally true. Several studies of average colleges have found GPA to be more predictive. At top colleges, it's less predictive, but that's likely because so many students have near-perfect GPA (range restriction).

Holy Father the post will perform better if you append the url in a threaded reply as opposed to linking it in the tweet

Today I'm launching a podcast! It’s called The Context Window with David Deming. My first guest is Angela Duckworth. @angeladuckw

Unpopular Academic Advice #10: I started this series casually, but I have been really touched by how many students have reached out to say they found it useful. I have been busy giving talks and organizing conferences over the past couple of months, so I paused for a while. But at recent conferences, several students told me they had been reading the series and encouraged me to keep writing. So, as many new PhD students are about to begin their programs, I want to say something about advisors. It is very tempting to choose an advisor who seems easygoing and has low expectations. I understand why. Low expectations feel safe, especially when graduate school already feels intimidating. But I would be careful about choosing comfort as the main criterion. A good advisor should first be a decent human being. They should be willing to spend time on you, support you, and invest resources in your development. But they should also have high expectations. They should push you to think more carefully, write more clearly, and take your own ideas more seriously. When I was a PhD student, my advisors were often very blunt and honest. They did not always try to frame feedback in a way that made me feel good. At the time, it was uncomfortable. But that discomfort made me take their advice seriously. It forced me to reflect on my weaknesses and improve. You are not in graduate school simply to enjoy life. You are there to be trained. A key part of success and growth is the willingness to receive, reflect on, and act on constructive feedback. Of course, high expectations should never be used to justify cruelty or abuse. But if an advisor is kind, invested, and demanding, don’t mistake discomfort for a red flag. Sometimes that is exactly where real training begins.