Teaching & Other Resources
Teaching
Principles of Macroeconomics (Large Lecture)
Principles of Macroeconomics (Honors)
Because this is a smaller honors course, I have taken an experimental approach and created my own set of notes*.
*These are a work in progress and will probably have small frequent updates. Feel free to contact me if you'd like to use these notes, or if you'd like access to the accompanying homeworks/exams.
Environmental Economics
Career & Student Resources
Photo Credit: NASA (restored by Toby Ord)
Career Choice
Our careers greatly influence the trajectories of our lives. Yet, we spend comparatively little time gathering information and planning them. I have found the resources at 80000 Hours to be helpful in this task and well received by students.
This site has an eye towards individuals who want to have a positive impact on the world---in the spirit of the Effective Altruism community---but even if you do not share that objective, it is the best resource I know of to understand the broad qualities that facilitate career happiness/satisfaction/etc.
As part of a related project, I contributed a post about how I became an economics professor and what my day-to-day life is like. "Writing about my job" posts for other careers are collected here.
Resource Recommendations for Students
Find Mentors
Having wise folks willing to provide you guidance is invaluable. People generally like serving this role; reach out to those you find impressive!
Shout-out to some particularly influential professors in my life: Mike Leeds, Doug Webber, Oli Coibion, Dean Spears, and many others
Books I frequently recommend (in no particular order)
Deep Work by Cal Newport
The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer & Doing Good Better by Will McAskill
Animal Liberation (Now) by Peter Singer & Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit (Warning: somewhat dense philosophy)
When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others. --Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit (pulled from this Vox piece on Parfit)
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Mr. Money Mustache (a blog, but worth including)
The Little Book of Research Writing by Varanya Chaubey (especially for grad students!)