jessebruhn.bsky.social
I’m an Econ AP at Brown: www.jessebruhn.com
My long term research agenda involves saying yes to everything and then repeatedly disappointing everyone who thought I’d make a good coauthor.
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And as a kind of meta-point lurking behind this whole discussion: I think we do research a disservice but ceding the point that we need to have real world impact to justify our existence. So many revolutionary ideas started as shit that smart people thought was cool but that was otherwise useless.
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But I just don’t see advocating for that change as part of my job. So many factors go into that which are orthogonal to doing good research and I just have no real desire to make that part of my job.
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I mean, don’t get me wrong. I would be pumped if someone read my deployments paper and it led them to ask me to help them make some real changes that would improve veteran well being. And I would definitely be excited to help out.
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But I’m content with just being part of that process — I don’t need to see my research have a direct impact to know what I’m doing is worthwhile.
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IMO the miracle of academic research is that when you give creative, hard working people the freedom to pursue the things that interest them, then it tends to yields insights that transform the world.
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Doesn’t play a role. Directly tracing my impact on the real world is just not how I see my job description.
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Now, why anyone get's paid to do what I do is another question and way above my pay grade...
(If only there was a field of academia that made it's intellectual claim-to-fame by studying how society chooses to allocate it's scarce resources. They could probably shed some light...)
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This feels like a lab experiment
“The illusion of control. Happiness, job satisfaction, and productivity: evidence from an unrelenting bureaucratic nightmare.”
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They give us the illusion of control
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We should at a minimum do what Nature does, in which the referee comments and author responses are published along with the paper.
Allows the paper itself to be an authoritative artifact while lifting the curtain on the debate that led its creation.
(quoting @dholtz.bsky.social )
4/
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Thanks!
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Variance decomp lit? Do you have a cite? Sounds interesting.
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respectfully disagree. If you apply it in a specific way enough times you get back to the average. If we give up on seeking improvements on average (or the median, etc.), then what are we left with?
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"You either play hide and seek with me now, or pay for my psychologist in 5 years. Your choice daddy."
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Idiosyncratic variation is real. But averages are also real. I’m not sure why the existence of the former implies it is not worthwhile to understand the latter.
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Are you saying my kids are not aware of the overlapping generations model and forecasting how my actions today will result in well being for their children tomorrow?
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Definitely. The causal impact of mosquito nets probably explains a very small share of cross country variation in mortality. Despite that, it’s still very critical/worthwhile to make sure the people who need them have access to them.
bsky.app/profile/jess...
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I see. So schools probably matter differentially for some kids in a way that is correlated with family income. don't disagree with that at all.
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Interesting. I tend to have the opposite prior. Schools definitley matter, but probably not much (5%? 10%?) relative to families. Admittedly though, I have no evidence to back that up.
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Interesting. I have a slightly different prior (schools matter, but maybe on the order of like 5-10% relative to families) but admittedly zero actual evidence to back that up.
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This is my strong prior too.
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Agree. To clarify: suppose I flip coins and randomize infants to families. Then I find them downstream (age 5) and, among families in the same neighborhood, randomize again which school they go to.
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Ooh this looks good. And yes -- I agree 100% that the "no school" counterfactual probably explains a much larger share of variance. I was thinking more about the distribution of schools as they currently exist.
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I agree. My gut is that schools are probably small in the grand scheme of things though. (Obviously an important margin to get write though, since I imagine schools differentially matter for the least advantaged, etc. and it is also a primary policy margin we have to work with for helping children)
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This is a good point. Suppose I cross randomize. First, we flip coins and swap a bunch of infants. Second, we flips coins (on that same sample) and have them change schools (among families that sorted to the same region).
Does that clarify the thought experiment I have in mind.
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Not 100% sure I follow: your model is that K-12 = not important. College = very important. Families = important insofar as they have resources for college?
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I'm very willing to move on the specifics of the thought experiment. I think the question of, "how important is education relative to family influence," is straightforward and important and I'm fine if others to interpret it through a slightly different set of assumptions, etc.