- Is it better to be a big fish in a small pond/should you send your kid to a better school? Kellogg insight on work by Roland Fryer and co-authors on how peer effects play out with relative rank changes.
- A new paper puts together intra-cluster correlation coefficients for designing cluster education experiments in Africa. (h/t Dave Evans)
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The latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives is now out and has a lot of must-read papers:
- Giovanni Peri has a great paper on migration and labor markets – a nice exposition of why the simple static supply-demand framework where immigrants increase labor supply, so must lower wages, is missing so much of the action. This is complemented by Dustmann, Schönberg and Stuhler who explain why different studies on this topic end up with different answers – they are estimating different parameters and make different assumptions – with occupational downgrading of immigrants a particular issue.
- Donaldson and Storeygard on the use of satellite data in economics – good summary of measurement and uses to date
- The theory and measurement of the Townsend Thai data – how the project was started and the village as an economy, “currently at 19 years of annual resurveys, 18 years of monthly resurveys, and counting “ …”Interviews are conducted in a conversational style and do not seem to be tedious for households. Enumerators have largely memorized the questionnaires, and of course take extensive notes during the interview, so that specific modules can be filled in afterward. This approach allows for eye contact and one-on-one back-and-forth during the interview, allowing sensitive topics to be revisited as conversations proceed”
- Bayer and Rouse on the limited progress towards diversity in the economics profession – “gender diversity in the academic economics profession is as poor as both the male-dominated tech industry and the Academy Awards nominating committee”.
- Remember we are taking entries for our post your job market paper series: if you missed the announcement, here it is.
- Job opening: we are still looking for a field coordinator for a project on SMEs in Nigeria. Apply by November 10. JPAL is also launching its annual recruitment drive.
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