What? Causal Identification Wasn't Always a Thing to Worry About?

Read this interview of David Card and Alan Krueger. Imagine that. There was a time in the not so distant past that nobody used the terms "natural experiment" and "research design".  Also, see their thoughts on RCTs, behavioral economics, and complicated theories explaining human behavior. Interesting throughout!

Here is more on the history of applied micro research, starting in the 1960s. Important to note before going on the job market: "We also show that, despite the partial abandonment of theory by applied microeconomists, the labor market for economists still pays a wage premium to theorists." My non-rhetorical question: Doing theory is hard and time-consuming. Is it worth it? My answer: It depends.... 

At Adam Smith's Grave

I know, I know. It's been a while since I've posted anything. I've been traveling. Yesterday I visited Adam Smith's grave. Pretty cool thing, no?

Need a Useful Yet Beautiful Graduation Gift? Stata Cheat Sheets

I suggest printing these out (ideally in color) and framing them! They're beautiful! And practical! I love them all...can't wait to start using the keyboard shortcuts.

How to Be Innovative

I just saw this Ted Talk on the habits of original thinkers. Really, that's what we're in the business of doing: coming up with innovative ideas and following through with those ideas. Lots of good advice in the talk. My favorite: "The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they're the ones who try the most. You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones." And honestly, all you need is a few good ideas. Nobody will care about or even notice all of your bad ones.

I also like his insights on procrastination. No, this does not mean you should wait until the last minute to write that proposal, third year paper, etc.! It does suggest that before hurrying to send that brand new paper to a journal, you should present it at several conferences and share it with trusted colleagues. Yes, you may get good suggestions from them, but even if you don't, it is very likely that you yourself will come up with ideas for substantial improvements while you wait for responses from people.

Dominicans Love Regression Discontinuity Design

I just got back from celebrating my little brother's wedding in the Dominican Republic (AKA República Dominicana). I really liked these pens spotted in a gift shop. ;)

And When the Going Gets Tough..

Step 1: Listen to this Billy Ocean song.
Step 2: Read this Jon Levin Quora interview.

When You Don't Have A Good Control Group, Just Make One Up!

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit. Synthetic controls methods are actually really similar to the typical differences in differences approach except that more weight is given to "untreated" observations that are more similar to the "treated" observations in the pre-treatment period. You can read more about this intuition here, but even cooler--you can download a STATA program that automates the process of running multiple synthetic control estimations. It even generates visualizations of the results!

And now you're ready. All you need to do now is find interesting policy changes enacted in different states at different times. Stop reading this blog and go read the newspaper!

PS
UConn people: David Simon is our resident expert on synthetic control methods.