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Pietro Biroli

@pietrobiroli.bsky.social

3.2K followers 2.6K following 500 posts

Applied econ @unibo interested in genes, health, human capital. Dadx2. Lactose and fascist intolerant. he/him 📉📈 https://sites.google.com/site/pietrobiroli/

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · May 20

🧵New paper out:

“Beyond Time: Unveiling the Invisible Burden of Mental Load”

with Barigozzi, Monfardini, Montinari, @elenapisanelli.bsky.social @svevav.bsky.social

🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2505.11426

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Beyond Time: Unveiling the Invisible Burden of Mental Load

This paper introduces a novel, scalable methodology to measure individual perceptions of gaps in mental load -- the cognitive and emotional burden associated with organizing household and childcare ta...

arxiv.org

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 15h

Could you unpack that?

Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 15h

I'm not crying, you are crying

youtu.be/Viumh9LKKvc?...

Reposted by Pietro Biroli

Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social · 19h

Congratulations to Maria Corina Machado, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize - her incredible optimism has already changed her country. I spoke to her, and wrote about her, at the beginning of this year:
www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

The ‘Anthropological Change’ Happening in Venezuela

Maduro is still in place, but a pro-democracy movement is transforming the beleaguered country.

www.theatlantic.com

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Reposted by Pietro Biroli

Nicolas R. Ziebarth @nicolasziebarth.bsky.social · 22h

Was a great experience and much fun to edit this

Labour Economics Special Issue with @joemoscelli.bsky.social and @osea.bsky.social on the

“Economics of the Healthcare Workforce”

👇

Giuseppe Moscelli, PhD @joemoscelli.bsky.social · 21d

Very happy to see the work from a fruitful 2-year journey come to life: the Labour Economics Special Issue on the “Economics of the Healthcare Workforce”, edited with Osea Giuntella Nicolas R. Ziebarth, is finally out!!!
Link: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

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Reposted by Pietro Biroli

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 20h

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

🧵 1/7

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 18h

I hope so, but I'm not too sure. My understanding is that they have been thinking of coming back to Europe for a long time. They lived in Paris, checked out many universities, even before Trump.

Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 18h

Congrats!

Reposted by Pietro Biroli

Jessie Baldwin @jessiebaldwin.bsky.social · 19h

I'm hiring! ✨ Looking for a Research Fellow to study environmental factors that mitigate intergenerational transmission of mental health.

3-year post at UCL @uclbrainscience.bsky.social with great opportunities for training, collaboration & exciting science!

🔗 Apply: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOZ633/r...

Research Fellow in Mental Health at UCL

Apply for the Research Fellow in Mental Health role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

www.jobs.ac.uk

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Reposted by Pietro Biroli

Diane Coyle @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social · 19h

High-profile departures from the US - congrats to @econ.uzh.ch

Department of Economics @Universität Zürich 🇨🇭 @econ.uzh.ch · 19h

We are thrilled to welcome Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee as the new Lemann Foundation Professors to our department, beginning in the summer of 2026.

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 5d

Look I don't think we're going to agree. There are many reasons why in practice, for certain settings, RCT can be worse than other methods.

But I'm any case, lots of messy reality and not much idealization in the following:

gen treat = 1 if runiform()>0.5
replace treat = 0 if treat==.

Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 5d

I believe there's a difference between creating your own random variable which you know to be orthogonal _by construction_ to everything else, and looking at a cutoff and arguing that things on average are similar on one side and the other

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Reposted by Pietro Biroli

D. Earl Stephens @dearlstephens.bsky.social · 6d

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Reposted by Pietro Biroli

Ruth Ann Crystal @drruth.bsky.social · 6d

The HPV vaccine is doing what had been promised.
17 years after it became available, HPV infections decreased significantly in vaccinated people and unvaccinated people because of herd immunity. buff.ly/WvjQ1BS

h/t @boghuma.bsky.social

#medsky #pedsky 🛟🧪

Light blue background. Young woman with dark hair makes a sign of strength with her arm and she has a vaccine bandaid on her upper arm. It says "The HPV Vaccine Works!"

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

I mean, your actual RCT is *not* that perfect trial. For sure. But mostly in (semi) testable ways: non compliance, attrition, lack of adherence to the treatment content, etc.

Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

Okay but did they have IRB approval to conduct experiments in plato's cave?

I mean were they trespassing??

(I'm joking mostly because I agree with you)

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

Is ciccio _||_ age an assumption? Or a property of that random variable?

Cov(ciccio,age) will never be exactly zero. But that doesn't tell me that ciccio is endogenous

Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

Adherence is never perfect, so you and never have the ideal experiment, but that's a different discussion.

Let me rephrase. Let's say that I open my favorite data set, which contains a variable called age, and I generate a random uniform variable which I call ciccio.

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

Ok but now you're changing the goalpost.

What I said I didn't agree with in your previous post was "You (a) have to assume that the experimental protocol was followed perfectly"

That's different from Y1 and Y0, which are unobservable.

Adherence to experimental protocol is observable.

Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

Very true.

But the messiness of RCTs or other data analysis are very empirical and applied in nature. No need to invoke differential hypothesis of counterfactuals for those.

One argument could be that rcts are "better" in theory but "worse" in practice, but I thought your claim was different

Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

Sorry I thought you were arguing that RCT were worse because they had to assume SUTVA

Certainly true that you need assumptions to interpret any estimate, RCT based or otherwise

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

Regarding (a), more than an assumption it's something you need to check ex post. Like the relevance of IV: you calculate the f statistic in the first stage.

In an RCT you know if you randomized or not. You can check whether there's differential attrition.

Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

I agree that RCT are not the gold standard, but I don't agree with a and b

isn't (b) a problem common to every method? Actually to every statistic? That's always the statistic for that sample. If you want to draw more general conclusions, you always have to make assumptions about extern validity

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

But virtually every standard causal method assumes SUTVA.

Whenever we write down Y1i Y0i we are assuming SUTVA

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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 6d

I assume that epsilon and X are always orthogonal.

Not always and everywhere, of course, I'm not stupid.

Just in all the regressions that I decide to run. Totally plausible assumption.

Chelsea Parlett @chelseaparlett.bsky.social · 7d

It’s not the method that makes you causal it’s the assumptions

Reposted by Pietro Biroli

Eladio Bobadilla @eladiobobadilla.com · 7d

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