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Before, we have introduced many articles about RDD of breakpoint regression design. It includes operating data, procedures and interpretations, listed as follows: 1. Breakpoint regression design RDD classification and operation cases, 2. RDD breakpoint regression, an encyclopedia of Stata programs, 3. The current state of frontier research on breakpoint regression design , RDD, 4. What the hell is the breakpoint regression design? Let's listen to the analysis of Harvard guest, 5. Breakpoint regression and readers’ questions and answers, 6. Comprehensive explanation of breakpoint regression design RDD, there are many users in the education field, 7. There are no instrumental variables, breakpoints and random impacts, and attribution can be inferred. , 8. What should I do if I can’t find IV, RD and DID? This is an alternative method, Volume 9.2 RDD Breakpoint Regression Manual, including Stata and R software operating procedures, 10. DID, synthesis control, matching, RDD four Comparison of methods, scope and characteristics, 11. Anshen + Clark Prize winner’s RDD paper, breakpoint regression design, 12. Is the Islamic government unfriendly to women? RDD classic literature, 13. PSM, RDD, Heckman, Panel model operating procedures, 14. RDD classic literature, RDD model validity and robustness test, 15. Interesting articles published on JDE in 2019, the latest trends in measurement methods, 16. About (Fuzzy) 100 featured Articles album designed by Breakpoint Return! 17. Incisive explanation of breakpoint regression design RDD to ensure that you will never forget it for a lifetime
Earlier, we introduced "The latest development of Harvard Economics Professor, Econometrics Circle", which mentioned Professor Melissa Dell (absolutely high myopia, born in a small town in Oklahoma in 1983, once won the marathon champion, is also her The first student admitted to Harvard in his high school was the most dazzling academic star in the doctoral job market that year. He graduated with a Ph.D. in 2012 but became a professor of economics at Harvard in 2018. PhD supervisors are Daron Acemoglu and Benjamin Olken).
Dell completed a master's degree at Oxford University through the Rhodes Scholarship. She is excited that receiving the award recognizes not only her work but also her field of research.
"This understanding shows that people are interested in the various issues of our political economy research in the field of development. For me, one of the key issues that I am trying to better understand is how poverty and insecurity can follow With the passage of time so long lasting, and the challenges that society faces in its efforts to cope with poverty and challenges."
A professor at Harvard University said that Harvard University helped her embark on the path of studying economics. Dell is now a professor in the Department of Economics. He came to campus as a freshman in 2001, not sure what his field of study was. However, she became obsessed shortly after. Dell said: "I think it's a combination of being able to take a really good course and be introduced to what research is and what economists think it fascinates me."
This fascination eventually won her John H. Williams Award (John H. Williams Prize), which recognizes the best Harvard University undergraduate in economics; Seymour Harris Prize (Seymour Harris Prize) was awarded to the department’s best undergraduate thesis in recognition of his "Broadening the border: the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on the United States."
The study abroad program to Peru and Chile also provides Dell with the opportunity to interact with the wider world.
Dell graduated with honors and obtained a degree in economics. She said: “I have the opportunity to see the situation on the ground and realize how important what we learn in class is actually to people’s lives.” She received a master’s degree from Oxford University in 2007 and started from MIT received his Ph.D.
Today, we again recommend Professor Melissa Dell. According to the latest announcement from AEA, Melissa Dell has become the female winner of the 2020 Bates Clark Award. In academic circles, Melissa Dell is also known as the "Queen of RDDs", especially good at using spatial RDDs to identify the long-term impact of historical events on developing countries.
Regarding the Clark Prize, please refer to: ①Anshen + Clark Prize winner's RDD paper, breakpoint regression design, ②AEA's Little Nobel Prize in Economics announced, what did 41 young talents do, ③Little Nobel Prize winner 3 years later He became a bachelor of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and spent 10 years on the Ph.D. JMP to establish his academic status. ④The latest Nobel Prize study "What kind of family is a school leader?"
The following is his PhD thesis in 2012, on economic development and political economy. We have once recommended "All doctoral dissertations in the United States 2002-18, too much information", you can download it if you need it.
Why should the Bates Clark Award be awarded to Melissa Dell?
AEA said. The central issue of history, political economy and economic development is the role of institutions in the development of different societies. Through her groundbreaking and creative meticulous data collection and empirical work, Melissa Dell has improved our understanding of the role of the state and other institutions in the daily lives and economic outcomes of ordinary people. In doing so, she has also given new vitality and direction to the entire political economy and development field.
