@gynemimesis @StatisticUrban Why is OKCupid data better than census data here?
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Ben Harrell 🌐
16.5K posts
Ben Harrell 🌐
@elben
Asst Prof of Economics @Trinity_U | health insurance, health policy, & health disparities. Abundance bro. Past: @vanderbiltecon @LGBTPolicyLabVU and @aysps
San Antonio, TX Katılım Mayıs 2008
3K Takip Edilen4.9K Takipçiler
@StatisticUrban Wrong. I ran my own numbers using the okcupid dataset, and gays earn 15% less after controlling for age and race
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@nomadj1s @besttrousers @jessespafford Basically the same insight as the hospital mergers literature. Local markets matter most for effective market power, and are defined by a complex combination of features commute times, ancillary services, and other factors that limit substitutability.
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@besttrousers @jessespafford @elben This work by Fern Ramoutar finds evidence of market power in rental markets, using the insight that there are sub markets within the same city:
dropbox.com/scl/fi/jny7mkd…
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Two problems w/ this article from my old Twitter frenemy Unlearning Economics:
1) Price controls in imperfectly competitive markets (eg oligopolistic) can improve welfare.
2) That doesn’t mean rent control as it is currently proposed will do so. Depends on lots of things!
Nathan J Robinson@NathanJRobinson
an economist explains how rent control is actually fine and good currentaffairs.org/news/rent-cont…
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an economist explains how rent control is actually fine and good
currentaffairs.org/news/rent-cont…
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@coryfromphilly @jbsteinberg @NathanJRobinson Yeah he was and did! EJMR doxxed him at one point, but that’s all been scrubbed now.
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@elben @jbsteinberg @NathanJRobinson Really? Last I remember (during the glory days of /r/badeconomics) he was an undergrad.
I am actually shocked he did a PhD and landed at a top university.
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@jbsteinberg @NathanJRobinson He has published in journals that would get both of us tenure. Idk what to tell you.
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@elben @NathanJRobinson Sorry but heterotards from Oxbridge don't count.
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@jbsteinberg @NathanJRobinson Can confirm he is an economist at a top university. Or at least was when I went in his podcast a few years ago.
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@NathanJRobinson FYI: the anonymous writer Unlearning Economics is not an actual economist. They're just an online weirdo with a grudge against the economics profession going back almost 20 years.
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A few more spots to fill! If you're interested in being a discussant or chair of a session in health equity at ASHEcon 2026 pls shoot me a DM!
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Tyler Cowen is to Bryan Caplan as Naomi Klein is to Naomi Wolff. I will not be elaborating further.
𝔐𝔽𝓩@mean_field_zane
You guys should go ask an actual academic economist what they think of Tyler Cowen, who is ostensibly supposed to be an economist. The answer might surprise you.
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Ben Harrell 🌐 retweetledi
you’re telling me all the same people who championed the anti trans panic now openly want to overturn gay marriage? you mean gay and trans struggles were inseparable this whole time?
Tyler O'Neil@Tyler2ONeil
🚨EXCLUSIVE: A broad coalition of pro-family groups is organizing to overturn Obergefell. The campaign declares that children are "Greater Than" so-called "Equality." Marriage and family law should prioritize the needs of children, not the predilections of adults. Here's the powerful video with @albertmohler, @LilaGraceRose, @Advo_Katy, @conservmillen, @JBStonestreet, @michaeljknowles, @FocusFamily's Jim Daly, @DelanoSquires, @tperkins, & @josh_hammer. The coalition includes: @AmericanFamAssc, @ColsonCenter, @FRCdc, Focus on the Family, @ThemBeforeUs, @CatholicVote, @LiveAction, @AbbyJohnson, @SteveDeaceShow, @RuthInstitute, @RonColeman, @CBMWorg, @sgruber91, @CCVPolicy, @AKFamilyCouncil, @indianafamily, @theFAMiLYLEADER, @MarylandFamily, @MAFamilyInst, @ncfamilypolicy, @txvalues & more dailysignal.com/2026/01/28/exc…
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@wwwojtekk We may never step in the same river (or policy regime) twice, but sometimes they're close enough to motivate good inference. History rhymes!
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Arpit truly doubling down on his contempt (misguided in my view) of Lucas critique
Arpit Gupta@arpitrage
Ignore academic publishing, and imagine the implications of everyone having access to a Raj Chetty-quality lab through AI Newspaper articles could routinely come with credible identification designs. We could spin up a simulation for every federal, state, local proposed policy
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@AlexCaswen @tbsama03 I think there’s a strong case to be made for preferential admission of young men into college for this reason. The point of putting your thumb on the scale is to ensure outcomes map onto the population distribution.
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I've always been against racial discrimination of any kind. But because I got into (and out of) academia before this started, and because I've never really worked a corporate job, I didn't know how widespread it was. No one really talked about it until the 2020s.
T. Greer@Scholars_Stage
This piece is justly being shared around. All I will add is this: if you want to understand the venom behind DOGE, the attacks on academia, and the grants being cut across the government... this is the thing to read, really. This is the main reason that all is happening.
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@RuxandraTeslo A genuine question: would course correction from several generations of white male dominance over all other groups not empirically look like a decline in the relative power of white men? Was that not the entire point of improving the prospects of women and minorities?
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I think discrimination against white men in academia, especially humanities, is a big deal. But, arguably, an even greater source of discrimination is one's political opinions. Anything slightly right of centre is punished imo more than race, gender etc..
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@tbsama03 @Noahpinion Yeah. I think we should have priced this kind of stuff into our mental model. Not in a “nothing to see here way,” but in a “this was to be expected” way.
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@elben @Noahpinion Black people and women expected pushback. Because they always faced pushback when they entered these spaces.
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Ben Harrell 🌐 retweetledi
One last (sobering) update on the #EconJobMarket before the winter holidays; data as of 2025-12-14. In terms of # of job listings on JOE, this is the worst job mkt in recent yrs for PhD Economists. # jobs down 20% from last yr, even 18.9% lower than during COVID (2020).
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@Econ_4_Everyone @instrumenthull nice, but there's a missing first step: measurement.
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I saw the below picture over on the always astute @instrumenthull. When I used to teach Econometrics, I followed this very approach: econometrics involves three distinct objects and two distinct intellectual tasks.
This framework is also beautiful in that it reveals exactly why experiments are so powerful. With observational data, the identification arrow is where all the heavy lifting happens. You want to know a causal effect (your parameter), but you can only observe correlations in the data (potential estimands). The gap between correlation and causation is the identification problem.
Random assignment cuts through this problem by construction. When you randomly assign people to treatment or control, you guarantee that the two groups are comparable on average, not just on observables, but on everything, including things you cannot measure.
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Ben Harrell 🌐 retweetledi
@ole_b_peters @LughSpear Thats certainly an interesting interpretation of Afriat’s theorem.
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@LughSpear The circularity is this:
Joan places a brick.
A: moving bricks must have utility for her.
B: Why is Joan moving bricks?
A: It has utility for her.
B: Ah.
Evolutionary arguments are an alternative: a house prolongs Joan’s life.
Prediction: we may find her moving bricks.
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My favorite Joan Robinson quote:
"Utility is a metaphysical concept of impregnable circularity."
Relearning Economics@RelearningEcon
"There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks." -Joan Robinson
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