The Hidden Curriculum

This week we talked with Jose Fernandez about the American Society of Hispanic Economists. Jose is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Economics Department at the University of Louisville. He graduated from the University of Virginia. He conducts research in crime, health, and labor economics. He is serving a second term as a member of the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession, a fellow of the Diversity Initiative for Tenure in Economics (DITE), and the former President of the Hispanic/Latino Faculty and Staff Association at the University of Louisville. He was the past President of the American Society of Hispanic Economists (ASHE).  Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Show notes: If you are more interested in learning about ASHE check their website: https://asheweb.org Jose spoke about the list of URM economist working in many fields. You can see the list here. Jose also talked about a paper on "Who gets invited to Seminar Talks" by Doleac, Hengel and Pancotti. Find that paper here.  Jose mentioned his to-do app is called MinimaList.  Jose's recommendation of the week is the book "Eat that Frog" by Brian Tracy.  Alex's recommendation of the week is the book "Teaching statistics: A bag of tricks" by Andrew Gellman and Deborah Nolan.  You can find these and all books recommended on our Hidden Curriculum Book List! https://bookshop.org/shop/Hiddencurriculum Sebastian's recommendation of the week is the Chirr.app which is an app that helps write and publish twitter threads. 

In this episode we talk with Sarah Hamersma about statistical grammar. Sarah Hamersma is an Associate Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs and a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University. Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Associate Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Notes from the episode A link to Sarah’s essay on statistical grammar here, https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/docs/default-source/research/cpr/faculty/hamersma-statsgrammarfail-2022-accessible.pdf A link to Sarah’s essay, Uncertainty: The beauty and bedrock of statistics, https://comment.org/uncertainty-the-beauty-and-bedrock-of-statistics/ A video lecture including the analogy for the golem of Prague and statistical models: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cclUd_HoRlo The Scientific American article about the developemtn and approval of the race specific drug BiDil, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-in-a-bottle/ Recommendations of the Week Sarah’s tip of the week is to read Tish Harrison Warren in the New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/22/opinion/faith-spirituality.html Alex recommends using the @ symbol when using stata reshape command. See here for more details, https://www.stata.com/manuals/dreshape.pdf Sebastian recommends going on a short vacation at the end of the semester to help transition to summer research.

In this episode we talk with Kosali Simon about letters of recommendation for tenure. Kosali Simon is a Distinguished Professor at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University. At IU, Kosali is also the Paul O’Neill Chair, a Herman B Wells Endowed Professor, and the Associate Vice Provost for Health Sciences. Outside of IU Professor Simon is an elected member of National Academy of Medicine and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  Sebastian Tello-Trillois an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Associate Professor at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Kosali mentions the COVID-19 research database, https://covid19researchdatabase.org. Note this episode was recorded a while ago, so this reference is a touch dated.  We also touch on an article on the ASHEcon Newsletter on Data Resources on health care encounter data which can be found here. Recommendations of the Week Kosali recommends gapminder, https://www.gapminder.org, for accessing data on health (and other things).  Sebastian recommends creating a shortcut that changes your phone to be black and white when you want to remind yourself to focus. Alex recommends-- if you're using obsidian-- paying for obsidian mobile sync, https://obsidian.md/pricing

E37 In this episode we talk with Marc Bellemare about his new book, Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School―But Didn’t. You can pre-order Marc's book here.  Marc Bellemare is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Distinguished University Teaching Professor, and Northrop Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. Marc's research focuses on agricultural economics and applied econometrics. Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Associate Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Notes from the episode Marc mentions harvester or sorrow by Metallica. You can energize your day here,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3yWbRngyJs  Marc's working paper: Bellemare, Marc F., Jeffrey R. Bloem, and Noah Wexler (2020), “The Paper of How: Estimating Treatment Effects Using the Front-Door Criterion.” Recommendations of the Week Marc recommends the silver spoon, https://www.phaidon.com/store/food-cook/the-silver-spoon-9780714862569/, an Italian cook book. Alex recommends using pacman for package management in R, http://trinker.github.io/pacman/vignettes/Introduction_to_pacman.html Sebastian recommends using slack, https://slack.com

In this episode we talk with the team from the Research in Color Foundation about their framework for mentoring students. The Research in Color Foundation is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to increasing the number of Ph.D. students of color in economics and economics-adjacent disciplines, and amplifying meaningful economic and policy research on communities of color. RIC does this by matching minorities looking to pursue doctoral degrees in these fields with seasoned professionals who will serve as mentors. In this conversation we talked with Chinemelu Okafor (Founder and President), Odichinma Akosionu (Director of Operations), and Rahma Ahmed (former Vice-president). Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Show notes: Chinemelu recommends taking some time of your day to read a book! This could be any type of book, doesn’t have to be a “serious” read. Odichinma recommends an air fryer, you’ll love it! She also recommends “Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself” by ****Nedra Glover Tawwab. You can find this an all other recommended books in this list. Rahma, recommends using audiobooks as a way to read your books! She specifically recommends two apps, the first one is Libby which can connect to your local library so you can access free audiobooks! The other app is LibriVox which offers free public domain audiobooks

