Good thread. Dei is CANCER.
ASSA 2023 is a BUST
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I remember many posts about the AEA generally, from their Soviet-style elections, elitism, nepotism, conflicts of interest at the AER, intrusive code of conduct, having inserted themselves into b state abortion politics, and finally this year’s pointless and overbearing Covid policy.
My reaction has always been that people should walk away: don’t go to the meeting, don’t referee for the journals, don’t buy a membership. It seems many have concluded the same thing
Will this lead to any rethinking of any of the above? Probably not. All of those attributes now define the organization. They would rather let it atrophy than change.
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It's not abortion or masks. It's just not that useful a conference unless your interviewing.
2022 Financial Management Association conference was fairly packed despite not much interviewing done there. IMO, it's indeed the combination of mask requirement (it absolutely was not reqired at the FMA, and I'd say less than 2-3 percent wore masks there) and the greater share of COVID-scared woke crowd in economics (compared to finance).
fma in any case is way more fun than AFA.. no uptight narcissistic people at FMA
Fully agree. AFA is a party by invitation only for those in the club that used to be subsidized by job market candidates and interviewers. Not any more.
It’s 2023, there’ll never be in-person interviews any more.
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Most of us don’t want ANY type of discrimination happen in our profession or anywhere else. We want to be judged on the merits of our work, not on the color of our skin, our gender or seksual preferences. Wokes are the ones who openly advocate discrimination.
what type of discrimination do you want to have happen?
Because AEA is a woke bust
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The DEI fokes are gonna ruin our profession
Ironically, I’m more optimistic now than just a few months ago. They have done such an effective job of killing ASSA, that the profession will now become more decentralized, and therefore more resilient to DEI nonsense.
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A few woke progressives are extremely vocal and loud. Unfortunately, AEA is pandering them. It’s so popular to play victims these days, be it about gender, race, etc. These woke people have made economics as a profession so boring!
And these fraudulent sexual harassment metoo stuff got to go. It won’t take long for male economists all play Pence rule.
Sad and pitiful profession. -
First they complain incessantly about AEA being a place where JMCs are harassed, pregnant women are in extreme danger, people get covid and die. That is, they exaggerated things enormously and made very rare events look like they were the norm. They effectively managed to kill conference attendance and now they whine about it.
Are economists not able to judge objective risk?
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Registration at #ASSA2023 was 6,000 in advance vs 12,000 at #assa2020 in San Diego. Missing include 1.5k job market candidates, ~2-3k interviewers, others. Impact: $900K loss on meeting. Effect: reg fees will go up for 2024. Per #aea sec/treas Rousseau at business meeting.
https://twitter.com/MarthaOlney/status/1611519172663734272
Get woke, go broke...They should ask Menopauleac to cough up the missing 900k
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One second, I just need to pop out in between sessions to get a quick abrotion.
You're being dense on purpose. Anyone pregnant is worried that they risk being unable to get proper medical care in the event of an emergency, which is a real concern though seems very risk averse to me. It's similar to how my aging parents refuse to set foot in USA without buying some travel medical insurance.
But there aren't that many pregnant women. So that's obviously not the main reason for low attendance. As others have said, it's because the conference is just not that useful beyond interviewing.
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Because of the large financial loss, the fees will be higher than last year and with a 50% drop in attendance the room discounts might be lower as well. Presumably that will reduce attendance further.
Soon the AEA meeting will consist of the subset of economists from top departments who share the same lefty politics. To the extent that’s who runs things, it seems appropriate that they bear the full cost of the meeting.
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Most of us don’t want ANY type of discrimination happen in our profession or anywhere else. We want to be judged on the merits of our work, not on the color of our skin, our gender or seksual preferences. Wokes are the ones who openly advocate discrimination.
what type of discrimination do you want to have happen?
Because AEA is a woke bust
“Discrimination” in this instance is simply code for “you don’t blindly follow my politics,” not some real, measurable and fixable effect. Enough of the kool aid peddling already
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I've been to many ASSAs pre-covid. I didn't go this year cause job market was remote.
I do not think I'll go to ASSAs again unless it is in an incredible location during the summer.
However, NBER covers the summer. So I think ASSAs are going to struggle and will likely become irrelevant in the future.
I prefer theme specific conferences and NBER tbh.
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Good riddance!!
I've been to many ASSAs pre-covid. I didn't go this year cause job market was remote.
I do not think I'll go to ASSAs again unless it is in an incredible location during the summer.
However, NBER covers the summer. So I think ASSAs are going to struggle and will likely become irrelevant in the future.
I prefer theme specific conferences and NBER tbh. -
Without interviews, ASSA is just another conference at what is quite possibly the worst time of year: at a time when people especially parents are still recovering from the Christmas holidays, when flights can be cancelled due to winter storms, and when people are busy just before the semester starts.
Even if you were not interviewing, it used to be a place to network and meet with coauthors when everyone would go, but not anymore.