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: Econ Grad Advice, 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. Arthur Turell has a nice website with lots of guides for coding, writing, referee reports, data visualisation, etc. 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
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". This paper by Jan Feld, Corinna Lines, and Libby Ross provides experimental evidence that writing matters. There are plenty of guides 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. If you are in finance, I also like this newsletter.
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 programming.
Talk to young faculty members to see if they have any additional insight to share with you. Don’t be afraid to 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)
Arthur Turell - Writing Papers
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
Daniel S. Hamermesh - The Young Economist's Guide to Professional Etiquette
Campbell R. Harvey - Reflections on Editing the Journal of Finance, 2006-2012
Craig A. Depken, II - Tips on How to Get Published
CSWEP - How to Get Published in an Economics Journal
Kwan Choi - How to publish in top journals
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
Ricardo Perez-Truglia - Tips for writing a POSITIVE referee report (Twitter thread)
Workflow, and creating graph and tables
Workflow
Asjad Naqvi - The Stata workflow guide
Daniel M. Sullivan - Best Practices when Writing Code
Anish Athalye, Jose Javier Gonzalez Ortiz, Jon Gjensgset - Missing Semester of Your CS Education
Tables
Asjad Naqvi - The Stata-to-Latex guide
Jonathan A. Schwabish - Ten Guidelines for Better Tables
Luke Stein’s tips for generating Stata output that can be outputted directly to LaTeX (Don’t miss the working examples with code).
Jörg Weber - Automated Table generation in Stata and integration into LaTeX
Alessandro Martinello - How to export tables from Stata to LaTeX
Graphs
Arthur Turell - Narrative data visualisation (Python)
Andrew Heiss - Data visuzalization course (R)
Asjad Naqvi - Stata graph tips for academic articles (Stata)
Kieran Healy - Data visualization (R)
Eric Zwick - A Graph is Worth a Thousand Citations
Nicholas T. Davis - A 2019 New Year’s Resolution for Stata users: Make cleaner, prettier graphs (Stata)
Daniel Bischof - Stata Figure Schemes (Stata)
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham Best Figure Page (good inspiration!)
Chiu Yu Ko - TikZ guide (Code for drawing graphs in LaTeX with so many examples)
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.
Presentations
Jon Schwabish - Better Presentations (book) and website for making better presentations. Highly recommended
David Ubilava - Academic Presenting: How to get it right and make it work
Jon Schwabish - Ending the “Thank You” Ending Slide
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
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!
ChatGPT and large language models
Please send your best tips! I don't have much experience, but Mushtaq Bilal seems to write a lot of interesting threads on the topic, and there are some guides from Inger Haaland and Christian Hendriksen.
Mushtaq Bilal - How to use ChatGPT smartly to supercharge your academic writing
Mushtaq Bilal - ChatGPT to identify research gaps
Inger Haaland - Integrating ChatGPT Into Your Research
Christian Hendriksen - ChatGPT and Bing: A Practical Guide
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
Insights for Young Researchers in Finance - newsletter with conferences, workshops and other topics
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 / #EconSky
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!
Anna Gifty - Science Communication for the Willing
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
Coding & creating a website
Arthur Turell - Coding for Economists
Alexander C. Lembcke - Introduction to Stata & Advanced Stata Topics'
Jack Blun - Applied Econometrics in Stata
Ljubica “LJ” Ristovska - Coding for economists
Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro - Code and Data for the Social Sciences: A Practitioner’s Guide
How To Make A Pie: Reproducible Research for Empirical Economics & Econometrics
Grant McDermott - Data science for economists
Kevin H. Wilson - So you want to build an academic website?
Hans-Martin von Gaudecker - Setting up a Python Environment
Michael Stepner - Coding Style Guide
Michael Stepner - Git vs Dropbox
Computational resources
Chuqing Jin - Collection of computational resources
Franz Prante & Karsten Kohler - DIY Macroeconomic Model Simulation
Dealing with stress and being a grad student
Jennifer Walker - There’s an awful cost to getting a PhD that no one talks about
Valerie Valdes - Smart kids eventually grow up
Matthew Pearson - How to survive your first year of graduate school in economics
Diana Leonard - A woman’s guide to doctoral studies
Maggie Berg - The Slow Professor
There are more links on Shanjun Li's website.
Job Market
Kelsi G. Hobbs - Job market materials (CV, cover letters, teaching evaluations, application tracker, statements)
Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz - The Ten Most Important Rules of Writing Your Job Market Paper
Johannes Pfeifer - Job Market Resources (Plenty of other links here)
European Economics Association - A Guide for European Job Market Candidates
Science - How to put your best foot forward in faculty job interviews
Job market cover letter replicator & spreadsheet for keeping track of applications
Michaela Carlana - A Guide for European Job Market Candidates
David Schindler - Your job market package
David Schindler- Interview & Flyout
Antonio Cabrales - General overview of market Job Market in Economics
Teaching
I would love to have more teaching links. If you have some, please send me an email!
EEA Education Committee Resources