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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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Sure, but when I can't take a derivative I'll still prefer a finite difference over nothing. How would you think those estimates change when we reduce the delta?

I think the answer depends on what you think is the margunal value of Harvard over Podunk state, which is the very question we are discussing.

We were discussing ability bias vs human capital - did anyone bring up signaling before I did? It seemed a very weird thing to leave out of the conversation, so I thought it was surely worth mentioning that it could be nearly as large an effect as ability bias despite falling on the opposite side of the "should I go to a cheap college" question.

But as long as I'm bringing up weird things to leave out of the conversation - what's your source for "Once you control for that, the differences are pretty slight"? I was providing what seemed to be a relevant counterexample to an assertion not yet tied to data, but if you do have more relevant data then that's a trump card - just go ahead and play it?