Claes Bäckman - Resources

Resources

Below you will find a list of resources that are useful for being a researcher. You might call this the hidden curriculum - the things that are not usually taught in a PhD program but that are essential to conducting research. This includes material on improving writing skills, how to organize a project, how to present your work, and lots of other practical issues.

It is not uncommon to realize that you had the same idea as someone else. Alex Albright has a great list of resources for R and data science and for undergrad thesis writing. A few days after creating this website I found Masayuki Kudamatsu’s tips for economists. Other sites to check out: Ryan B Edwards, Plamen Nikolov, Shanjun Li and for Jennifer Doleac (including an awesome database of published papers in the Economics of Crime. You can also check out the AEA’s list of links and the links at EconGradAdvice. I would strongly encourage you to check out these sites too.

If anyone has a resource or a useful link that they think is missing from this list, please send it along to claes.backman@gmail.com!

My curated tips

Writing

How to publish, referee and discuss

Workflow, coding and creating graph and tables

Workflow

Tables

Graphs

Computational resources

Presentations

Being productive & finding new ideas

Being a researcher

Getting an overview of the literature

Networking

#EconTwitter

Coding & creating a website

Dealing with stress and being a grad student

Teaching

My curated tips

Below are some highlights that I think are worth mentioning. A bit further below are the actual links. You can also look at a small presentation for PhD students that summarises my thinking a bit, or just order Marc Bellemare's book "Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School -- But Didn't".

Doing research This guide by Paul Niehaus contains some very good tips on doing research. A key takeaway for me is that most people "experience a dramatic loss of structure" at some point. Going from being a student with set goals and someone telling you what to do (study for this exam, write that paper) to being a researcher responsible for your own output can be difficult, and this guide contains some very good advice on how to navigate that transition.

Learn how to write a paper and how to edit your own work: As Amitabh Chandra, the Editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics put it: "[...] the single best predictor of getting a paper accepted, would be clear and accessible writing, including an explanation of where the paper breaks down, instead of putting the onus of this discovery on the reader". There are plenty of guide below to help you out!

Find a way to be able to concentrate: Social media and emails are very good at stealing your attention, which is detrimental to your ability to write well. I highly recommend Deep Work by Cal Newport. He also has a blog with good tips for how to study or work productively.

Sign up for new paper alerts: This is super important for being up to date on your field. Skim NBER working paper emails, IZA emails, RePeC emails and notifications from the journals that you like, and you will have a great overview of what’s out there after a while. I strongly encourage you to sign up for them right away.

Learn how to make good graphs: Figures are extremely powerful ways to communicate ideas. Remember the Flatten-the-curve graph? That graph conveys complex ideas about epidemiological modeling in a super easy, intuitive and easy-to-explain way (h/t to Andrew Heiss). If you can summarize your paper in one figure, you are well on the way. Read online or pick up a copy of Data Visualization by Kieran Healy and take a look at the course on data visualization by Andrew Heiss. See some other good examples and look at the first figure in this blog post to get an idea of how useful a good figure can be for communicating your results. You can find code and guides on how to do this below.

Learn to manage a good workflow: It is extremely annoying to go back to an old project to find that you do not know where the data was constructed, where that graph was made, or how you got your main results. Figuring out the workflow should be the first step you take in a new project. A good workflow will also help your collaborators figure out things, which might save you many emails of the type "Where did you create that graph again?". Asjad Naqvi has a good guide on workflow in Stata, which is also applicable to other programming languages. You can also check out Jeppe Druedahl's page on Tips and tricks for workflow and Python programing.

Talk to young faculty members to see if they have any additional insight to share with you. Don’t be afraid to also ask questions about practical issues, not just about research topics. Younger faculty members or senior PhD students likely have plenty of things to share.

Writing

Marc Bellemare "Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School -- But Didn't" (book)

John Cochrane - Writing Tips for Ph. D. Students

Claudia Sahm - Good writing matters in economics!