In this episode we talk with Abdullah Al-Bahrani on innovations in the teaching world. Abdullah is an Associate Professor of Economics and the Director of the Center for Economics Education at Northern Kentucky University. His research focuses on economics education and on the role of information on economic decision-making and market outcomes. He is the recipient of the Kenneth G. Elzinga Distinguished Teaching Award (2020), Excellence in Teaching and Instruction award (2016), Dean’s Citation award (2015), and several other awards that recognize my passion and ability for teaching. Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Associate Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Shownotes: Check out the Econ Games. https://www.theecongames.com. Abdullah founded this event in which students use skills learned in their economics classes and apply it to real world situations. Check out Abullah’s youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrAbdullahAlBahrani Sebastian recommends the news site: https://ojo-publico.com and news aggregator: https://winno.app. Sebastian also recommends checking out Dbrands, https://dbrand.com, which are “covers” for your tech so they look nice and unique! Abdullah recommends Paperlike for the ipad. Screen https://paperlike.com Alex recommends Uni-ball power tank: https://uniballco.com/collections/ballpoint-pens/products/power-tank-ballpoint-pens Take the npr health insurance quiz: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/459346426 We also talked about Rebbeca Moryl’s resource on using podcast to teach economics

In this episode we talk with Will Wheeler about working at the Environmental Protection Agency. Will is an environmental economist at the U.S. EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics. He mostly conducts research regarding water quality and enforcement issues and is interested in the quality of EPA’s environmental data and helping people understand the EPA's data sets. He is also interested in the potential for gaming of environmental data. He is Past-President of the Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association and is on the Editorial Board of the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy. In this episode we talk about What does the EPA do? What is the role of economist on the EPA? What are day-to-day tasks? What are some misconceptions about the work in a government agencies? and other interesting questions! Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Recommendations of the week: - Will recommends checking the book  "No drama discipline" and if you are an environmental economist and are looking for research topics, look into the trade press like "Inside EPA" - Alex recommends having a plain text file to "accumulate" things to do, and only concentrate on a number of things per day/week. - Sebastian recommends the book "Make Time" by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. Find it here

In this episode we talk with Price Fishback about admission to economics PhD programs. Price Fishback is the Thomas R. Brown Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona. His primary research interest is the political economy of Roosevelt’s New Deal during the 1930s, examining both the determinants of New Deal spending and loans and their impact on local economies throughout the U.S. Fishback is a research affiliate at the Centre for Economic History at Australian National University, a CAGE Fellow at Warwick University, a program scholar for the Hoover Program on Regulation and the Rule of Law, a fellow at the TIAA-CREF Institute and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Associate Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Notes from the episode Racial Disparities in Access to New Deal Programs in the 1930s: by Price Fishback, Jessamyn Schaller, and Evan Taylor Recommendations of the Week Price recommends seeing/watching Hamilton Alex recommends when running code that will take a while, preventing your computer from turning off and changing the background of your desktop to remind you that you did this.  Sebastian recommends writing down what you want to do the day before!

In this episode we talk with Patrick Baylis about productivity and work habits.  Patrick Baylis is an assistant professor and environmental economist at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He studies how people respond to environmental threats like climate change, air pollution, and wildfires.  Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Associate Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Notes from the episode  An updated blog post from Patrick that we reference throughout the episode, https://www.patrickbaylis.com/blog/2022-02-09-productivity/ Patrick's working paper: Mandated vs. Voluntary Adaptation to Natural Disasters: The Case of U.S. Wildfires (with Judson Boomhower), https://www.nber.org/papers/w29621 Watch Patrick on ESPN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9m9o0X7MN8 Make time book: https://bookshop.org/shop/Hiddencurriculum Recommendations of the Week Patrick recommends deleting email applications from your phone. Alex recommends buying a kitchen scale (he has this one Escali Primo P115C). (Note: Sebastian has now done this and also endorses this tip) Sebastian recommends wakelet (https://wakelet.com) to organize lists of links 

In this episode we talk with Christine Strong about the graduate student immigrant experience. Christine is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Strome School of Business at Old Dominion University. She holds a PhD from the University of Oklahoma. Her research focuses on macroeconomics, monetary policy, politics of central banking and currency union, with a focus in African countries. Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia. Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Indiana University. Recommendations of the Week Christine's recommendation of the week is the book "Born a Crime" by Trevor Noah. You can find this and other recommended books in this link Alex's recommendation of the week is the command binscatter or binscatter2. This is a command that helps understand relationships between two variables. The idea is that it will give the average y for equally size bins of the x variable. You can look find the command of this link: https://michaelstepner.com/binscatter. Another important point is that there are some potential issues with this version of the command that are explained here ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.09608) and a newer version of this command which fixed those isssues: binscatter2  https://github.com/mdroste/stata-binscatter2 Sebastian's recommendation of the week is the podcast "Professor-ing". Professor-ing is a new podcast from the NCFDD where faculty share the R&R - the real and realer about life in academia. Find out more at www.FacultyDiversity.org/ProfessoringPodhttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/professor-ing/id1519285794