Historians (for example, Engerman and Sokolov) have long advocated the persistence of institutions and the "permanent shadow" of historical events on developing countries. For example, transnational studies point out that Latin America and North America had different ways of organizing labor during the colonial period, and used transnational historical data to support the idea that these differences have long-term effects. More generally, Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson compared the experiences of countries that established different institutions for accidental reasons during the colonial period, showing that these early differences are still important today.
In her work, Dell goes beyond transnational evidence and uses historical accidents or peculiarities to clarify the continuing impact of institutional differences (including differences in national organizations). Using the historical background, she can very convincingly determine the continuing impact of a particular institution and explore the specific channels through which these effects occur.
"The continuing impact in Peru's mining industry (Peru's Mining Mita, first-year Ph.D., Ph.D. 3 published in one of the Top 5 journals, Econometrica, 2011)" illustrates this well.
In this article, Dell takes advantage of the fact that Spain's compulsory institutions to support silver and mercury mining in what is now Peru and Bolivia are based on geographic discontinuity (spatial discontinuity). In particular, people in the catchment area near the mining area are subject to the mandatory labor agency (Mita), while those outside the mining area are not subject to the mandatory labor agency. Even if these specific institutions were abolished more than 300 years ago, their political and economic consequences may still maintain a lasting impact. Her thesis uses Spatial regression discontinuity (Spatial regression discontinuity, which itself is a methodological contribution) to investigate this and finds a large persistent effect. Families living inside the border are 20-30% poorer than those living outside the border, and the rate of child stunting is relatively high.
This paper enriches the transnational methods found in the early literature, analyzes the sources of change in detail, and conducts an in-depth analysis of the mechanisms by which the system produces and lasts. She indicated that the negative impact of Mita was probably caused by the (lack of) provision of public goods, and provided suggestive evidence that it was related to the economic structure inside and outside the basin. In particular, this article identifies the role of the manor in explaining Mita's influence. A manor is a large farm unit that has the right to influence the government’s funding of roads connecting these farms to the market. Dell found that there are more estates outside the Mita catchment area than inside. The state's control of labor in Mita seems to prevent the entry of manor-type private farms. Although manor houses may be predatory institutions, they have less impact on long-term underdevelopment than the mandatory control of the state. This observation is contrary to a claim that links the slow development of Latin America with the concentration of land ownership, because it shows that the land elite provides a path for development in some ways.
Dell’s other three landmark papers have adopted a similar approach, using individual events to find the continued influence of specific institutions in Mexico, Vietnam, and Indonesia. These four papers have made significant contributions to the study of long-term political and economic development, and also provide researchers with a model to prove the persistence of historical events and, more difficultly, the reasons for this persistence.
The second point of Dell's research is to answer questions related to current policies, which are usually related to conflicts. Here again, Dell uses creative empirical design to identify variability. In "Trafficking Networks and Mexico's Drug War" (American Economic Review, 2015), Dell investigated how Mexico's drug war affected local economic development. Dell compared the elected town of the mayor of the PAN Party (strongly opposed to cartels) with the town where the election of the party’s candidate was defeated. She recorded that the violence within the gang was triggered by a tough line taken by the mayor of the opposition party. More importantly, she recorded the spread of criminal activities through space networks for the first time: the city of violence within the gang is no longer an attractive place for drugs on their way to the United States. She recorded that the violence within the gang was triggered by the PAN party mayor’s hard line against the cartel. More importantly, she recorded the spread of criminal activities through space networks for the first time: the place of gang violence is no longer an attractive place for drugs to be shipped to the United States. She then constructed a road network from the source of the drug to the point of entry in the United States. She pointed out that drug cartels are shifting from these affected drug-trafficking cities to those that form alternative and more peaceful viable roads to destinations.
The second paper related to this is "Building Nation Through Foreign Intervention: Evidence for Military Strategic Discontinuities" (co-authored with Pablo Querubin, published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2018). Dell uses a policy discontinuity, which is to continuously score villages and then classify them to determine how the villages are handled. Therefore, very similar villages (on a continuous scale) received discrete and different treatments on one side or the other of the standard. This discontinuity allowed her to assess the impact of treatment differences. She also studied the different effects of different strategies adopted by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, showing that the Army’s stricter policies have led to greater support for the Viet Cong.
With her ingenuity, rigor and curiosity, Dell has made significant contributions to the political economy of the development field and inspired countless others. She is a force for change and a well-deserved recipient of the Clark Medal.
