Duncan Webb @dunc_webb Twitter profile

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Duncan Webb

6 months

Excited to present my JMP: Silence to Solidarity My job market paper studies whether communication between discriminatory people can lead to large reductions in discrimination 🔗 👇for more

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@BrendanJKearney Every time I order a coffee in this city, the person laughs, confused, asks me my name again, then gives me a cup with "Dunkin'" written on it - apostrophe and all

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

💫 Very honoured to be awarded the inaugural Weiss NEUDC Distinguished Paper award at #NEUDC2023 @HarvardCID @Kennedy_School , alongside 4 other amazing young economists ( @fracchiamattia , Emma Smith, Miguel Ortiz, Trina Pamh)

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

5 months

Very excited to see my blog post about how discriminators can persuade each other to discriminate less in the @WorldBank blog! #EconTwitter

David McKenzie

@dmckenzie001

5 months

Can conversations between discriminators lead to less discrimination? Evidence from anti-transgender discrimination in India - today's job market post by @dunc_webb shows how persuasion can reduce discrimination

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

9 months

🎙Thrilled to share this #VoxTalksEconomics podcast with @timsvengali ! I discussed my research on how group dynamics can combat transphobic discrimination in India, alongside the amazing @tscarelli and @cvillallera #EconTwitter

Tim Phillips

@timsvengali

9 months

⭐ VoxTalks Economics NEW EPISODE ⭐ In a special episode, the next generation of researchers talk about their work & the future of economics. Duncan Webb & @tscarelli @PSEinfo & @cvillallera @warwickecon talk to @timsvengali @cepr_org . Listen:

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

7 months

Super excited to be presenting my paper on the effect of group dynamics on discrimination at the #AFE2023 AT @UChicago this week!

John A. List

@Econ_4_Everyone

7 months

Advances with Field Experiments week is here! Hundreds of field experimentalists will be descending upon UChicago later this week to present their own work and to hear from the always wonderful trio: @I_Am_NickBloom @UriGneezy and @S_Stantcheva

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

1 year

Can't wait to get to @YaleEconomics to present my work at #neudc2022 tomorrow! I'll be talking how critical periods in early childhood can imply dramatic long term effects on cognitive development #econtwitter

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@JoHenrich How can you tell that the causality runs from kinship to economic outcomes, and not e.g. the other way round?

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

Had such an awesome time at @GPIOxford over the last month, thanks to everyone involved, especially @rossaokod @BenjaminTereick !

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

8 months

Very excited to be talking about my research with @srajagopalan on the @IdeasofIndia podcast! We had a great discussion about my field experiment that shows that group dynamics can sharply reduce discrimination against the transgender community in India.

Shruti Rajagopalan

@srajagopalan

8 months

I kick off the 2023 job market series of @IdeasofIndia Duncan Webb @dunc_webb , a PhD candidate in economics @PSEinfo . We discuss his field experiment on how group discussions by cisgender customers reduces prejudice against transgender workers. @mercatus

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

1 year

Great round-up of all the fantastic papers at #neudc2022 by @Almedina1Music and @DaveEvansPhD , including my work on early childhood and cognitive development

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@JustinSandefur @davidroodman The Duflo analysis is also vulnerable to the worries about using fixed effects with heterogeneous treatment effects, as described here:

Fuzzy Differences-in-Differences

Abstract. Difference-in-differences (DID) is a method to evaluate the effect of a treatment. In its basic version, a “control group” is untreated at two da

academic.oup.com

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

Cutting taxes for the richest is not the way to generate growth 🤦 #UKPolitics

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

This is just a pretty wild fact about the way the world works... and beautifully put by @willmacaskill

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

1 year

👏 Now that's my kinda title: 👏👏 ( @KailaHeidi )

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@suannaoh And for any Tamil-speakers out there, I'm looking for an RA to work on an exciting project on how laws can reduce anti-gay discrimination

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

I ran an experiment in Chennai with over 3,000 people, measuring discrimination by offering participants a free grocery delivery and seeing who they select to carry out the delivery

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

1 year

@paulnovosad Using @elicitorg you can upload a paper and then ask it questions about the text, it works pretty well for short / specific questions!

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

E.g. this paper from the US shows that tax cuts on the bottom 90% are the ones that generate employment growth - trickle down economics isn't empirically supported!

Tax Cuts for Whom? Heterogeneous Effects of Income Tax Changes on Growth and Employment | Journal...

This paper investigates how tax changes for different income groups affect aggregate economic activity. I construct a measure of who received (or paid for) tax changes in the postwar period using tax...

www.journals.uchicago.edu

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

But if people were earlier involved in a group discussion, in which they spoke to two of their neighbours and collectively decided who to hire, this discrimination disappeared on average

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

Only ~1/3 of people who voted Tory in 2019 say they would still vote for them, ouch (from @jburnmurdoch )

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

1 year

@economeager @itaisher I feel like EA as a movement comes across as more sanctimonious than any actual EA person I've ever met

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@leightjessica @evavivalt @jrgptrs @VictoriaBaranov @a_peterman @RWI_Leibniz_en @Rose__Julian @GLMLIC @otis_reid Relatedly, my paper shows that weather shocks in Indonesia have an effect on long-run cog development that can't be explained by the medium-run effects (the "missing middle" idea)

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

Who knew that Britain was connected to mainland Europe via an area called "Doggerland" until only 6500 BCE?!

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

This is John Wolfenden, who led a report recommending the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1957, live on BBC saying that homosexuality is "morally repugnant". A reminder of just how far we've come since back then #LGBTrights

Sir John Wolfenden Meets The Press (Press Report, 1957)

Sir John Meets The Press, BBC4, 02/09/07 - a part of the Hidden Lives season, here a cut-down of the original BBCtv (06/09/1957) Press Report: "A press confe...

www.youtube.com

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

This seems to be driven by persuasion between participants - even just *listening* to a discussion, without taking part in one, is enough to reduce discrimination substantially

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

We normally think that discrimination is hard to change, but sometimes societies shift rapidly towards less discriminatory preferences: how can this happen?