Marc F. Bellemare - How to Write Applied Papers in Economics

Anne Lamott - Shitty First Drafts from Bird by Bird

Plamen Nikolov - Writing Tips For Economics Research Papers

Keith Head - The Introduction Formula

Marc F Bellemare - The Conclusion Formula

Claudia Sahm - We need to talk MORE … (advice about writing a job market paper)

Jesse M. Shapiro - Four Steps to an Applied Micro Paper

Mike Munger on writing a dissertation

Steven Pinker - Why Academics Stink at Writing

Deirdre McCloskey - Economical Writing (book) & Summary

David Evans - How to Write the Introduction of Your Development Economics Paper

Florian M. Hollenbach - Academic Writing: Exercises and Guides on Writing (Lots of links to writing resources)

Ed Glaeser on how to write a theory paper

Hal Varian - How to Build an Economic Model in Your Spare Time

Book resources: get a style guide that you like. Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style” is the classic reference. Steven Pinker’s “The Sense of Style” is another example.

How to publish, referee and discuss

Marc F. Bellemare - How to Publish in Academic Journals

Campbell R. Harvey - Reflections on Editing the Journal of Finance, 2006-2012

Jonathan B. Berk, Campbell R. Harvey, and David Hirshleifer - How to Write an Effective Referee Report and Improve the Scientific Review Process

Journal of the European Economic Association - Ask the Editor with Juuso Välimäki

Plamen V Nikolov - Referee Report template

James J. Choi - How to Give a Good Paper Discussion

Workflow, coding and creating graph and tables

If you use Stata I suggest that you install the lean scheme package (net install gr0002_3, replace) and use this package for your graphs (you can type “set scheme lean2, permanently” in stata to always use it). There are of course other schemes out there that you can use. Google is your friend here.

Computational resources

Chuqing Jin - Collection of computational resources

Presentations

Jon Schwabish - Better Presentations (book) and website for making better presentations. Highly recommended

Jesse M. Shapiro - How to give an applied micro talk

Shengwu Li - How to give an economic theory talk

Rachael Meager - Public Speaking for Academic Economists

Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham Beamer Tips

Carmine Gallo - How to Rehearse for an Important Presentation

Marc F. Bellemare - 22 Tips for Conference and Seminar Presentations

Tip: If you are presenting at your own university, get a fellow PhD student to take notes for you. This saves lots of time and ensures that you won’t miss any good comment. Also ask your friends for feedback on your presentation.

Being productive & finding new ideas

Lasse Lasse Heje Pedersen - How to Succeed in Academia or Die Trying Have Fun Trying

Deep Work by Cal Newport (book). (see also his blog, Study Hacks)

Steve Pavlina - 7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creative Output

Ben Olken - My Epic Failures

Ariel Rubinstein - 10 Q&A: Experienced Advice for “Lost” Graduate Students in Economics

Luke Taylor - Tips for Finance Ph.D. students

Amy Finkelstein - An unofficial guide to trying to do empirical work

For new ideas: See this Twitter-thread started by Ivan Werning. I enjoyed this presentation by Frank Schilbach, and this point by Sally Hudson: great questions may also come from the industry or policy world. In general, the Twitter-thread contains a lot of advice, some of it contradicting other advice. Find the thing that works for you!

Being a researcher

Claudia Goldin - The Economist as Detective

Esther Duflo - The Economist as Plumber (Alternative link)

Martin A. Schwartz - The importance of stupidity in scientific research

Getting an overview of the literature

NBER emails - Super important. Sign up to get all emails every week.

RePEc emails - sign up for the working paper series that interest you

SSRN emails - papers and job/conference announcements. Find the link once you login to SSRN.

INOMICs emails - courses and conferences.

IZA emails - working papers

You can also sign for alerts on new articles in your favorite journals. Paul GP has a Twitter-thread on how to sign up for publication alerts. This is very useful!

Networking

Claudia Sahm - Economists must build a better community: Practical advice on how to do it!

The Hidden Curriculum - How to approach networking with Jennifer Doleac

Sahil Bloom - How to write a cold email

#EconTwitter

This great Twitter thread by Women in Econ/Policy summarizes a lot of tips, guides, help and advice for how to use Twitter to make life better. Since they do that better than I can, I suggest going there right away!

CSWEP/CSMGEP @Twitter Tips for Success: Social Media for Economists

Joshua Goodman - Twitter tips for PhD Students

Matt Clancy - A Beginner’s Guide to #EconTwitter