The following are her main research results, from which it can be seen that her works are small but influential (especially the research on Peru Mita). Of course, the difficulty and workload of mining data from economic history make her articles unique. What's more, her eyes are extremely short-sighted? !
- Dell, Melissa, and Benjamin Olken. “The Development Effects of the Extractive Colonial Economy: The Dutch Cultivation System in Java.” Review of Economic Studies 87, no. 1 (2020): 164-203.
- Dell, Melissa, Benjamin Feigenberg, and Kensuke Teshima. “The Violent Consequences of Trade-Induced Worker Displacement in Mexico.” American Economic Review: Insights 1, no. 1 (2019): 43-58.
- Dell, Melissa, and Pablo Querubin. “Nation Building Through Foreign Intervention: Evidence from Discontinuities in Military Strategies.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 133, no. 2 (2018): 701-764.
- Dell, Melissa, Nathan Lane, and Pablo Querubin. “The Historical State, Local Collective Action, and Economic Development in Vietnam.” Econometrica 86, no. 6 (2018): 2083-2121.
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Dell, Melissa. "Trafficking Networks and the Mexican Drug War." American Economic Review 105, no. 6 (2015): 1738-1779.
Corresponds to the second part of the doctoral dissertation
- Dell, Melissa, Benjamin Jones, Benjamin Olken. “What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature.” Journal of Economic Literature (2014).
- Dell, Melissa, Benjamin Jones, and Benjamin Olken. “Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century.” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 4, no. 3 (2012): 66-95.
- Dell, Melissa, and Daron Acemoglu. “Productivity Differences Between and Within Countries.” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2, no. 1 (2010): 169–188.
- Dell, Melissa. "The Persistent Effects of Peru's Mining Mita." Econometrica 78, no. 6 (2010): 1863-1903.
Corresponds to the first part of the doctoral thesis
The American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women interviewed Melissa Dell:
Nathan Nunn: You come from a small town in Oklahoma. It is certainly rare for people in Enid, Oklahoma to eventually become a tenured professor at Harvard University. Is there anything that has a special impact on the path you choose?
Melissa Dell: I think there are several factors that have a special impact on me. When I was growing up, my grandmother was very interested in the big issues of social science, and it also inspired my interest. She will record PBS documentaries and bring me books written by writers like James Michener. After graduating from high school, my grandmother joined the Women's Army Aviation Corps, learned to fly planes, and achieved the highest military rank a woman could achieve during World War II. But after the war, women rarely had the opportunity to pursue further careers or education. Like her generation, she became a housewife. I think she wants to be a man in many ways throughout her life so that she can pursue her career aspirations, but instead, she greedily reads, attends community college courses that seem to be interesting, and never misses the opportunity to learn. Having a career and a family is not always easy, but every day I am grateful for the opportunities that my grandmother’s generation of women created for today’s women. I think this is largely unimaginable at their age like us. of.
The second very influential thing is coming to Harvard as an undergraduate. The extremely generous financial support made this possible, and the dedication of the teachers to the undergraduate teaching made me really interested. Knowing more about the things that fascinate me is not just a hobby, I can do it as a career.
Nathan Nunn: Early in your career, your research focused on Latin America. You are also studying Asia now. Is there any reason for this progress?
Melissa Dell: In a sense, I have always been interested in comparison issues. Compared with East Asia, what are the main differences in the economic trajectory of Latin America? However, these are global issues that are difficult to deal with and require a lot of investment to understand the institutional background and available data sources. Before I seriously consider these comparative developments in different contexts, there are still many unresolved questions regarding the interpretation of the internal development trajectory in Asia. Facts have proved that, in most cases, the data of East Asia is much richer than the historical data of Latin America. This makes it a very exciting work environment, despite the large upfront costs involved in digitizing the large amounts of available data.
Nathan Nunn: I know you are a long-distance runner. What is the longest time you have participated in the competition? As a runner, what characteristics do you have to help you write and publish research papers for the marathon? Or, the same qualities make you very successful in both areas?
Melissa Dell: Exactly. The longest race I have participated in is 100 miles. Most of the time I just like it. I really like to breathe fresh air outside. I do think it can build discipline and focus, which are more widely useful.
Nathan Nunn: Your research will never avoid trying to answer major questions. Due to the lack of causal identification, many people usually give unconvincing answers. Therefore, if a person wants to solve such a problem, he must often make sacrifices for it. However, your own research can answer these questions in a convincing capacity. How can you answer the big picture question, but in a way that is well determined?
