Dr. Lisa D. Cook Profile picture
Academic economist. Innovation, growth, finance. Obama WH aide. Director, @AEASPmsu. #Spelman, @UniofOxford, #Berkeley alum. @nberpubs #DST Views mine. She|Her.
michael mattison Profile picture artisan Profile picture Uncle Rome's Therapist Profile picture 3 subscribed
Aug 1, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
I think many economists & policymakers underestimate the impact 6.5 million destabilized, homeless households could have on the spread of #COVID & the entire economy. The impact on those HH's, many of whom are Black & Brown, alone could be devastating. More must be done urgently. For context, we know from research that Black & Hispanic households are more likely to:
1) Pay more for comparable housing (jchs.harvard.edu/blog/black-and…)
2) Be behind on rent (Census HH Pulse Surveys, cbpp.org/research/pover…)
3) Be at risk of eviction (evictionlab.org/demographics-o…).
Jun 14, 2020 15 tweets 6 min read
Dear Fellow Macroeconomist @haralduhlig,
My friend Bernice's dad & my friend & classmate Angela's uncle was brutally murdered on April 4,1968 at 6:01pm at the Lorraine Motel. Bernice & Angela were 5 & 4 years old. He was a protester. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr. 1/N @haralduhlig That day, my uncle’s classmate, Christine King Ferris, lost her brother. And my uncle, Samuel DuBois Cook, lost a best friend, @MorehouseCollege classmate, and fellow intellectual. The Cooks and Kings have been friends and civil rights defenders for 3 generations. 2/N
May 30, 2020 27 tweets 10 min read
I am a macroeconomist who uses lynching in economic analysis & was a student of George Akerlof, Barry Eichengreen, David Romer & Paul Romer.

When I taught at Harvard, I taught 2 fundamental equations for economic analysis:

Y = C + I + G + (X-M) (1) and

Y = F(K, L, A) (2). 1/N I use “human capital” to explain models that got macro to the endogenous-growth equation, Eq. (2). I also teach how slaveowners & Confederates tried to extract "disembodied human capital" from enslaved persons by giving them the right to patent prior to emancipation. 2/N
Apr 11, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read
Agree. Economists don't consult (or admit to consulting) other fields enough. Some subfields are traditionally open to other fields, eg, econ history, development & pol econ.

This piece has a few blind spots, too.

1) Why just call out lack of gender diversity in econ? 1/n "...Their discipline needs to be disrupted by an injection of new ideas, methods, and assumptions about human behavior. Unfortunately, there are powerful obstacles to this disruption: elite control and lack of gender diversity."

Economists' lived experiences r key to ideas. 2/n
Oct 1, 2019 29 tweets 81 min read
Based on the #AEAClimateReport, @AEASPmsu alum @itsafronomics and I wrote about issues facing Black women in economics and current & potential efforts to address them (nyti.ms/2oGMYxm). Hope all will read the op-ed & climate study: aeaweb.org/resources/memb…. 1/N @AEASPmsu @itsafronomics For context, African Americans receive a smaller share of economics degrees than STEM degrees at every level. For 2017,

Economics
BA: 5.3%
MA: 5.6%
PhD: 3.2%

STEM
BA: 6.5%
MA: 7.8%
PhD: 4.3%

The full 2018 @AEACSMGEP report is here: aeaweb.org/content/file?i…. 2/N
Mar 27, 2019 4 tweets 3 min read
Thanks to Chairman ⁦@RepHankJohnson⁩ and Ranking Member ⁦@RepMarthaRoby⁩ for holding a hearing today on diversity in the innovation economy and allowing me to present my research! #Honor #LostEinsteins #LostKatherines Focus of my research & testimony: macro implications of suboptimal allocation of talent when women & URM aren't included at each stage of innovative process -- STEM ed & training, practice of invention (patent teams), & commercialization of invention. #LostEinsteinsAndKatherines
Mar 14, 2019 14 tweets 10 min read
For #PiDay + #WomensHistoryMonth, I honor an eminent, glass-ceiling-breaking mathematician, Dr. Loretta Marion Murray Braxton. In the 1950’s, her 1st math prof in college in VA told her that she was in the wrong classes, b/c "only boys took higher-level math classes."1/14 Undeterred, Loretta Braxton won an NSF to do an MS in math in a top program at the University of Illinois, obtained a doctorate, and taught the 1st African American who formed a billion-dollar company, Reginald Lewis. #PiDay #Fearless 2/N
Apr 26, 2018 8 tweets 5 min read
Today the 1st national #LynchingMemorial opens in Montgomery, Alabama. I have worked to create a national lynching data set from 1684 to 1983. What do we know about lynchings? 1/N First, we know they were heavily concentrated in the Deep South from the late 1800's and in general. Here's a heat map of the entire data set from 1684 to 1983. 2/N