The Hidden Curriculum

Ebehi Iyoha, a PhD student in Economics, discusses tips on working with co-authors, setting expectations, and divvying up labor. The podcast also explores her participation in 'NaNoWriMo,' book recommendations, and insights on navigating co-author relationships in academia.

In this episode, we talk with Trang Hoang about preparing for video interviews and presentations. Trang is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Economics at Vanderbilt University. She was an International Economics Ph.D. Fellow at Dartmouth College in the fall of 2019. Her areas of research include international trade, development, and applied microeconometrics. Her job market paper has received two awards: one for "Best Graduate Student Paper" in the FREIT-EIIT conference and a second one for "Best Paper in Applied Economics" from the Econometric Society Winter School at the Delhi School of Economics. You can check it out here. 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: In this episode we talked about hardware that we use. We don't think you need to invest as much as we did, but if you want to know what we use, for microphone we use the Samson Q2U USB. For Webcam we both use the Logitech C920.  We also recommend getting some "light" whether that's coming from a ring light, or a lamp. In terms of recommendation of the week, Trang recommends getting and Apple iPad with the apple pencil. It's a pricey item but she feels she has gotten value out of it. Sebastian's recommendation is to check the application called readwise. Is an application that takes the highlights you've made on many e-books or articles and sends you an email with some of those highlights every so often. This is a great way to "remember" what you once highlighted. Alex's recommendation of the week is the paper "The Environmental Bias of Trade Policy" by Joseph S. Shapiro. Here the abstract of that article: "This paper describes a new fact, then analyzes its causes and consequences: in most countries, import tariffs and non-tariff barriers are substantially lower on dirty than on clean industries, where an industry's “dirtiness” is defined as its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per dollar of output. This difference in trade policy creates a global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions in internationally traded goods and so contributes to climate change. This global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions totals several hundred billion dollars annually. The greater protection of downstream industries, which are relatively clean, substantially accounts for this pattern. The downstream pattern can be explained by theories where industries lobby for low tariffs on their inputs but final consumers are poorly organized. A quantitative general equilibrium model suggests that if countries applied similar trade policies to clean and dirty goods, global CO2 emissions would decrease and global real income would change little." (Click here)

In this episode we talk with Marianne Bitler on general tips to keep in mind while in graduate school. Marianne Bitler is a Professor of Economics at UC Davis. She is an applied microeconomist whose line of work lies within public economics, health economics and labor economics. She has also worked at UC Irvine, the Public Policy Institute of California, the RAND Corporation, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Trade Commission. She is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research fellow at IZA. She just completed chairing a National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Panel on Improving Consumer Data for Food and Nutrition Policy Research for the Economic Research Service, USDA and she is a co-editor of the American Journal of Health Economics. 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: We refer to a "Failure CV". The path to have a "successful" CV is non-linear, and we usually only see people's success (i.e. published papers) but we don't get to see their failures. Doug Webber, has an example of this on his website. Marianne's book recommendation is "Administrative Burden: Policymaking by other Means" Donald P. Moynihan (Author)  Pamela Herd (Author). (click here) Alex's recommendation of the  week is to "print like a referee" so that you can see the tables and figures as referees may see them. Sebastian's recommendation is the book "Range" by David Epstein. The thesis of the book is simple, in a world that values specialization, having "range" could prove a very useful tool to pair up with specialization. (click here). We talk about the book "Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way" by Steven Pressfield (click here) ****************Contest Rules*********************** - You have to be a Job Market Candidate (Defined as someone who is finishing their PhD and going on the Job Market to get their first job after graduated school) - Listen to today's episode and make a note of our guest's recommendation of the week - Choose one of your favorite episode - Send us an email to hiddencurriculumpodcast@gmail.com with Marianne's recommendation and your favorite episode! Also gives us your name and your email address. You could also leave us a voice message on Anchor, be sure to leave us your email and name! - You have 7 days from the episode to make you submissions. That is, we will take submissions until December 23rd - We will randomize the entries and pick a winner. We are hoping to announce the 1st winner on our subsequent podcast (we'll send you an email if you win)

