Advice for PhD Students

This web page collects together advice for PhD students that I think is important. This includes job market resources at the end.

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Transitioning from taking courses & exams to producing research

• "Starting a Research Career" by Backus
• "Ph.D. Thesis Research: Where do I Start?" by Davis
• "Doing Research" by Niehaus
• "Pep Talk on Research" by Weil
• "The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research" by Schwartz

Finding ideas

• "Most Projects Fail" by Finkelstein
• "An Unofficial Guide to Trying to Do Empirical Work" by Finkelstein

• "How I Work" by Krugman
• "My System of Work" by Dixit
• "The Art and Practice of Economics Research: Lessons from Leading Minds" by Bowmaker

The process of developing ideas into a research project

• "The Research Paper Playbook: A PhD Student's Guide to Writing and Presenting" by Even-Tov and Valentine
• "Four Steps to an Applied Micro Paper" by Shapiro

Writing a paper

• "The Ten Most Important Rules of Writing Your Job Market Paper" by Goldin and Katz
• "Writing Tips for Ph.D. Students" by Cochrane
• "Thoughts on Writing for Financial Economists" by Karpoff

• Checklist by Kremer
• Formulas for the abstract and introduction by Sahm
• Formula for the introduction by Head
• Formula for the conclusion by Bellemare
• Formulas for the motivation by Zuckerman

• "How to Write Any Research Paper" by de Freitas, Paquet, Gouws, Arjovsky & Cho
• "Writing the Empirical Journal Article" by Bem

Presenting a paper

• Presentation tips by Piazzesi
• Presentation rules by Piazzesi, Schneider & Tonetti
• "How to Give an Applied Micro Talk: Unauthoritative Notes" by Shapiro
• "How to Give an Academic Talk" by Edwards
• "The Ten Commandments For How to Give a Seminar" by Storesletten
• "A Graph is Worth a Thousand Citations" by Zwick

General advice

• "How to Succeed in Academia or Have Fun Trying" by Pedersen
• "Advice for PhD Students" by Roth and Schindler
• "The 12 Step Program for Grad School" by Zwick
• "15 Rules to Help You Make it Through Grad School" by Blattner
• "10 Mistakes Doctoral Students Make in Managing their Program" by Grover

Good habits for reproducible workflows

• "Code and Data for the Social Sciences: A Practitioner’s Guide" by Gentzkow and Shapiro
• "A Basic Data Science Workflow" by Barter
• "Code, Data, and Version Control: Best Practices for Economic Research by Price
• Replication packages from the RFS as examples

Academic job market

Advice

See my Powerpoint slides (for UW students).

• "Finance Job Market Advice", by Peter Iliev
• "A Rookie’s Guide to the Academic Job Market in Finance: The Labor Market for Lemons", by Alexander W. Butler and Timothy Falcon Crack
• "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Job Market", by Eric Zwick
• Job Market Tips by Kim Fe Cramer and Kerry Siani
  • Slides
  • Frequently Asked Questions
• "Finance Job Market Advice, Based on 2020-2021 Experience", by Manish Jha

• "A Verbose Note for PhD Students on How to Interview for Economic Research Jobs", by Jonathan A. Parker
• "So You Want To Go on the Job Market", by Alex Albright
• "Suggested Timeline For Those On The Job Market Next Year", by Tatyana Deryugina
• "Job Market Timeline, 2022-2023", by Boston University
• Tips by David Laibson (pre-Covid)
• Interview Advice by Natalia Emanuel
  • Interview Structure and Tips
  • Interview Questions
• Articles on "Advice for Phd Students in Economics", by Chris Roth and David Schindler
• Articles on "Economics Job Market Advice", by Anonymous

Job listings

• SSRN Finance
• AFA

• HigherEdJobs in Finance
• EconJobMarket
• Indeed
• AcademicJobsOnline in Finance
• AEA JOE
• Chronicle
• FMA