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

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

Recommendations of the Week

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 

Recommendations of the Week

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

In this episode we talk with Donna Ginter on her tips to a successful grant proposal. Donna is the Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute for Policy & Social Research at the University of Kansas and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her major fields of study are scientific labor markets, gender differences in employment outcomes, wage inequality, scientific entrepreneurship, children's educational attainments, and child abuse and neglect.

In her role as the director of IPSR at Kansas she helps people get funded through different means. Her research also focuses on scientific entrepreneurship. Finally, Donna has has extensive experience applying for grants and serving in committees that award grants. She shares what she has learned from all of these experiences with us.

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:

Donna recommends that if you are looking for a way to quickly re-charge your batteries, go out for a walk in "nature". Donna feels that going out to nature even for 15 minutes can help recharge energy and get the creative flow going. Her second recommendation is to track your time. Pick a given week or period of time for which you will track your time. Then check how much %s of your time you spend on each category of your job and adjust accordingly.

Alex's recommendation of the week is to ask people for their successful grant applications. When he started this process, Alex didn't know where to start. Seeing a friend's application was very helpful in understanding format, and narrative of how an application looks.

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to apply for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. This fellowship provides you with financial support and importantly it can relief you from teaching assistant duties during your PhD Program, which can be very helpful. You can apply for this fellowship while applying for graduate school or in your first year of graduate school.

In this episode we talk with Allison Luedtke (LID-kee) about procuring a job at a liberal arts position. Allison is an assistant professor of economics at St. Olaf College. Her research focuses on the macroeconomic effects of networks. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Virginia and Bachelor's degree in Math from William and Mary.

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:

Allison's recommendations of the week is a cocktail called greenpoint. It's a spin on a Manhattan. Ingredients are:

Alex's recommendation of the week is to sign up for "Bright by Text". It's a text messaging systems that "provides invaluable information from early childhood experts on topics including developmental milestones, brain development, mental health and resilience, social-emotional competence, STEM, language and literacy, nutrition, health and more." Text BRIGHT to 274 448 to sign up. They also have the text in spanish!

Alex also say you should watch Ted Lasso.

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to submit your JMP! This is taken from my adviser Kitt Carpenter. The main story here is that once you are done with the market, you will take a break, move and then the semester will start and life will be a bit hectic. It may be easy to keep scheduling working on the JMP for later. It may even seem like a huge task to do all the suggestions you got while being on the market! That's true but I still highly recommend getting back to it and just trying to submit it, and re-submit it until it is done. You will feel so great when it is off your shoulders!

In this episode, we talk with Julian Reif about setting up a research project folder for best replications purposes. Julian is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Economics at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He is also a Senior Scholar at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on health policy evaluation and the value of health and longevity. Professor Reif received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and his BA from Vanderbilt University.

In this episode, we go over how to set up a research project folder structure. We follow the guide that Julian has on his page. [https://julianreif.com/guide/#folder-structure]. This is a great guide to follow for structuring all your projects. I usually have an "empty" project folder, and every time I start a new project, I copy and rename that folder for my new project.

We also have a companion video tutorial on how to do this, in which you can follow step-by-step how to do it. [https://youtu.be/KUtxJyauQ-o]

Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.

Alex Hollingsworth is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University.

During the episode, we talk about Julian's paper on teenage driving and mortality risk. You can find that paper here https://julianreif.com/research/reif.wp.driving.pdf

Recommendations of the week

Julian's recommendation of the week is to listen to a podcast while you exercise! His two recommendations are (1) Conversations with Tyler and (2) Mindscape. https://conversationswithtyler.com and https://www.mindescapepodcast.com

Alex’s tip of the week is to use code snippets when writing in latex and sublime text. Basically ways of automating annoying tasks. You can check out examples here: http://www.peterhaschke.com/workflow/2013/05/08/SLT2-Snippet.htmlFor example, you can type `fig` then hit tab and all the code to create a figure with a centered graphic will replace the `fig` text you typed, with your cursor in the place to add the appropriate file path. 

Sebastian's recommendation of the week is to use the text-replacement app Autohotkey. This app allows you to map any keyboard combination to an action or other words. For example, I type "-zoom" for my personal zoom link, and my zoom link appears. https://www.autohotkey.com