In this episode we talk about how to approach networking with Jennifer Doleac. Jennifer Doleac is an Associate Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University, and Director of the Justice Tech Lab. She is also a Research Fellow at IZA, and a Research Affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty, the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. Jennifer studies crime and discrimination, with particular emphases on prisoner reentry and the effects of technology on public safety. She also organizes the Texas Economics of Crime Workshop (TxECW), and also has a podcast! Probable Causation, a podcast about law, economics, and crime. 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 We referred to Parkinson's law, which is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". For non-research tasks, Jen schedules a finite amount of time, and she aims to finish those task by the amount of time allotted. For research tasks, her schedule is more flexible as she just assigns a amount of time (e.g. 2 hours) but won't put a specific tasks to get done. Jen also mentioned that she enjoys reading the book "The War of Art" right before a getting into a project to her get pumped up! Check this an other books recommendations in our ever-growing list of books recommended by our guests. (Click here). Jen also recommends checking out gather.town and the podcast Women at Work (click here) ****************Contest Rules*********************** - You have to be a Job Market Candidate (Defined as someone who is finishing their PhD and going on the Job Market to get their first job after graduated school) - Listen to today's episode and make a note of Jen's recommendation of the week - Choose one of your favorite episode - Send us an email to hiddencurriculumpodcast@gmail.com with Jen's recommendation and your favorite episode! Also gives us your name and your email address. You could also leave us a voice message on Anchor, be sure to leave us your email and name! - You have 7 days from the episode to make you submissions. That is, we will take submissions until December 15th - We will randomize the entries and pick a winner. We are hoping to announce the 1st winner on our subsequent podcast (we'll send you an email if you win)

Benjamin Hansen, WE Miner Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon, shares his fascinating transition from the private sector to academia. He delves into his research on police staffing and its complex relationship with homicide rates, particularly in marginalized communities. The discussion highlights the challenges and strategies of navigating academic pathways post-2008 financial crisis, along with the importance of maintaining professional networks. Plus, the hosts bond over cycling, recommending Zwift as a fun way to stay active and connect.

In this engaging discussion, John Cawley, a Professor at Cornell University and co-Director of its Institute on Health Economics, shares invaluable tips for advising Ph.D. students entering the job market. He emphasizes the significance of networking and developing practical skills, backed by personal anecdotes about cultural exchanges. Cawley also addresses the evolving job market landscape and highlights initiatives focused on enhancing communication between students and faculty. Tune in for insights on teaching writing skills and empowering student independence!

This week we talk with Melissa Spencer about handling multiple projects. Melissa is a PhD student in Economics at the University of Virginia. She is a job market candidate this year! Melissa’s research focuses on well-being of women and minorities, across the areas of reproductive health, infectious diseases & domestic violence. Alex Hollingsworth - is an Assistant Professor in the O’Neill School of Public and Environment Affairs at Indiana University. Follow Alex @ajhollingsworth Sebastian Tello-Trillo - an Assistant Professor in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Follow Sebastian @dsebastiantello Links: We were talking about how to improve "focus" during work. One technique is the Pomodoro technique. You only need a 25 minute timer, but if you care for more fancy apps, Sebastian uses Tide (https://tide.fm/en_US/). He has also heard good things from [Forest]. Alex uses Focus-to-do (https://www.focustodo.cn). Melissa started her own chapter of women in economics at UVA. If you are interested in starting a chapter, she recommends checking out the resources from "Women in Economics at Berkeley" (http://calwomenofecon.weebly.com) In terms of recommendation of the week. Melissa recommends speaking to people that are not economist about your own research. Sebastian's recommendation is to have a "Nice Emails" folder. Save any email in PDF format in this folder for when you are feeling down but also for any potential review you may have in the future Alex's recommendation of the week  is a software that blocks access to fun-website so you can concentrate on your work. It's called self-control (https://selfcontrolapp.com)

