Advice for Phd Students in Economics
This site provides some resources for grad students in economics. If you have useful resources that you would like to be added to this page please reach out to the creators of this page (Chris Roth or David Schindler)
General grad school advice
Jaya Wen: Ideas that helped me
Eric Zwick: The 12 Step Program for Grad School
Matthew Pearson: How to survive your first year of graduate school in economics
Chris Roth & David Schindler: Advice for Ph.D. Students
Berlin School of Economics: Researcher's guide
William Thomson: A Guide for the Young Economist (Book)
P.J. Healy: The Backwards Induction Approach to Grad School
The hidden curriculum (podcast)
Chris Blattman: Various pieces of professional advice (the advice blogposts can be found in the right panel of his webpage)
Advice for Grad Students on the Greg Mankiw Blog
Andrew Oswald: Things I would have found it useful to have been told when I was a young researcher
Jeffrey Smith: Advice on Graduate School in Economics
Jennifer Doleac resource collection
Shanjun Li collection of resources
The Econ Resources & Grad School Wiki
Tobias Klein: Links for PhD students
Alex Albright: various resources
Quan Le: collection of resources
Keith Head: collection of resources
Natalia Emanuel: collection of resources
Thriving in Economics book series: (separate books for PhD students & for those aspiring to a PhD)
Marc F. Bellemare’s Doing Economics book
Mitali Mathur: Flourishing in the First Year
Applying to Grad School
Chris Blattman’s application advice
Berkeley’s advice on statements of purpose
Susan Athey: Professional advice
Miles Kimball: The complete guide to getting into an economics PhD program
Elgin et al.: So you want to go to grad school in economics?
Rachael Meager: For the ambitious, prospective Ph.D. student
Natalie Duncombe: Applying to graduate school
Natalie Duncombe: Preparing for the NSF
Advice for PhD Econ aspirants from India
Jesse Shapiro: Notes on Applying for a PhD in economics
Harvard-MIT Application Assistance and Mentoring Program (AAMP) (bottom of admission pages: https://economics.mit.edu/academic-programs/phd-program/admissions)
LSE Applicant Mentoring Program is now across multiple schools and has the following landing page:
https://sites.google.com/view/econphdamp/home
Ideas
Matt Lowe: How to Generate Ideas
Matt Lowe: Idea creation in class
Steve Pischke: How to get started in research?
Don Davis: PhD Thesis Research: Where do I start?
Frank Schilbach: 5 steps towards a paper
Shiv Hastawala: Developing ideas for applied micro development papers
Some principles of Econ Theory research
Krishna Srinivasan: Is an idea worth pursuing? Checklist
From Ideas to Papers
Ricardo Dahis: Advice for Academic Research
Matthew Lebo: Managing Your Research Pipeline
Sam Lynch: Managing Your Research Pipeline
Jesse Shapiro: Four Steps to an Applied Micro Paper
Amy Finkelstein: An unofficial guide to trying to do empirical work
Hal Varian: How to Build an Economic Model in your Spare Time
Podcast on Behavioral Science Research and how it is made
Mental Health
Frank Schilbach: Resources on mental health
Scott Cunningham: Mental Health and Success
Chris Roth: Practical Advice on Meditation
Job Market
John Cawley’s guide on the US Job Market
Chicago students' Economics Job Market Advice
David Smerdon: How to survive the economics job market
David Schindler: Guide to the European Job Market
Michela Carlana: EEA Guide for European Job Market Candidates
Johannes Pfeifer: Job Market Resources
Michael Ewens: Job Market Websites
Kelsi Hobbs: Job Market Materials
AYEW: Economics Job Market Roundtable
Kim Cramer: Columbia Job Market Advice
The European Job Market for Economists Info Session 2022: Slides Part I, Slides Part III, Slides Part IV
The European Job Market for Economists Info Session 2023: Slides Part I, Slides Mental Health, Slides Part III, Slides Part IV, Slides Part V
Writing
Claudia Goldin & Lawrence Katz: The Ten Most Important Rules of Writing Your Job Market Paper
John Cochrane: Writing Tips for Ph.D. Students
Plamen Nikolov: Writing Tips for Economics Research Papers
Claudia Sahm: Writing Economics Research Papers
Don Cox: The Big 5, How to write the introduction of a presentation (and paper)
Keith Head: Formula for writing an introduction
Albert Ma: On Writing Economics Papers
Eric Sims’s PhD & Writing Workshop
Datasets and coding
Pietro Biroli collects list of datasets for applied work and gives wise suggestions
Julian Reif: Stata Coding Guide
Gabor Bekes and Gabor Kezdi: Data Analysis
Presentations
Jesse Shapiro: How to Give an Applied Micro Talk
Monika Piazzesi: Tips on how to avoid disaster in presentations
Kjetil Storesletten: The Ten Commandments for How to Give a Seminar
Rachael Meager: Public Speaking for Academic Economists
LSE: How to design an award-winning poster
Resources for research assistants
https://github.com/gslab-econ/ra-manual/wiki/Introduction
https://povertyaction.github.io/guides/
Conferences
Barton Willage and Anne Burton's list of Econ conferences
Apurav Bhatiya: Conferences in Political Economy
Funding
AEA CSWEP: Getting research funding
Matthew Jackson and Laura Razzolini: Getting funding from the NSF
Mentoring
Economic Science Association: Junior Women in Experimental Economics
AEA: Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession
AEA: Committee on the Status of LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Profession
Women in Economics: Mentoring Program
LSE: The Economics PhD Applicant Mentoring Program
Refereeing
Andrea Passalacqua: Guidelines to Write a Referee Reports
Berk, Harvey, Hirshleifer: Preparing a Referee Report: Guidelines and Perspectives
Hammermesh: Facts and Myths about Refereeing
When refereeing be aware of biases against null results