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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Aug 19

Interesting study but worth noting that “correlation is not causality” applies here. This shows a correlation between political beliefs and conclusions, it does NOT show that political beliefs affect conclusions.

Reposted by Nikolaj Harmon

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · Aug 5

In Denmark, new mothers are quasi-randomly assigned to mother groups by nurses.

This new paper shows that being assigned to a group with a depressed peer decreases mothers self-reported mental health + increases mental health care uptake.

Fascinating!

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Feb 11

Jeg ville jo nok insistere på at det første er lidt et definitionsspørgsmål :)

Tak for oplysning. Nu er jeg med igen (på både substans og sprogbrug)

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Feb 11

Ja, mindre samlet trafik ved road pricing, men også en modsatrettet effekt fra af at nye veje nu giver indtægter fra roadpricebetalinger.

Men det sidste du nævner lyder som om den gængse nomenklatur er at se dette som en sænkning af nettoomkostningerne (selvfinansiering) frem for højere afkast?

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Feb 11

Hvis man regnede helt rigtig, burde vejprojekter så ikke se bedre ud med optimal Road pricing? Road pricing løser et eksternalitetsoroblem som sikrer optimal udnyttelse af vejnettet = større samf. afkast

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Reposted by Nikolaj Harmon

Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · Feb 11

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Feb 11

Yes, nu er jeg med. Så den overordnet gode policy er congestion pricing plus vejudvidelse indtil omkostning>=gevinst i sparet rejsetid.

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Feb 11

Jeg er nysgerrig om jeg er bagud på min viden her, men jeg troede: 1) udvidelse af transport-infrastruktur løser ikke trængselsproblemer (eksternalitetsomkostninger), 2) congestion road pricing gør. Er det ikke det der står i tweetet? (Plus noget tvivlsomt om kollektiv transport)

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Reposted by Nikolaj Harmon

Torben Heien Nielsen @torbenheien.bsky.social · Jan 27

Hello BlueSky!

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Reposted by Nikolaj Harmon

Ben Golub @bengolub.bsky.social · Dec 24

In economics, editors, referees, and authors often behave as if a published paper should reflect some kind of authoritative consensus.

As a result, valuable debate happens in secret, and the resulting paper is an opaque compromise with anonymous co-authors called referees.

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Reposted by Nikolaj Harmon

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · Dec 19

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Reposted by Nikolaj Harmon

Jonas Jessen @jonasjessen.bsky.social · Dec 16

🚨 PUBLICATION ALERT 🚨

How are firms are affected by (longer) parental leave absences?

Paper joint with @mathiashuebener.bsky.social, @danielkuehnle.bsky.social & Michael Oberfichtner is forthcoming at The Economic Journal

doi.org/10.1093/ej/u...

Short thread below 👇

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Reposted by Nikolaj Harmon

Jeppe Druedahl @jeppedruedahl.bsky.social · Nov 27

Imorgen torsdag har vi Økonomisk Eksploratorium om årets nobelpris.

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 25

TL;DR: The novel data is the universe of human written text. The LLM is just a way to process this data.

Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 25

I share your skepticism but there is a coherent argument for why this could work:

An LLM is (approx) trained on the universe of text to behave like humans do.

To someone who has read and understood the universe of text; the LLM will never surprise. But none of us have!

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 20

Let’s just say my enthusiasm for accepting referee tasks dropped for a while after.

I’m sure I have lots of bad (subjective) opinions as reviewer. But this was not that.

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 20

Later I got the revised version to review. The authors had BEAUTIFULLY addressed 1…

… but also doubled down on the bias claim, STILL without properly defining an estimand. 🤯

Situation was weird after that. Eventually ended with editor half-agreeing with both of us and accepting then paper. 🤷‍♂️

N/N

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 20

… the paper never defined the estimand! And in fact for a sensible choice of estimand, there is NO bias in the existing method.

I wrote a positive referee report detailing how I would fix 1. Plus suggesting that claim 2. be taken out (the paper’s contribution was easily high enough without it)

2/N

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 20

I’ll keep this vague since I hold no ill will here. But basically:

I refereed a really good paper with only two drawbacks:

1. The exposition/framing was doing the results a disservice (IMO)

2. The paper claimed to fix a bias in an existing method that I have worked on extensively, except…

1/N

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 20

Man, I have a war story about this one.

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Nov 20

When a study talks about various things that could bias estimates but never explicitly addresses the analysis goal in the first place

Goose chase meme.
Top Panel: Suspicious goose asks "biased relative to what?"
Bottom Panel: Goose is chasing a man, yelling "Biased relative to what?"

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 20

Cue that Lucas quote in 3…2…1

Hank Green @hankgreen.bsky.social · Nov 19

Today my eight year old was cheering and jumping up and down upstairs, so I went to see what he was watching on youtube and it was a video showing the GDP of countries growing over time. I asked him why he found it so exciting — he put two fingers on my chest and said “that’s none of your business.”

Reposted by Nikolaj Harmon

Robert (Bob) Kubinec @rmkubinec.bsky.social · Nov 19

#bluesky has over 20 million users! 🥳👏

here's to a quality media environment that promotes information, not misinformation! 🫡

(except for @kjhealy.bsky.social posts, those are just bad)
(@timgill924.bsky.social is pretty bad too)

(what is it with sociologists... 🤔)

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Reposted by Nikolaj Harmon

Mark Wittek @markwittek.bsky.social · Nov 20

🎺 Open Assistant Professor position in Social Data Science at our Department (DNDS). Great research, supportive social atmosphere, willingness to communicate across disciplinary boundaries, and a beautiful city with affordable rents.
For details see: careers.ceu.edu/job/Vienna-A...

Assistant Professor (f/m/d)

careers.ceu.edu

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Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 19

Either I don’t understand your question or I’ve already answered it above.

Nikolaj Harmon @nikharmon.bsky.social · Nov 19

But adding a spline or polynomial makes it much harder to summarize the relationship. If the log model is a good fit, you can summarize it in one number (elasticity blah blah).

(Obviously many cases where you can do better than logging but I’m happy to defend it as a good norm/first-pass)

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