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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Sep 10

"I say unto you, pray for your enemies."

❌👑 aren’t we all antifa? @rappacord.bsky.social · Sep 10

Not celebrating but no thoughts or prayers for him either.

My thoughts & prayers are reserved for those who want to implement common sense gun laws to protect all, especially children.

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Reposted by Sam Dodini

Emily Parker @emilyparker.bsky.social · Jul 29

📣 Hot off the press 📣
We document tremendous growth in U.S. federal place-based funding, show it has disproportionately gone to areas with more nonprofits & stronger housing markets, and find a pattern of cumulative advantage in funding among high-poverty neighborhoods.

doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

Federal place-based policy and the geography of inequality in the United States, 1990–2019

Abstract. This paper assesses the growth and spatial distribution of federal place-based policies in the United States. Using a novel dataset of federal pl

doi.org

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Reposted by Sam Dodini

Jenny Schuetz @jennyschuetz.bsky.social · May 13

How should elected officials divine voters’ preferences about building more homes: through broad-based polls or the 12 people who show up at a community meeting on Tuesday night and yell for hours? Hard to say…

Jonathan Berk 🏠 @berkie1.bsky.social · May 13

81% of Massachusetts voters surveyed in a recent
@massincpolling.bsky.social / @abundanthousingma.org poll support "state lawmakers passing a bill to make it easier to build more homes, and a greater variety of housing options, in Massachusetts."

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · May 1

A strongly worded letter isn't gonna cut it.

NBC News @nbcnews.com · May 1

Sen. Susan Collins says President Trump should use a “surgical approach, not a sledgehammer,” when it comes to the cuts to the National Institutes of Health.

“These actions put our leadership in biomedical innovation at real risk and must be reversed."

GOP Sen. Susan Collins urges Trump administration to reverse proposed medical research cuts

Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Trump should use a “surgical approach, not a sledgehammer” at the National Institutes of Health.

nbcnews.to

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

There is a lot more detail in the paper, including tests to rule out people's favorite alternative explanations.

t.co/xObtAFPZOh

https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/17830/the-power-to-discriminate

t.co

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

Greater labor market competition has an equalizing effect across workers & helps to reduce discrimination. But so does good information about where each worker stands in his/her true productivity--when employers don't rely on coarse proxies like demographic group.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

What stands out is that in the concentrated markets, the firms most likely to hire non-Western immigrants have managers who have more prior work experience with immigrants-those who know their productivity best! Another signal of *information* & beliefs being the culprit.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

Second-generation immigrants don't experience the same discriminatory gaps. Neither do immigrants who have been in the country for ~20 years or immigrants from western Europe & the US.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

We use the richness of the data to rule out a bunch of other mechanisms like different job search, social networks, being hired at firms with immigrant managers, take-up of social programs, or sorting into different occupations. None of these explain the gaps.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

What's remarkable is that these gaps are there even when both workers are displaced from the same firm but then re-hired into the same firm! In other words, the immigrant is paid far less than his co-worker at the same company even when they were paid the same before the layoff!

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

By the 4th year after the layoff, gaps even in the most concentrated labor markets close, implying the discrimination is based on beliefs about the average productivity differences between immigrants & natives.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

So what kind of discrimination is this? Taste-based (prejudice/animus) or based on beliefs about their productivity (like statistical discrimination)? If tastes, there's not much reason for gaps between the workers to close. But beliefs can update over time & gaps will close.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

Competition STRONGLY reduces discrimination among employers, but does not quite completely eliminate it (call it win for Becker). Next we measure if this is labor market power or product market power that matters. Looks like it's loading entirely on labor market power.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

We find fairly small discriminatory gaps between non-Western immigrants & other workers in competitive markets, but large gaps in concentrated (less-competitive) markets. At HHI=0.25 (~4 equally sized employers for that occupation) the immigrants earn 26% less!

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

We measure market competition by the concentration (HHI) of employment in the year their firm closure or mass layoff. 1=one single employer for everyone in that occupation in their city. We then track the gaps between the worker pairs as they search in a diff-in-diff setting.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

Suddenly, their firm closes, & they are forced to look for a new job. Prior to the firm closing, the market valued their skills EXACTLY the same. Immigrant-native gaps after their search can tell us about discrimination--especially the difference between the two pairs.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

Imagine you have four workers-2 immigrants & 2 natives working at the same firm doing the same job for the same pay. One pair (1 immigrant & 1 native) work in a city where there are lots of employers that will hire for their occupation. For the other, there are fewer employers.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

Our context is Norway--long considered one of the most egalitarian societies in the world--and discrimination against immigrants from outside of 'the West.' If we can find discrimination there, it's likely to be in other places. So how do we investigate this?

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

iza.org/publications...
A long history of economic theory says that sufficient competition should kill discrimination, but that's been mostly focused on product market competition. We look at the role of labor market competition in allowing for discrimination.

The Power to Discriminate

This paper examines the relationship between labor market power and employer discrimination, providing new causal evidence on when and where discrimin...

iza.org

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 16

🚨🚨 Does labor market discrimination drive economic gaps? Can market competition eliminate discrimination like economic theory suggests? What *kind* of discrimination are we talking about. In a new paper, Alex Willen & I explore the question. #Econsky

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Reposted by Sam Dodini

Jeva Lange 🫎 @jeva.bsky.social · Apr 9

Final_Version_of_Tarrifs_actualFINALcopy_version7_USETHISONE.docx

290 4.9K 24K

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 8

There is a lot more in the working paper!

Human capital retention matters in strategic sectors like healthcare, so policies should reflect the balance between these priorities and public systems should be responsive to local economic conditions.

www.iza.org/publications...

The Fatal Consequences of Brain Drain

This paper examines the welfare consequences of reallocating high-skilled labor across borders. A labor demand shock in Norway—driven by a surge in oi...

www.iza.org

Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 8

So what happened in Norway? We are not able to detect any measurable effect of the incoming commuters on mortality events, physician retention, or other metrics in Norway. There appears to have been no offsetting gain in Norway.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 8

The effects hit hardest in areas with lower physician density before the commuting started. So the out-commuting of doctors increased inequality across classes and across places within Sweden.

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Sam Dodini @microsamonomics.bsky.social · Apr 8

These illnesses are more likely to require emergency care. Guess which physicians were most likely to commute? High-skilled, young, generalists--those most likely to staff emergency departments.

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