Nishaad Rao

Senior Economist @bankofcanada working on topics in household finance, inequality & urban economics. PhD @umichECON. Views my own.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

🚨 Job Market Paper 🚨

Q: What are the long-run implications of booming labor markets on intergenerational wealth accumulation? E.g., do kids from San Francisco accumulate wealth differently than kids from Detroit?

A: Yes, but only if the parent is a homeowner!

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

The @Arsenal have done it, at long last. Love this football club, that's all.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@anup_malani Reminiscent of the Banerjee and Iyer paper (https://t.co/ekie3SDPap) documenting that areas which relied on the zamindaari system (revenue collected by landlords) had lower investment in health and education.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@dasanaike I have two collections that I think would be great to digitize: a) National and Provincial Censuses of British India (1881-1931), and also editions of the Bombay Chronicle, an English daily newspaper that I have scanned copies of through the 1920s. Can I DM you for more details?

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@tishasaroyan @peeleraja Btw, would love to hear/read about conceptions of "al-Hind": how much did they know about South India, e.g.? What was their conception of an "al-Hind", how did it differ from the geography of the actual subcontinent? That's super interesting!

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@tishasaroyan @peeleraja See second reply. People are always trying to prove that India was uniquely peaceful using this argument. I don't think it was? Ideas of governance and conquest differed. That's the interesting discussion, not this fake moral superiority (not accusing you of that, of course)!

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@tishasaroyan @peeleraja The overall point of this argument, meanwhile, is to imply that India was uniquely peaceful, at least historically. As a counter to this wider argument, evidence of brutal internal warfare is enough (see Cholas vs. Chalukyas, Marathas in Bengal, etc.).

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@tishasaroyan @peeleraja Even this is not true because we conveniently redraw the boundaries of what we call "historical" India, or what we call conquest vs. raids. Is modern day Afghanistan part of "historical" India? Sri Lanka? The Malay peninsula? In any case, a largely uninteresting discussion.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@anup_malani @ATabarrok Seems like a fairly robust finding across contexts and space, as in this paper by Diamond, McQuade and Qian shows in SF: https://t.co/AXt1ZwiaqT

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@_alice_evans Ha! An extension of an activity that's become more of a social experience? "We're doing dinner on the weekend", "we're doing drinks after work", "we'll do a cafe run in the morning"...."I'll do a latte"?

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

The @bankofcanada recently launched a new publication, "Sparks at Bank", to share research and analysis from staff in an accessible format. The inaugural edition includes some work I was involved with on the Toronto condo market. Have a read! https://t.co/h9CTMPjyRD

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

This represents substantial progress and the opening up of many more markets. The cars and textiles sector implications are especially encouraging.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: Details of the historic trade deal between India and the EU have emerged:

1. Eliminates tariffs on ~90% of goods trade between EU and India

2. Set to double EU goods exports to India by 2032

3. Tariffs on cars from EU to India cut from 110% to 10%

4. Tariffs on wines from EU to India cut from 150% to 20%-30%

5. Tariffs on jewelry and textiles from India to EU cut to 0%

6. Tariffs on furniture, chemicals, leather, and metals from India to EU cut to 0%

This deal took nearly 20 years to reach and is being called the "mother of all deals."

India and the EU are looking to diversify away from the US.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

This is great news from a lot of dimensions: https://t.co/BjI69pJ7iX

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@rohitshinde121 The 1700s were a remarkably unstable time in India (sacking of Delhi by Nader Shah, Maratha expansion, Mughal succession drama, etc.), and by 1770 the EIC had truly arrived -- it took 70 years after Aurangzeb for the EIC to get going, & that added to the decline in GDP too.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@rohitshinde121 Worth noting Aurangzeb routed the English multiple times, but his (as you said) disastrous policies and obsession with the Marathas meant the Mughal empire (& by extension the entire subcontinent) was bereft of stability once he died.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

Other than that, I've found most seminars have a person or two showing off (i.e., judgmental). But the curious ones make the best comments, and in general outnumber the other group. That one show off, though, loves the sound of his voice and has derailed many seminars.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

My rather corny take on this is from Ted Lasso: be curious, not judgmental.

This is true for an audience member in a seminar. It's not very hard to tell them apart, and to the extent possible, a good questioner must work to sound curious, not judgmental.

[Paul Novosad @paulnovosad]

Econ seminar culture is built on the assumption that the audience knows something that the speaker doesn't, and that the speaker values that information.

A very important thing the audience knows and the speaker doesn't: Is the speaker making any sense at all?

If nobody has any idea what you are saying, it's very helpful to be interrupted on slide 3. If you leave confusion for too long, you will lose your audience entirely.

To publish a paper / nail a presentation, you need to nail the elevator pitch perfectly. In a paper, this is the introduction, in a presentation it's the preview. If you get 50 questions in your paper preview, it's often a signal that you have work to do. It's a sign you're at risk of losing the reader in your introduction, it's not good.

If someone asks "are you going to address endogeneity?" Don't roll your eyes because it's coming on slide 12. The feedback is: "It's very hard to interpret the things you are saying without clarity on how you are thinking about endogeneity."

It's normal that junior presenters should face more questions. They have less presenting experience and the audience knows more relative to them as compared with a senior talk. (Though often juniors have better presenting skills)

After a presentation where I get bogged down at the beginning, I ask myself what were the key stumbling points, how can I make things tighter the next time.

Of course, the audience also has a responsibility to keep their interruptions value-adding. A good audience member assesses whether their interruption will add to the whole group's understanding more than remaining silent.

Some audience members are bad at this and waste others' time, and seminar organizers need strategies to prevent these people from being destructive. But in most econ seminar settings, policies that reduce interruptions on average (without discriminating low- vs. high-quality interruptions) are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Questions and interruptions are good. They keep everyone engaged and on their toes. They result in better understanding for everyone. The good econ seminars are the best seminars in the social sciences, and the good overwhelmingly outnumber the bad.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

Overall, I've found it very useful to start out saying, "hey, here's where I want help with this paper", and that really focuses the audience. So that's one more thing to add.

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

My brother's film, Three Threads, is live on YouTube as part of the Bandra Film Festival: https://t.co/G6IlRUxByo

The film follows a weaver who blends stories of industrialization, deforestation and hope into his tapestries. Give it a watch! #Documentary #handloom #rannofkutch

[Nishaad Rao @nishaadrao]

@paulnovosad Just the normal progression of an academic then