Economists Turned Poets

In this episode, we caught up with attendees at the Institute for Research on Poverty's Summer Research Workshop, to learn about what they're working on. But there's a catch! We made them compose a poem to tell us about their main findings. We hope you have as much fun with this as we did. 

The episode was made available to our Patreon supporters on October 23, 2019. To get access to this episode and additional bonus material, like extended conversations with podcast guests and other interviews with book authors, support Probable Causation on Patreon.

Date: October 23, 2019

A transcript of this episode is available here.

The papers we discuss in this episode:

• Using Longitudinal Administrative Data to Understand Gaps in College Outcomes by Childhood Disadvantage by Katherine Michelmore and Susan Dynarski (working paper not yet available).

• The Effect of an Autism Insurance Mandate on Special Education Identification and Academic Performance of Students with ASD by Scott Imberman, Riley Acton and Michael Lovenheim.

• The Impact of the Flint Water Crisis on Fertility by David Slusky and Daniel Grossman.

• Effects of Losing Public Health Insurance on Healthcare Access, Utilization and Health Outcomes: Evidence from the TennCare Disenrollment by Sebastian Tello-Trillo (working paper not yet available).

• Timing is money: Does lump-sum payment of the Earned Income Tax Credit affect savings and debt?  by Lauren Jones and Katherine Michelmore.

• Simple Tests for Selection Bias: Learning More from Instrumental Variables by Jeffrey Smith, Dan Black, Joonhwi Joo, Robert LaLonde, and Evan Taylor.

• The Impact of Family Income on Child Outcomes, by Alex Smith and Andrew Barr (working paper not yet available). 

• Granular Search, Market Structure, and Wages by Isaac Sorkin, Gregor Jarosch, and Jan Sebastian Nimczik.

• Additional Returns to Investing in Girls’ Education: Impact on Younger Sibling Human Capital  by Javaeria Qureshi.

• Family Structure and Welfare Participation in the 1960s: the Role of Legal Services by Andrew Goodman-Bacon and Jamein Cunningham (working paper not yet available).

TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE:

Jennifer [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to Probable Causation, a show about law, economics and crime. I'm your host, Jennifer Doleac of Texas A&M University, where I'm an economics professor and the director of the Justice Tech Lab. This is a special bonus episode of the podcast featuring a bunch of researchers, all economists in this case, but it won't always be that way, I promise, who attended the Institute for Research on Poverty at Summer Research Workshop in beautiful Madison, Wisconsin, in June. This is one of my favorite conferences, in large part because the attendees are the sort of people who are game for this sort of thing I ask them to do here. I told them that they could talk about any paper they wanted to for this episode, but had to do so in poetic form. So these left brained quantitative economists put their best creative talents to work, writing haikus, limericks, and one went with spoken word, which was extra creative. I will put links to all of the papers they discussed on our website, so please go check them out. All right. First up, we have Katherine Mitchelmore. Kathy is an assistant professor of public administration and international affairs at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Kathy tells us about her recent study of student disadvantage and college outcomes.

 

Kathy [00:01:19] My name is Kathy Mitchelmore. I'm an assistant professor at Syracuse University. My paper is called "Using Longitudinal Administrative Data to Study Gaps in College Outcomes By Childhood Disadvantage." A haiku to summarize this paper-- poor kids lag in school. Measure childhood poverty. Attainment gaps grow.

 

Jennifer [00:01:43] Next we have Scott Imberman. Scott is a professor of economics and education policy at Michigan State University. Scott describes his recent work on autism.

 

Scott [00:01:54] I'm Scott Imberman. I'm a professor of economics and education at Michigan State University and my research shows that parents systemize or do not empathize so kids have autism.

 

Jennifer [00:02:07] David Slutsky is next. David is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Kansas. He summarizes his paper on lead contamination in Flint.

 

David [00:02:18] This is David Slutsky from the University of Kansas. Flint switched water source, raised lead levels in kids and birth rates went down.

 

Jennifer [00:02:29] Sebastian Tello Trillo is an assistant professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia's Batten School. He tells us about the effects of rising costs of TennCare that is Tennessee's Medicaid program.

 

Sebastian [00:02:42] Sebastian Tello Trillo assistant professor of public policy and economics. Tanker costs were flying high, hence people got kicked out. This story has no surprise their credit scores went down.

 

Jennifer [00:02:55] Next up, Lauren Jones is an assistant professor of human sciences at Ohio State University. She described her work on the Earned Income Tax Credit, a.k.a. EITC.

 

Lauren [00:03:06] Hi, I'm Lauren Jones, and I'm an assistant professor at the Ohio State University. The EITC is paid yearly, an amount that people love dearly, but paying all at one time may cost many a dime and for some to live life austerely.

 

Jennifer [00:03:23] Jeffrey Smith is a professor and Paul T Heyne Distinguished Chair in economics and the Richard A. Meese Chair in applied econometrics. I hope I got all that right all at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jeff tells us about his work on selection bias.

 

Jeffrey [00:03:39] Jeffrey Smith doing the bonus podcast for Jen Doleac. Here's my paper haiku. The CIA really holds in my paper.

 

Jennifer [00:03:53] I admit we'd all had a couple of beers at that point in the evening, so none of us around the table noticed that that haiku was missing some syllables. Oops. Did I mention this isn't our day job? All right.

 

Jennifer [00:04:04] Next up is Alex Smith. Alex is an assistant professor of economics at West Point. Alex talks about his paper on the effects of income shocks in early childhood.

 

Alex [00:04:14] All right. This is Alex Smith from West Point. Born day earlier. Tax credit eligible. Big impact later.

 

Jennifer [00:04:28] Isaac Sorkin is an assistant professor at Stanford University. He tells us about his study of firms market power.

 

Isaac [00:04:35] My name is Isaac Sorkin. When firms get bigger, they can choose to screw over employees who leave.

 

Jennifer [00:04:42] Javeria Qureshi is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her paper is about the spillovers of educating girls in Pakistan. Here is her haiku.

 

Javeria [00:04:54] Hi, I'm Javeria Qureshi. I wrote a haiku about my newly published paper on spillovers from educating girls in Pakistan. Sending girls to school makes younger brothers smarter. Sisters matter to.

 

Jennifer [00:05:11] And last but certainly not least is Andrew Goodman Bacon. Andrew is an assistant professor of economics at Vanderbilt University. Andrew wrote a limerick about the effect of legal services for the poor.

 

Andrew [00:05:25] I'm Andrew Goodman Bacon I'm assistant professor at Vanderbilt, and I presented a paper about legal services under the war on poverty and here's my limerick. Some lawyers moved in down the block. They were helpful and ready to talk. I filed for divorce and got welfare, of course, and now live alone. What a shock.

 

Jennifer [00:05:48] That does it for this first bonus episode of Probable Causation. Thank you to all of these very good sports for their contributions to this episode, and thanks to all of you for listening. If you have ideas for what you'd like to hear in future bonus episodes, please email me at Jdoleac@probablecausation.com or send us a tweet at @ProbCausation.

 

Jennifer [00:06:09] Thanks again and I'll talk to you soon.