This week we talk with Anne Burton. Anne Burton is a Economics PhD student (and job market candidate for 2020!) at Cornell University. Her research is primarily concerned with the social welfare implications of risky health behaviors and crime. Before going  to Cornell, She was a Senior Research Assistant in the Fiscal Analysis section at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. from 2012-2015. She graduated from Colby College in Waterville, Maine in 2012 with a B.A. in Economics and Government. Alex Hollingsworth - is an Assistant Professor in the O’Neill School of Public and Environment Affairs at Indiana University. Follow Alex @ajhollingsworth Sebastian Tello-Trillo - an Assistant Professor in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Follow Sebastian @dsebastiantello Show Notes: Anne's paper is on smoking ban's on alcohol and smoking consumption. She also gives a shout out to this paper by Jérôme Ada and Francesca Cornaglia. (Taxes, Cigarette Consumption, and Smoking Intensity) Anne Burton & Barton Willage have compiled a list of conference in economics, which includes online conferences. Check it out! (Click here) We also mention that in terms of tools for keeping connected you may want to try slack, or gather.town Anne's recommendation of the week is to go vote! Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to use "Control + Backspace" instead of "Backspace", this will delete full words and will make your typing experience easier! It takes some time to get used to. If you want more tips to type fast, (click here) Alex's recommendation is the STATA command "ds" (click here). DS can store a set of variables in a local or macro. For example, you can type "ds a*" and this will create a local with all the variables that start with a.

This week Alex show us his research workflow. How he starts a project, and moves through the different software of analysis and organizing to produce a paper. Although the this episode contains audio, we have a recorded this on a video format and you can find video here. Listening to the audio may be helpful but we strongly encourage to check out the video.   Note: The audio episode is a shortened version. The portion where we show how to pull your code into overleaf using GitHub is only in the video version.  Co-host: Alex Hollingsworth - Assistant Professor, O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Follow Alex @ajhollingsworth Co-host: Sebastian Tello-Trillo - Assistant Professor, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Follow Sebastian @dsebastiantello SHOW NOTES:  Longer video episode with overleaf overview: (click here).   GitHub repo of the code used in the episode: (click here) and associated Dropbox folder: (click here). Alex's tip: use minimum working examples to both debug and build complex code. Example/more explanation: (click here). Other tip: Preferred STATA Graphing Scheme Blind Schemes or `ssc install blindschemes, replace all`  then `set scheme plotplainblind` HT: Coady Wing  Most excellent Keanu movies to watch (from video): Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Point Break   BONUS: Grant McDermott offered a suggestion on twitter: "One suggestion, which will simplify life on the R side, is to use renv instead of manually configuring your project libs. This will automatically snapshot your project environment, create a project-specific library, add to gitignore, etc. Here’s a test repo for you to try out. Video link at the bottom too if you’re interested.  Just clone and run `renv::restore()` and it will take care of everything for you. Pretty sweet. (click here)

This week Alex and Sebastian talk with Kelli Marquardt, a PhD Student at University of Arizona. We talk with Kelli about how to approach people from outside your discipline and similar practices. Kelli is a health economist and is currently studying health disparities on the decisions that health providers make in a variety of situation. Co-host: Alex Hollingsworth - Assistant Professor, O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Follow Alex @ajhollingsworth Co-host: Sebastian Tello-Trillo - Assistant Professor, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Follow Sebastian @dsebastiantello Links: Here is the datacamp link for Kelli's recommendation.  This is a mini-course to learn how to do text-analysis by analyzing prince songs.   Academic sequitur, a service that helps you search and keep up to date with research from your topic of interest across fields, or just in your field Alex's recommends checking this website by Jonas Kristoffer Lindeløv that teaches how most models are just linear regressions Unlocking Us is a podcast by Brene Brown, and the episode with Harriet Lerner is particularly awesome as you learn how to form a good apology.