It's true! I recently learned that
@Caltech
has granted me tenure 🥹 I would say that it's a dream come true but I never dared to dream such a dream.
I just feel so much gratitude & desire to pay forward the encouragement and kindness that's been given to me.
Let the fun begin!
1/2 Our brilliant colleague
@KirbyKNielsen
(AsstProf 2020) just got promoted to tenured Full Prof, 2y ahead of schedule. Here's a hint about why:
1. she writes *perfect* haikus describing papers. That is *not easy*
2. Three
@AEAjournals
AER papers in 2 years. Different topics.
Student: Can you please send me the syllabus for your course that starts in 17 days?
Me: So very incredibly flattered that you think I know what I am going to be teaching. This is my first year teaching and also a pandemic, so I will try to update you in 16 days.
Best,
Kirby
Are you (like me) a junior researcher who sometimes worries about having a narrow enough research focus, or thinks that your interests feel a bit scattered?
I recently remembered this great comment from a mentor: "All of your projects already have something in common---you!"
Another plus: My sister had to learn how to use Google Scholar for one of her college classes and she saw I had a profile and that’s how she finally learned what I do. She said “I didn’t realize the papers you write are like the real kind of papers my teachers make me read.” ☠️
*Every* researcher should create a Google Scholar account (and do some minor maintenance -- the algorithms are imperfect).
It alerts you to new research and makes it easy for others to find your papers.
If you don't already have one, go here now:
I was trying to think of the jargony word(s) I use most often (or have to stop myself from using), in "normal" conversation.
Exogenous/endogenous?
Ex-ante/ex-post?
Marginal?
What about you?
The newly established William H. Hurt Scholars Program will, when fully developed, provide 6 years of unrestricted funding for a cohort of 18 early-career faculty.
Benefactor William Hurt endowed the program shortly before his death in September 2021.
I know some people are skeptical of online experiments. But today I collected 400 observations across two different projects, better data quality than in the lab, all while I spent my time in Zoom meetings.
@Prolific
has been incredibly efficient without sacrificing quality
If you could become a “research consultant” and people would hire you to do one part of the research process for their project, which part would you want to specialize in?
Seeing Wooldridge on here dropping knowledge is confirming my belief that an econometrician should team up with an experimentalist to write an experimental data analysis handbook. Experiments should be simpler to analyze by definition, but I think it'd still be huge value added.
Whenever I have to pick up a paper I haven’t worked on in awhile, I *dread* re-familiarizing myself w/ the data. This inevitably causes me to put it off.
#EconTwitter
, what are you best tips to prevent this? I try to annotate for Future Kirby, but still feels like a huge hurdle.
As a childless researcher, w/ no current lab experiments running, & who was working from home regularly before... my productivity has significantly decreased, to my surprise. I didn't anticipate this overall anxiety taking a chunk of my day.
And to think I'm the LEAST affected.
Excited to share a new working paper with
@JRehbeck
, “Are Axioms Normative? Eliciting Axiom Preferences and Resolving Conflicts with Lottery Choices.”
Haiku summary of our paper: You like a choice rule/but then you violate it./How to reconcile?
Abstract here, thread below (1/)
Excited to share a new paper, joint with
@pauljhealy
and Marina Agranov, titled "Non-Random Randomization."
Haiku summary of our paper: People randomize/even when dominated./We study where, why.
Abstract here, thread below
Full paper:
Having just been desk rejected on this fine Saturday morning, I can honestly say that I really appreciate desk rejections. Just saved me five months of time for the same outcome.
Academics travel a lot, but tend to treat flights as a jail cell for refereeing. Sometimes I do, too, but flights can be great! I’m flying back home & excited for my 4 hours of solitude—analysis, movies, and a healthy dose of wine and cheese ☺️ This really is the best job ever.
Traveling often stresses me out, BUT I really miss traveling.
That feeling of sitting in a random airport trying to send an email and get Overleaf to compile your slides before your boarding group is called... nothin' like it.
In grad school, I always felt bad for my advisors when I presented the same paper over & over again (e.g. JMP practice talks). But now that I'm barely-on-the-other-side, it's fun to see how the presentation changes & improves! My feedback improves, too, as I understand it better.
So proud of my (very first) “student,” coauthor, and friend,
@marissalepper
! She’s joining Texas A&M
@ageconomics
next year; check out her papers in the meantime and keep an eye out for even more great things to come 😊
I love seeing another academic for the first time in awhile and asking how they're doing, because they either say
"Well, I'm teaching, so..."
or they say
"Well, I'm not teaching, so..."
Know any women who are interested in Beh/Exp Decision Theory? Let's form a network!
The intersection of Exp+DT is minuscule for women:
- Exp SITE had ~40% women presenters (👏, organizers!)
- The DT conf. I attended today had 1 woman (me...) in the entire audience (~30 ppl).
These simulations are really great illustrations! With a somber closing statement:
"If you want this to be more realistic... some of the dots should disappear."
Always glad for a dose of humility. For example, just now—
Me: our neighbor looks like a famous person!
Husband: by “famous person” do you mean a famous economist or, like, a *real* famous person?
@itaisher
I’ve seen a lot of chat transcripts of students playing indefinitely repeated PD experiments and claiming that they “know what to do because (they) learned about the prisoners dilemma in class and you should always defect”
I’ve decided that my summer “hobby” will be taking album-length walks in new areas.