Melissa Dell: I am very interested in many questions, and I don't have much motivation to answer most of them. The world is a complicated place, and it is difficult to analyze what happened. But I do try to put interesting questions first, and occasionally find a background that is particularly suitable for revealing them. It takes a long time to write a paper, so you don't need too much background!
Nathan Nunn: Actually, all your projects need to collect main data. In your own research, what usually comes first: data discovery/collection, research question or identification strategy?
Melissa Dell: These three are the basic elements of research ideas. The core requirement is to link a background (with relevant data and changes that can produce causal identification) with a research question and an empirical method. Richard Feynman, one of the most influential physicists of the 20th century, was once asked how he produced so many pioneering research ideas. He replied that he kept two lists-a well-defined list of questions and a list of mathematical tools. A research idea needs to connect a question in his list of ideas with a tool in another list. He worked hard, constantly expanding his list, and doing daily memory exercises to keep their primary thoughts in order to maximize connections. I like this way of thinking and researching. You need to ask a series of questions that interest you. To answer these questions, there is no shortcut, which requires understanding of various backgrounds. To transform these contexts into thoughts, you need to connect these points, such as how they can be combined with empirical methods, and the questions you are interested in. What is added to the list first is a bit irrelevant to me, it depends on the specific article. I think one of the important reasons that made research so difficult at first is that your lists start to be very short, but luckily they will grow a lot over time, because writing a paper always leads to more interesting Problems and provide opportunities to learn new backgrounds and methods.
Nathan Nunn: How do you look forward to changes in the field of economic history in the next 10 years? What is its biggest challenge? Its biggest contribution?
Melissa Dell: I think that economic history has matured and can be revolutionized by a broader data science revolution, just like the measurement revolution of the previous generation. There are so many extremely rich historical data sources that have never been developed and utilized because they are too large to be digitized and organized manually. These can be scans of archive tables; large amounts of text data from historical newspapers, government documents, etc.; and even historical images or video clips. The latest advances in computer vision, deep learning, and natural language processing have made it possible to access data that was unimaginable a few years ago, although it does require extraordinary investments to adapt these tools to our applications. People often associate artificial intelligence with thinking, but give the most suitable technological frontier to perception, that is, to perceive the content of tables, texts, etc. This is what I have invested the most recently, because the possibility of new data (answering some of the questions on my list that have not yet made progress) is incredibly exciting!
Nathan Nunn: What advice do you have for young scholars who work at the intersection of economic development and economic history?
Melissa Dell: Through extensive and in-depth reading of relevant social science literature, invest in learning background knowledge that interests you. Investing in your technical skills is not just econometrics, but also deep learning, natural language processing, etc., because having a strong technical ability will open up a lot of original materials. In my experience, this is not something you can outsource without knowing it.
Nathan Nunn: If you could improve the method of economic history research, what would it be? The same question, but for economic development?
Melissa Dell: I think that the more transparent and open the research, the better, because it makes it easier for everyone to understand the driving forces of the patterns we observe and model them on this basis. Transparency is not only to ensure that the analysis is correct (although it is of course important), but to make it easier for others to understand and build on your work, rather than having to reinvent the wheel. I hope to see more data visualization tools with research projects so that others can easily see the changes in the data without having to go through the potentially dozens of tables (count the appendix!) to understand what is happening. For large investments, such as the management of data sets that are widely applicable to questions raised by many researchers, open access data management collaboration may be very powerful, but it rarely happens. I am currently working with a software company to build an online platform for open access collaboration for managing and disseminating historical data sets. I think more projects that encourage research teams to collaborate to create knowledge will be very powerful.
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Long press the above QR code to read Dell's doctoral dissertation.
Below are the data and programs of several important articles by Professor Melissa Dell. You can press and hold the following QR code to download the corresponding data and programs directly, and then copy the article. Develop corresponding empirical results. For scholars who want to learn the RDD method, this is a perfect opportunity. After all, Melissa Dell is known as the "Queen of RDD" in academia. If you want to learn more about the RDD method, you can also visit the community to exchange and visit, and I will continue to pay attention to these latest methods later. Below the
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is the Lecture notes that Delissa Dell teaches students to use ArcGIS software for analysis, which can be downloaded for free.
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You can long press the QR code to refer to the ArcGIS analysis tutorial by Professor Melissa Dell.
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The number of citations on Google Scholar is as follows:
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Source: https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/bates-clark/melissa-dell
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