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

@paulnovosad Yeah it's wild I've been using this to effectively have custom podcasts/interviews on walks to work

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

We're still such a long way from equality, but advances in legal status are an important step in the right direction

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

This effect is 1.7x larger than top-down communication about the legal rights of transgender people in India, and it partially persists even after 1 month

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@charoo_anand @WouterLeenders And what a special connection it is

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

🏛️Policy implications? We should try and design hiring decisions to involve group decision-making more often, and use discussion-based sensitisation programmes to improve discriminatory attitudes

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

People are very discriminatory when they choose on their own - they sacrifice almost 2x their daily food expenditure to avoid selecting a trans worker

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@HaydenWilko Also worth noting: plausible views that care about autonomy/freedom rather than "pleasure" could easily imply longtermism - people don't have much freedom when they don't get to exist, nor when being ruled by an indefinitely long dictatorship...

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@davidroodman @JustinSandefur The bias can generate heterogeneous effects, but even if there was no bias as identified in your paper, the analysis would still be suspect.. and any solution to the heterogeneous effects problem might lead to different results

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

@economeager @hmmlowe I like this idea! Doesn't seem to be what is going on, because people make overwhelmingly pro-trans statements in the discussions.. but maybe that's partly because they anticipate how silly they'll sound if they try and defend an anti trans view(?!)

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

5 months

@rgblong @JamesOzden Bonus - get a gpt 4 script to convert your notes (e.g. from notion) into flashcards

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

And people are persuaded to be more pro-trans, rather than anti-trans, because the pro-trans people are much more vocal when faced with a transgender choice - they speak first more often, and dominate the discussion.. So on net everyone is persuaded to be more pro-trans

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@JustinSandefur @davidroodman But I'm not sure @davidroodman fully engages with this critique, apart from dismissing DeChaisemartin / D'Haultfoeuille's solution to it?

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

@DavidRhysBern Thanks Dave 😍 it's been amazing to be able to share so much of the PhD journey with you!

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

3 years

⭐ New article out in Nature Communications - using novel testing data, we show large socioeconomic disparities in COVID-19 infections in Bogota, Colombia

COVID-19 spread, detection, and dynamics in Bogota, Colombia

Nature Communications - Detailed information on SARS-CoV-2 infection rates in Latin America by occupation, socioeconomic group and geographic area are rarely available. Here, the authors provide...

www.nature.com

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

3 months

@zdrks How about Chapter 1 and/or 2 of The Narrow Corridor (Acemoglu & Robinson)?

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@sebagac @willmacaskill Biggest decision of your life Seba

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

Check out the thread of my JMP here:

Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

Excited to present my JMP: Silence to Solidarity My job market paper studies whether communication between discriminatory people can lead to large reductions in discrimination 🔗 👇for more

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@robertwiblin That doesn't necessarily seem like an irrational bias: if you're already plugged in, you've probably lost all your "real" relationships with people in the outside world or have lost touch with goals related to the outside world, so no point coming back out?

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@albrgr I agree that this is a crucial crux. And the discussion of moral values was strangely lacking in this perspective. I would have loved to see a more rigorous discussion of the *ex ante* probability of changing long-term values if we take certain actions

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

And also how the idea of rights to privacy and equality before the law can be powerful enough to overcome extreme prejudice

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

Nailed it

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

1 year

@griambau People might be inferring from the fact that the average wage in B is lower that the cost of living is also lower, so that real wage is higher in B. Can you rule that out?

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@hadleywickham This, for quickly checking how many duplicates there are in terms of a series of ID vars (now in a package! )

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

Come and work with me on a super exciting project examining how gay rights can reduce discrimination against LGBT persons!

J-PAL South Asia

@JPAL_SA

2 years

📌 #TamilNadu : Hiring a Research Associate to work w/ @DuncanWebb1 on a project evaluating ways to reduce anti-LGBT prejudice You will: 👉Design surveys 👉Manage field & data teams 👉Supervise data collection Fluency in Tamil & English is required

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

1 year

@economeager @itaisher But also, it's a very interesting question - why do people hate morally superior people so much?

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

6 months

@emma_c_smith2

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@singhkullu01 Yes, fluency in Tamil will be required for this project as it's very cultural- and context-specific!

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

8 months

And here's the paper!

trans_draft_dw.pdf

drive.google.com

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@taylor_wright In a similar vein, @CBicchieri 's Norms in the Wild is a fantastically lucid account of social norms and how they evolve

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@albrgr @MichaelDPlant @Parthion @JoelMcGuire12 @HappierLivesIns On the question of within-household mental health spillovers, there is suggestive evidence from other contexts e.g. "A 1SD change in the mental health of household members is associated with a 0.22–0.59SD change in own mental health."

Mental Health Patterns and Consequences: Results from Survey Data in Five Developing Countries:...

The social and economic consequences of poor mental health in the developing world are presumed to be significant, yet remain underresearched. This study uses data from nationally representative...

elibrary.worldbank.org

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

2 years

@paulkrugman I'm very sympathetic to this argument, but you claim that there is "no evidence" that tax cuts for the rich strongly increase economic growth. What's your take on this new empirical evidence that taxation (especially at the top) disincentivises innovation?

Taxation and Innovation in the Twentieth Century*

Abstract. This article studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel o

academic.oup.com

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Duncan Webb

@dunc_webb

1 year

@KailaHeidi Can't wait to see how your spice girl research agenda progresses

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Duncan Webb