In this episode, we talk with Joe Benitez on working in specialized departments. Joe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Management & Policy at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health. His research focuses primarily on the impact of public policy changes on access to care, medically underserved populations and the role of the health care safety net, and the Medicaid program. He has been published is Health Affairs, Health Services Research, and Medical Care, and featured on NPR and U.S. News & World Report. In 2016, he was funded by AcademyHealth’s New Investigator Small Grant Program to study the implications of Medicaid expansion for safety net hospital financing. More recently, Dr. Benitez received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study Medicaid use and participation among transitionally poor households. He is also on the editorial board of Medical Care Research & Review, and he will soon start as a member of the advisory board for the construction of a Medicaid Equity Database to be developed by the University of Minnesota’s State Health Access and Data Assistance Center (SHADAC).

Dr. Benitez received his PhD in Health Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and he was awarded an R36 Dissertation Grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality to study the long-run effects of the Medically Underserved Area designation program.

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.

This week we (@ajhollingsworth) talk with Andrew Friedson on how to get a book published. Andrew is a research director at the Milken Institute. Previously he was an associate professor on economics at UC Denver. He recently has published his first book "Economics of Healthcare" is out now! This textbook is an introduction to health economics to people without much of the Econ-background.

Get the book here

P.S. We've are back! Share any episode on your favorite social media and send us a receipt at [email protected] or just by doing it on twitter we will notice it!

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 at the Ohio State University

Andrew Friedson, PhD, is the director of health economics in the Milken Institute’s Research Department. He heads projects concerning health, health care, and related sectors. Prior to joining the Milken Institute, he spent over a decade in academia where he was an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado, Denver, with a secondary appointment in the department of health systems management and policy at the Colorado School of Public Health.  He has wide expertise in health economics and has published peer-reviewed research on health behaviors, markets, and policy in premiere journals in economics, public policy, and medicine including the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Law and Economics, and JAMA Health Forum. Friedson received the Richard Musgrave Prize from the National Tax Association in 2014. His textbook, Economics of Healthcare: A Brief Introduction will be released soon by Cambridge University Press. Friedson received a PhD and a MA in Economics from Syracuse University and BAs in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Rochester.

We took a little break and now we are back with some great episodes. Some are recorded long ago, some more recently. All are newly edited. Looking forward to a great season :)

This week we have a special episode! We invite a couple of job market candidates to give us their pitch and we have a panel of judges identifying the great things about each pitch and broad lessons for everyone who is crafting the pitch for their paper. The "elevator" pitch is an idea whose objective is to talk about a particular paper to motivate a conversation. Usually job market candidates have to "craft" a pitch since they'll be constantly asked about their job market paper. It is not easy and there are many takes on how to get this done, this is why in this episode we have the hot takes from two professors. Our first panelist is Mary Eschelbach Hansen, she is a professor of economics at American University. Our second panelist is Zach Bethune, an associate professor of economics at Rice University. We have four candidates who have share their pitches with us:

Laura Montenovo a PhD student at Indiana University. Job Market paper

Alistair Macaulay a postdoc at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford. Job Market Paper 

James Flynn a PhD student at UC Boulder. Job Market Paper 

Ashley Bradford a PhD student at Indiana University. Job Market Paper. 

 We hope this is useful to both JMCs and early career scholars honing their skills on marketing a paper.

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.

Recs of the week:

Check out Mary Eschelbach Hansen's book Bankrupt in America (with Bradley A. Hansen). This book traces how and why bankruptcy was transformed from an infrequently used provision in the Constitution, to an indispensable tool for businesses, to a central element of the social safety net for ordinary Americans— all in less than a century.

Mary recommends for you to check out the pumpkin pie with bourbon recipe from Julia Childs, I think is this one. In addition, listen a Johnny Cash song! Here is a playlist of his work

Zach recommends to unplug from your phone and to do something else, maybe read a physical book! He recommends The Infinite Machine, by Camila Russo. You can find all the recommended books on our recommended book page https://bookshop.org/shop/Hiddencurriculum. Also check out Zach's research on his research page and his food rec is to order a Greenberg Smoked Turkey. 

Alex recommends the book When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein. 

In this episode we talk with Jessica Calarco about advocating for oneself. Jessica is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University. Her research program focuses on systems of inequality, how policies and institutions cater to those with power and privilege while disadvantaging others. Professor Calarco has two books, "Negotiating Opportunities" and "A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum", which is very related to the topics of this podcast!

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:

You can find the book and all other books that we have recommended in our Hidden Curriculum library

One of the recommendations of the week is Zotero bib. ZoteroBib is a free service that helps you build a bibliography instantly from any computer or device, without creating an account or installing any software. Find more here: https://zbib.org/faq

You can also check out Alex's guide on how to manage reference for research here: https://hollina.github.io/managing-references.html

Another recommendation is the Facebook group "Buy Nothing". This is a Facebook group, that aims to have people give out free items to members of their own local community. It's a great way of recycle or ask for favors!

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

Recommendations of the Week

In this episode we talk with Kosali Simon about letters of recommendation for tenure.

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

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

Recommendations of the Week