It's a bit over the top cynical to assume the reason younger people are wearing masks more often is "signaling" or unawareness of science without giving consideration to the thought that young people might be more likely to wear them out of respect for older, more vulnerable people.
Being part of an more vulnerable group tends to lend itself toward thinking your preferences should apply to everyone in your group.. or maybe as well, if you have a lot of older colleagues you have more confidence that, overall, older people are okay with the risks.
If however, you are younger, it's less acceptable to put someone else at risk, and disobey the rules. By less acceptable, I mean not simply some kind of virtue signaling, but actual virtue as well.
This also remains consistent with the lower usage over the course of time, as others become familiar with others lack of concern, they gain confidence that they violating someone else's preference.
I'm sure there is some effect of virtue signaling, but to assume that all signals of virtue are lies, takes the concept too far. There is almost always a way to, at an individual level, determine the difference between virtue and virtue signaling. Some level of skepticism combined with some level of optimism, allows you to identify the two, and use those judgements to the advantage or yourself, the virtuous, and society overall. Absolute cynicism however leads to a predictable outcome, the virtuous lose as they stop gaining any of the benefits of their goodwill, yet still suffer the costs.
Good post. The inflation point is partly because it is a macroeconomic topic, and the overwhelming majority of academic economists are micro. Tacking on gender or race to one's research is pretty straightforward - in some cases it amounts to little more than sample splits when generating results. But most economists wouldn't consider inflation to be near enough their area to contribute to. An additional problem is that inflation has been studied by economists a bunch, and there's a premium in academic econ placed on studying a new issue, or at least in a new way: the current bout of inflation isn't necessarily a better one to study than those of the past. And, because of data lags, many datasets covering the current bout aren't even out yet, limiting the quality of papers substantially. The returns to writing a good paper when the issue is irrelevant for policy is vastly more than writing a mediocre paper when the policy value is high.
Maybe these things represent a bad equilibrium, maybe not, but it's the one we're in. Some of the above applies to growth too - at least the macro point - though you could ask why there are so few growth economists in the first place. I don't know why that is.
Climate change is a little different - you can't just do a sample split - but there are lots of little interventions (some RCTs, others quasi experiments) that are amenable to microeconomic study.
As the quote from Ip said, there was no shortage of COVID papers in 2020, so it's not like economists don't take account of their key issues of the day.
Out of touch or not, it seem that gender/race are out of proportion compared to climate change and growth.
Mask wearing should not have much to do with the vulnerability of the wearer as the benefits, if any, is to prevent an asymptomatic person with COVID from infecting someone else. I guess it could make sense for less professionally secure members to take care to at least appear to care for others.
It's a bit over the top cynical to assume the reason younger people are wearing masks more often is "signaling" or unawareness of science without giving consideration to the thought that young people might be more likely to wear them out of respect for older, more vulnerable people.
Being part of an more vulnerable group tends to lend itself toward thinking your preferences should apply to everyone in your group.. or maybe as well, if you have a lot of older colleagues you have more confidence that, overall, older people are okay with the risks.
If however, you are younger, it's less acceptable to put someone else at risk, and disobey the rules. By less acceptable, I mean not simply some kind of virtue signaling, but actual virtue as well.
This also remains consistent with the lower usage over the course of time, as others become familiar with others lack of concern, they gain confidence that they violating someone else's preference.
I'm sure there is some effect of virtue signaling, but to assume that all signals of virtue are lies, takes the concept too far. There is almost always a way to, at an individual level, determine the difference between virtue and virtue signaling. Some level of skepticism combined with some level of optimism, allows you to identify the two, and use those judgements to the advantage or yourself, the virtuous, and society overall. Absolute cynicism however leads to a predictable outcome, the virtuous lose as they stop gaining any of the benefits of their goodwill, yet still suffer the costs.
Good post. The inflation point is partly because it is a macroeconomic topic, and the overwhelming majority of academic economists are micro. Tacking on gender or race to one's research is pretty straightforward - in some cases it amounts to little more than sample splits when generating results. But most economists wouldn't consider inflation to be near enough their area to contribute to. An additional problem is that inflation has been studied by economists a bunch, and there's a premium in academic econ placed on studying a new issue, or at least in a new way: the current bout of inflation isn't necessarily a better one to study than those of the past. And, because of data lags, many datasets covering the current bout aren't even out yet, limiting the quality of papers substantially. The returns to writing a good paper when the issue is irrelevant for policy is vastly more than writing a mediocre paper when the policy value is high.
Maybe these things represent a bad equilibrium, maybe not, but it's the one we're in. Some of the above applies to growth too - at least the macro point - though you could ask why there are so few growth economists in the first place. I don't know why that is.
Climate change is a little different - you can't just do a sample split - but there are lots of little interventions (some RCTs, others quasi experiments) that are amenable to microeconomic study.
As the quote from Ip said, there was no shortage of COVID papers in 2020, so it's not like economists don't take account of their key issues of the day.
Out of touch or not, it seem that gender/race are out of proportion compared to climate change and growth.
Mask wearing should not have much to do with the vulnerability of the wearer as the benefits, if any, is to prevent an asymptomatic person with COVID from infecting someone else. I guess it could make sense for less professionally secure members to take care to at least appear to care for others.