11/12/2018Advice for PhD students
Insightful advice on how to become admitted into US economics phd programmes. Not updated in a while, but the discussion boards are quite active. [Link]
Collection of websites with advice on all issues of PhD student life:
phdtips.com: like the tips4economists, but exclusively for the PhD student phase [Link]
Dissertation Recipes [Link]
"phd life, a blog about the PhD student experience" by the University of Warwick [Link]
The Dutch PhD Coach (in English) [Link]
"Essential PhD tips: 10 articles all doctoral students should read" by the generally very recommendable and unique Times Higher Education [Link]
"How to write a publishable paper as a class project", "Dissertation Advice" for PhD students, and "Advice to Junior Faculty", by Gary King of Harvard [Link]
Andrew Johnston, now at UC Merced, has a nice link collection on many topics, including his experience with many empirical techniques. [Link]
Collection of websites with advice relevant also for more senior academics:
Science over the years has had articles on all topics of academic work and life, collected as "The Academic Scientists' Toolkit". [Link] More recently it also had a series on basic "how-to"s. [Link]
Quora is a more 'serious'/'academic' version of the ubiquitous Q&A webpages. Highly insightful. [Link]
Resources for Young Economists by the Royal Economic Society [Link], inter alia offering the annual PhD Meeting (UK job market), Training Schools, and The Economics Network (see "Teaching Economics" below)
Adacemic Job Market:
About "The Transition from Graduate Student to Assistant Professor" by the University of California Berkeley Career Center [Link]
Collection of advice for job market candidates by CentER of Tilburg University. [Link]
Guidance on the "Academic job market advice for economics, political science, public policy, and other professional schools" from Chris Blattman (U Chicago) [Link]
Career Tips from the EUI's Academic Career's Observatory, with a special section on the Job Market in Economics [Link],
also provide introductions into the academic career systems in Europe and the most important overseas countries [Link]
Brief overview of the Spanish Economic Association's Job Market for Economists [Link]
A large part of the advice you find online on finding a postdoc comes from the hard sciences and maths, which does not fully translate to Economics departments. But the advice on CVs, cover letters etc. is still mostly very useful. Examples are [Link]
Job Application samples:
UC San Francisco [Link]
Writing & Publishing
Advice on writing:
Writing an abstract for a conference paper [Link & Link] (maybe the most crucial point during PhD studies)
Nicolas Boccard on how to single-author an economics textbook [Link]
There are a number of apps, websites, or browser plug-ins that are grading your writing style. Awesome idea, generally, but I feel that they are mostly useful for non-technical, non-academic pieces. [e.g. Hemingway App, Writefull App]
Fine-tuning documents:
APA Citation Style: Quick Guide and Links with more details (University Library Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) [Link]
To me the APA style looks the most elegant and coherent. Obviously the style is only a choice for drafts and working papers.
Have the Capitalization of Words in Titles on Scientific Articles Done for You [Link, Link, Link, Link]
Adding JEL Codes [Link]
Where to publish:
Repositories for working papers: [here], [here], [here]. [Academia.edu] doesn't seem to be used too much by Economists and was furthermore acquired by evil Elsevier. Linked.in seems to be become more common in academia, even though it is said to not be of too much help in pursuing an academic career. Connecting with conference acquaintances won't hurt, though.
Journal Ranking (Scimagojr) [Link] (REPEC/IDEAS also features a journal ranking)
Suitable journal candidates among the Elsevier portfolio [Link]
You wouldn't want to publish here: "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers" [Archived, as it was taken offline in early 2017]
How to publish:
Kwan Choi, former editor of the Review of International Economics, on "How to Publish"; initially intended to become a book, now a collection of chapters free to download [Link]
Database of "Journal Cost-Effectiveness". [Link]
(Academic) Correspondence in English
57 Ways To Sign Off On An Email [Link]; updated version now containing 89 Ways [Link]
More opinions on this sensitive topic: [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link] and [Link].
Useful Stock Phrases for Your Business Emails [Link] (In general the Daily Writing Tips have some great advice on writing in English)
Forman and Informal Email Phrases [Link]
How to write formal letters (and other official communication) [Link]
Sample Business Letters [Link]
Teaching economics
Link collection of learning resources to be used in Undergraduate Micro courses (in German) [Link]
Handbooks for Teaching Assistants:
The Economics Network offers a handbook on teaching economics at universities, with a special section for Graduate Teaching Assistants [Link]
To-do lists and advice for TAs at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota [Link]
The University of Southern California Center for Excellence in Teaching offers "Teaching Nuggets", a Wiki for TAs, and numerous pieces of advice on course design [Link]
Warwick [Link]
Teaching micro resources:
A free "principles" ebook that tries to incorporate more recent developments, INET-style. Remotely connected with the Economics Network [Link] (registration required)
Microeconomic Theory: Matt Clancy (Iowa State) [Link]
Teaching maths resources:
Explanations, examples and visualisations of mathematical concepts, from basic to advanced. [Link]