Ph.D. student @UCSDEcon. Been studying lead poisoning since before it was cool. Previously @MITEcon (DEDP), @JPAL, @bowdoincollege, and golfer @WorldLongDrive.
Fifty-six minutes is the final tally. If you calculated how much revenue you’re losing because people are standing in line instead of buying food and other goods post-security, you’d vomit.
@HeathrowAirport I’ve flown out of hundreds of airports and I’ve never seen a slower security line than the one I’m in at Terminal 2 right now. It’s been 30 minutes and I’m still not through. Why are these Smiths Detection machines so slow? And why are three of them not working?
@JohnHCochrane The distance of the earth away from the sun has a larger average effect on how warm I’ll be than an air conditioner does. But I can fix an air conditioner, whereas I don’t think any research I do on our distance from the sun will do me any good.
@JohnHCochrane Comparing the average effect on poverty of growth to that of RCT-style aid is unambiguous but unhelpful. The relevant comparison is the marginal effect on poverty of more research on growth vs. more research on RCT-style aid. This is not so clear.
I've worked with @leadresearchorg in the past — super exciting new org aimed at identifying sources of lead exposure & engaging with policymakers to eliminate them!
Seems like an exciting opportunity to help build their research team:
@jon_wertheim Jon, I’ve come to respect your use of punctuation. It’s terrifying, creative, and terrifyingly creative. This tweet is exemplary, deploying your signature arbitrarily-long ellipses, among other innovations. “.) …” in particular belongs in MOMA. Keep it up. Big fan of Served.
NEW PAPER! We know that lead exposure is bad, but where is it all coming from?
We show that used lead-acid battery recycling is likely much more important than previously thought - perhaps 1/3 of exposure in LMICs.
LINK: https://t.co/AkEWFksvbv
w/ Theo Mitchell & @y_james_hu
@singhabhi This is so great. The returns to this funding are hard to quantify but you’d have to work pretty hard to convince me that they weren’t huge in expectation.
Does Lead Exposure Really Kill Five Million People Per Year?
(Probably yes, while there's limited causal evidence, the one causal study with comparable data suggests similar effect sizes to the much larger observational literature)
@NathanLazarus3 (Also depends on how much of the TE of UCSD is driven by signaling, and how much that signal quality is reduced if they let lots of kids graduate who are bad at math.) Reminds me of Pauline Mourot’s paper on surgeon sorting: https://t.co/INvldrGx8o