Resources for PhD students

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• Jump to “Picking topics and developing ideas”
• Jump to “Data visualization and presentations”
• Jump to “Reading and writing papers”
• Jump to “Professional development and citizenship”
• Jump to “Mental health and making it through”
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Coding and data management

• Invest early on in good coding habits: abstraction, documentation, orderly file structures, and minimal clutter.

  • My lectures on “Code, Data, and Version Control: Best Practices for Economic Research”
  • Code and Data for the Social Sciences: A Practitioner's Guide by Matt Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro
  • Coding for Economists by Ljubica Ristovska
  • Coding Style Guide by Michael Stepner
  • Best Practices for Computer Programming in Economics by Tal Gross

• Stata-specific guidance:

  • The Workflow of Data Analysis Using Stata by J. Scott Long
  • Microeconometrics Using Stata by Colin Cameron and Pravin Trivedi

• Some classics in software engineering:

  • Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert Martin
  • The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick Brooks

• Get proficient with workhorse computing tools like the Unix/Linux shell, regular expressions, and web scraping.

  • A Gentle Introduction to Effective Computing in Quantitative Research: What Every Research Assistant Should Know by Harry Paarsch and Konstantin Golyaev

Version control (Git)

• Use version control. Git is the industry standard.

  • Git for Economists by Frank Pinter (a good place to start)
  • Pro Git by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub (free e-text)
  • Version Control with Git by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough
  • Most Git users pair it GitHub or GitLab
  • Visual Studio Code is a superb text editor with built-in support for version control

• If you want to dig deeper into effective Git workflows:

  • When to Make a Git Commit
  • How to Write a Git Commit Message
  • A Successful Git Branching Model
  • Git for Teams by Emma Jane Hogbin Westby

Picking topics and developing ideas

• Some perspectives:

  • PhD Thesis Research: Where Do I Start? by Don Davis
  • Choosing and Pursuing Unusual Research Topics by Muriel Niederle
  • How to Get Started on Research in Economics by Steve Pischke

• My two cents: think in terms of developing topical expertise, not (just) coming up with viable projects. Lots of things have to line up for a proposed project to succeed: in applied micro, you need an interesting question, suitable data, and convincing variation, with novelty along one or more of these margins. This is hard, and you can expect to pitch many projects unsuccessfully before you land on one with legs.

• Instead of jumping immediately to specific questions/data/variation, give some thought to what topics really interest you, and solicit feedback on whether a potential thesis topic seems promising. I’m talking here about something broader than a research paper but narrower than a field. Within labor economics, some examples would be “the economics of working conditions”, “racial disparities in labor market outcomes”, or “the labor market for health care workers”. (A useful test: can you see it as the title of your dissertation? Or would it sound too narrow, too broad, or simply unimportant?)

• Why think in terms of topics? First, if a particular research idea doesn’t work out, you can recycle more of what you’ve learned about the economic questions, available data, and potential sources of variation. Developing topical expertise will speed up the process of triaging ideas. Second, working within a well-defined topical area will equip you with a coherent research identity and the beginnings of a longer-term research agenda. By contrast, focusing too narrowly on project viability can leave you with a portfolio of unrelated, one-off projects in areas where you don’t have deep expertise.

Data visualization and presentations

• Effective graphics are easy to comprehend and hard to misunderstand, and they highlight the contrasts you want to emphasize. They also look slick and convey spit, polish, and professionalism. Find templates you like, and then fine-tune.

• Up your graphics game:

  • The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
  • An Economist's Guide to Visualizing Data by Jonathan Schwabish

• Improve your presentations:

  • Better Presentations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks by Jonathan Schwabish
  • Beamer tips and templates by Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham
  • How to Give an Applied Micro Talk by Jesse Shapiro

Reading and writing papers

• Reading papers and learning the literature:

  • Reading Papers: Some Tips by Brendan Price

• Good economic writing is good writing. Classic principles apply.

  • The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
  • Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

• Leave enough time for the writing stage. Writing out an argument brings tensions and inconsistencies to the surface, and it often points the way towards changes in the analysis that can strengthen the paper.

  • Economical Writing by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey (long version here)
  • A Guide to Writing in Economics by Paul Dudenhefer

• Make your manuscripts look professional. Become fluent in LaTeX.

  • Butterick's Practical Typography by Matthew Butterick
  • The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX by Tobias Oetiker, Hubert Partl, Irene Hyna, and Elisabeth Schlegl
  • Consider using Overleaf for coauthored papers

• Deeper dives for the typography enthusiast:

  • The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
  • Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton

Professional development and citizenship

• Professional protocol:

  • Best Practices for Economists from the American Economic Association
  • A Guide for the Young Economist by William Thomson

• Professional development:

  • Professional Development Resources from the American Economic Association
  • The Hidden Curriculum, a podcast on professional development in economics
  • CSWEP Programs for female economists
  • CSMGEP Programs for economists from underrepresented minority groups
  • Summer Economics Fellows Program sponsored by the American Economic Association

• Refereeing:

  • How to Write an Effective Referee Report by Jonathan Berk, Campbell Harvey, and David Hirshleifer
  • Guidelines on Writing Referee Reports by William Thomson

• Teaching:

  • What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain
  • Diversifying Economic Quality edited by Amanda Bayer
  • Teaching Resources from the American Economic Association

Mental health and making it through

• Morale and mental health:

  • Graduate Student Mental Health: Lessons from American Economics Departments by Paul Barreira, Matthew Basilico, and Valentin Bolotnyy (forthcoming, Journal of Economic Literature)
  • Impostor Syndrome Is Definitely a Thing by Rachel Herrmann
  • An Unofficial Guidebook for PhD Students in Economics and Education

• Some potentially healthy perspectives:

  • The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc by Radhika Nagpal
  • The First Step by Constantine Cafavy

Other resources

• Some similar lists of resources curated by others:

  • Jennifer Doleac
  • Shanjun Li
  • Michèle Tertilt