So, please recommend me an album! I’ll listen to the whole thing on a walk sometime. Old favorites, new finds, meh with a few good songs, unique, classic, popular, obscure, etc. all welcome.
It's really helpful to see behind the curtain sometimes (especially after waking up to a rejection this morning).
But the main thing I'm jealous of is that other disciplines can cycle through 5 journals in 1.5 years 😲
To all grad students who think publishing research is always easy for tenured professors, I present to you the review life cycle of my most recent co-authored paper with two other tenured professors. If you believe in your work, don't give up on it!
I can't think of a possible reason why WhatsApp would suddenly change the "typing" and "online" status notifications to be upper case on mobile except to make me angry.
I think this has to be the most beautiful—and the most intimidating—room I’ve ever presented in 😅 I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with hundreds of
@Caltech
alums this afternoon!
If you’re going to ask a few friends to read your paper, consider asking each to read just a couple of sections. I’ve seen this work for a few reasons:
1. It’s an easier ask! More likely to get quick feedback
2. Can see if sections are self-contained
3. Independent signals, since
Equally excited to share the updated version of our paper (
@JRehbeck
)! It's got a new title and new data, but the story is still the same... Namely, people want to follow the canonical axioms in decision theory and many classic violations of the axioms are "mistakes."
Excited to share a new working paper with
@JRehbeck
, “Are Axioms Normative? Eliciting Axiom Preferences and Resolving Conflicts with Lottery Choices.”
Haiku summary of our paper: You like a choice rule/but then you violate it./How to reconcile?
Abstract here, thread below (1/)
I am finding that every semester my syllabus just keeps getting longer and longer as I close ingenious loopholes students have found. Will I ever manage a two-page syllabus? How long will it be when I retire?
Fool me once, shame on me.
Fool me twice, it's going in the syllabus.
Second-day-on-the-job report:
Good news: home office standing desk has arrived!
Bad news: I found out there was a faculty meeting an hour after it ended 🤦♀️
There are so many wonderful people in this profession. Willing to share slides, programs, take time to explain things... People are very generous and my friends are very kind!
Just feeling extra grateful today. I wouldn’t be able to do any of this alone.
A tip from your friendly neighborhood referee: ctrl-F (or whatever is the Mac search) your pdf for “?” before submitting. Missing references don’t give off a great impression.
Kirby Nielsen's (
@KirbyKNielsen
) is an experimental economist studying how people perceive risk and uncertainty.
The results of her research can better inform how people make decisions in a range of areas, such as medical testing.
Really excited that our paper "Timing of Communication" (with Puja Bhattacharya and Arjun Sengupta) has been accepted for publication at
@EJ_RES
!
Main question: Is breaking a promise the same as telling a lie?
Answer: No! Individuals are much more willing to break promises. 1/
They say that staying for a 6th year of grad school
@OSU_Econ
increases your job prospects and lifetime earnings. But what they don't tell you is that staying for an 8th year would have given you a shot at $1 million.
The problem with using someone else's slides for teaching is that they make no sense and are all out of order.*
*especially true if "someone else" is your past self
Forthcoming in the AER: "Distinguishing Common Ratio Preferences from Common Ratio Effects Using Paired Valuation Tasks" by Christina McGranaghan, Kirby Nielsen, Ted O'Donoghue, Jason Somerville, and Charles D. Sprenger.
"...a 10-percentage point increase in the share of minorities in a white student's assigned school decreased their likelihood of registering as a Republican by 2 percentage points (12 percent)."
Forthcoming in AER: Insights: "The Long-Run Effects of School Racial Diversity on Political Identity" by Stephen B. Billings, Eric Chyn, and Kareem Haggag.
Just one week til SITE Experimental Economics 🥳 Looking forward to two full days of great talks. Check out the program below and don’t forget to register if you haven’t already.
Reminder: The paper submission deadline for the SITE: Experimental Economics workshop is this Monday, May 8! The workshop will be in person at Stanford on August 10-11.
Submit here:
One of the 12 jurors in the New York case said his only sources of news were Trump's social network, Truth Social, and X.
And he still found Trump guilty.
Something useful that Gmail could do with all my data:
Estimate how long an email will take me to reply. 2min? A week?!
Maybe I'm the only anxious inboxer, but I avoid even opening emails that seem scary. So in addtn to time mgmt, this would prevent a lot of unnecessary anxiety.
Do you struggle to sit down and write? Foolproof solution: adopt cat who sleeps on your lap + develop strong guilt over waking him up → forced productivity!*
*net productivity unclear as you will only be able to type with one hand & will spend lots of time staring at said cat
Tomorrow, Oct. 6, at 10 a.m. - Catch
@Caltech
's
@KirbyKNielsen
discuss an experiment where her team tested whether subjects considered it a mistake to violate canonical choice axioms when making decisions.
Me, submitting a conflict of interest disclosure statement: "I have no relevant material or financial interest related to the results in this paper."
Econ: "Lol, yes you do"
I know
#EconTwitter
has lots of opinions about peer review, so check out this website
A team of economists surveyed ~1500 economists to collect experiences with peer review (supply and demand). 1/
The best part about traveling is that sometimes your husband makes you take embarrassing* photos while tens of people in the Detroit airport watch the antics.
*proud, not embarrassed
Me: I'm excited to be back traveling for work!
Also me: Took a Lyft >1 hour through morning rush hour to get to LAX, only to remember that my flight was leaving from Burbank (which is a pleasant 10min drive from my house).
☠️