Robert Apel

@bobapel.bsky.social

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Social scientist at Rutgers with expertise in criminology and social policy

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Robert Apel

I wrote a small r-script to download the SEER county-level population age/race data (single age year and grouped years), break the string apart, and create a full dataset. Is that something people want? I can post it on GitHub.

U.S. Population Data - SEER Population Dataseer.cancer.gov Download county population estimates used in SEER*Stat to calculate cancer incidence and mortality rates. The estimates are a modification of the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program, in ...

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Robert Apel

I’ve updated gssr, an R package that makes it more convenient for R users to work with the General Social Survey. It now includes the most recent release (Version 2a) of the 1972-2022 data file. One feature of gssr is that it lets you see documentation for individual GSS variables as R help pages.

US General Social Survey (GSS) Data for Rkjhealy.github.io The General Social Survey (GSS) is a long-running, mostly annual survey of US households. It is administered by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). This package contains the GSS Cumulative Da...

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Robert Apel

I’m releasing ISOCODES, a new Stata package to generate standardized country code variables. Feed in a string variable identifying countries and isocodes outputs numeric/2-3 letter codes (ISO3166) or full country names. I’ll give you a short motivation and rundown below.

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Robert Apel

Social scientists need to write papers but we generally aren't taught how to actually do that. Here is how I get papers out the door, in 10 straightforward steps. 1/N #econsky #socsky #scisky

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Robert Apel

In today's print edition: www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

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Robert Apel

Last Fall I completed another iteration of Gov 50 (Data Science for the Social Sciences), and I've been really happy with the course. We doubled in size to 250 students and got great reviews from students. What's worked for us? gov50-f23.github.io

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Robert Apel

💡Glad to see this paper with Beyers Louw finally published: "On the Nuisance of Control Variables in Causal Regression Analysis" (preprint available on arXiv). doi.org/10.1177/1094...

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Robert Apel

So excited to announce that our textbook with Xavier, "Difference-in-Differences for Simple and Complex Natural Experiments", is now under contract with Princeton University Press. Check out the "working textbook" version here! Comments welcome! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Alarming just how readily pharmacies can give away private information without as much as a warrant

New: Cops are going into pharmacies and walking out with people's most sensitive health information. No warrant or judge review. Comes at a time when women's health care is being criminalized. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Pharmacies share medical data with police without a warrant, inquiry findswww.washingtonpost.com Findings of a congressional inquiry raise privacy concerns as some states seek to criminalize abortion.

Well I guess when you put it that way…

Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dieswww.rollingstone.com Henry Kissinger has died at age 100, his consulting firm said in a statement on Wednesday.

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Robert Apel

Empiricism xkcd.com/2855

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Robert Apel

#30DayMapChallenge #2 lines I revisit one of the coolest small improvement one can do to their maps – create borders explicitly as lines and not as polygon outlines💡 #rstats #rspatial #dataviz Blog post: ikashnitsky.phd/2023/map-bor...

This is a lot of fun for anyone who is interested in the dynamics of neighborhood and place, as well as anyone who has lived in New York City.

An Extremely Detailed Guide to an Extremely Detailed Map of New York City Neighborhoodswww.nytimes.com A visual guide to the past, present and future of more than 350 New York neighborhoods, as told by more than 37,000 comments from New Yorkers.

This is absolutely terrific, and highly recommended for an intro class or any class that concerns data and measurement. It’s just 30 minutes long.

Me and Peter did an episode debunking the shoplifting panic! We're making the teasers condensed versions of the full episode so this includes most of the core arguments and data (though it does not include details about my shoplifting arrest lol) podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

‎If Books Could Kill: The "Organized Retail Crime" Panic [TEASER] on Apple Podcastspodcasts.apple.com ‎Show If Books Could Kill, Ep The "Organized Retail Crime" Panic [TEASER] - Oct 26, 2023

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Robert Apel

Econometric Thread (#EconSky): Today, I will briefly discuss a few recent papers expanding the synthetic control method (SCM). I will talk about three WPss: Abadie + L'Hour (2019), Grossi, Lattarulo, Mariani, Mattei + Oner (2020); Cao + Dowd (2019) and Cattaneo, Feng, Palomba +Titiunik (2023).

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Robert Apel

Econometrics Thread: Marginal Treatment Effects (MTE) Today, I will explain the basics of MTE and will mention the papers that I believe to be important. As my wife says, I like to preach and spread the Gospel of MTE. (PS: I'm moving some of my Twitter threads to here.)

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Robert Apel

a database of datasets ⬇️ been working for awhile on pulling together economic datasets for econ & policy students b/c there is *so* much publicly available data sharing it for anyone who finds it useful pls suggest additions; work in progress lenorepalladino.notion.site/Economic-and...

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Robert Apel

📈📉 #econsky I'm teaching causal inference and want to give students an example of data+code using the new DiD TWFE estimators. (My examples use proprietary data or do not rely on TWFE.) Thanks team!

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Always happy to help 😘 here is the canonical paper on posttreatment bias, highly recommended: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Just when I thought I couldn’t get much more cynical about the state of the field, @dingdingpeng.bsky.social told me how post-treatment bias ruins experiments

How Conditioning on Posttreatment Variables Can Ruin Your Experiment and What to Do about Itonlinelibrary.wiley.com In principle, experiments offer a straightforward method for social scientists to accurately estimate causal effects. However, scholars often unwittingly distort treatment effect estimates by conditi....

A welcome installment in the search for the One True Cup of Tea along with the One True Biscuit. Science never sleeps—due, in part, to its being over-caffeinated.

www.bmj.com

“Recall that the original Luddite movement coincided with the revolutionary fervor that was sweeping Europe in the early 1800s. Decel movements may simply be a way of crying ‘Stop the bus, we want to get off!’.”

Don't be a decelwww.noahpinion.blog Technological progress must be harnessed, not fought

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NEW: U.S. states lock up Black people at 6x the rate of white people, on average. We just published updated 50-state data on incarceration rates by race, as part of our mission to make important data about the criminal legal system accessible to everyone: www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/09...

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Robert Apel

Guess I should post something here, so I’m linking my job market paper! I examine the effects of ideological polarization on local politics through the lens of police union endorsements. tinyurl.com/2s7kdpem

Running shorts need a different phone pocket in the liner. If I’m sweaty or it’s raining, the mesh goes to work swiping. I’d like to apologize to my brother, friend, colleague, and research assistant for the calls. And to the Uber driver for the canceled trip that cost me $5.

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